Handley Lumber
As villages were surveyed throughout the Kawartha Lakes region in the nineteenth century, many were located at cataracts on the Trent Waterway, and typically land was set aside to build mills. Fenelon Falls was no exception, having multiple mill reserves. It originally had mills on either side of the Falls—more recently transformed into a pair of hydro generating plants. The days when just about every town had a saw and grist mill processing wheat and lumber for local use and export are a distant memory. Handley Lumber is one of the few local mill reserves that still has a mill on it.
In the early twentieth century, the site was home to a planing mill. In that era, the village was rapidly developing and much of the trim, (wooden) windows and doors that was then fashionable was manufactured locally. In 1936, the property passed from Fred Chambers to Joe Handley Jr., who made a living clearing land, milling the logs and pasturing cattle. Joe was operating a shingle mill in Burnt River and also had a sawmill on the Third Concession of Somerville. While Chambers had used the property primarily to machine lumber, in early years, Joe exported a lot of lumber. In 1937, he bought a tractor trailer to facilitate shipping lumber to Toronto.
When J. Handley and Sons opened in Fenelon Falls, a few years had passed since the last log drives had come down the Trent Watershed. But for a generation afterwards, many farmers spent the winter getting out logs off their farms for sale. Joseph would drive around the region, purchasing logs that he would truck to his mill and process. From about the 1960s and 1970s on, many farm families had off-farm employment, and ever fewer spent winter working in the bush. At the same time, requirements for stamped lumber in construction would make mass-produced, spruce lumber imported from other regions the industry standard. In 1964, Joseph’s son Ray Handley joined BOLD: Better Ontario Lumber Dealers, a buying platform that would evolve into Castle Building Centres Ltd. In the years that followed, the volume of sales vastly increased, as did the variety of products that were used in local construction.
Handley Lumber would pass to Ray’s sons, then his grandsons Chris and Tim. Now in its fourth generation, Handley Lumber carries on as Fenelon Falls’ lumber yard. The old red mill, remains a familiar sight on Helen Street and much of the belt-driven machinery is still operational, as newer equipment has been introduced. Third generation owner Ken Handley continues to work in the mill, making products like flooring.
Did you know that Maryboro Lodge Museum has produced a new documentary on the history of Handley Lumber? Check it out in the museum’s little cinema, or online at https://maryboro.ca/documentaries/handley-lumber/
