Kinmount Station
Kinmount grew around the Bobcaygeon Road’s bridge over the Burnt River. Though the Burnt River is a pleasant canoe route today, it was not practical for steam navigation because there were several rapids along the way. But it soon became one of the main arteries for exporting sawlogs from Haliburton. Being a fast flowing river that drained much of eastern Haliburton County, the logs could be floated to Kinmount. In the second half of the nineteenth century, much of the material to supply the logging camps passed through Kinmount. Over the years, several mills have also operated in the community.
For the first decades of its existence, many wagons of goods passed through Kinmount on the Bobcaygeon and Monck Roads. In 1874, work began on the Victoria Railway, which was completed from Lindsay to Haliburton on November 29, 1878. In 1876, a young contractor from Kirkfield named William Mackenzie began work on the train station at Kinmount. He soon earned a reputation as an excellent contractor, and would become one of the best-known railway builders in Canada. With partner Donald Mann, he would complete Canada’s second transcontinental railway, the Canadian Northern Railway.
Many railway stations followed a common design and Kinmount was no exception. It contained a waiting room for passengers, a ticket office and a baggage room. The bay window on the front allowed the station agent to see both directions on the line. The railway helped make Kinmount into a centre of transportation and commerce for the surrounding district. In the years that followed, the IB&O Railway was constructed running east from Howland Junction, which was just north of town. The railway station in Kinmount was often encircled by stacks of freight (particularly forest produce) waiting to be exported from the region. Kinmount station also handled many supplies headed for logging camps. During the heyday of the railway, Kinmount was also surrounded by farms. The station was so busy that it needed an addition on the north side to handle all the freight.
Many visitors to Kinmount today have no idea that it once had beautiful main street, with Victorian buildings and hotels. Kinmount has suffered from fire more than any other community in the Kawarthas, having many memorable infernos. In 1890 and 1942, the downtown surrounding the station burned. The Great Fire of 1942 even burned the sheds beside the station, but somehow, not a shingle on the station itself was scorched. It is often said that Sir William Mackenzie’s ghost protects this structure that he built as a young man. During the Great Flood of 1928, the Burnt River rose so high that it was up to the firebox of the woodstove in the waiting room. Yet the line stayed open, as trains pulled up to Kinmount station, where passengers could step into a boat for the short paddle to higher ground.
With the advent of automobiles and trucks, the railway declined over the course of the twentieth century, and Kinmount was never the same after the fire of 1942. By the 1960s, regular passenger service had ceased, and the waiting room became a storage shed for handcars. The bay windows were replaced with unsightly doors to facilitate moving equipment in and out of the building. The station closed in 1978, and it was not long until the entire Victoria Railway disappeared.
In the 1990s, the old railway was reborn as the Victoria Rail Trail. Kinmount station was restored. It has been repainted to its original colours (for a period of time it had been a dark red). More recently it has been home to Kevin Robillard, the village blacksmith, the Kinmount Model Railway and Heritage Centre. In 2007, the municipality replaced the foundation, which had settled over the years. Sitting on a level base, all of the windows and doors once carefully installed by Mackenzie’s crew started to work properly again. Kinmount Station has stood at the centre of the village, through all the changes and catastrophes that have happened since 1876.
