The First Panorama of Fenelon Falls: Anne Langton’s Road to Blythe

Fenelon Falls is very fortunate that Anne Langton spent a decade living at Blythe Farm on the north arm of Sturgeon Lake, beginning in 1837. Before the advent of photography (which reached Fenelon Falls in the 1870s), images of people and places were captured through art. Looking back to this period, most small towns have no visual record of their early history. Because Anne Langton had the time and talent to sketch, there are few places in Canada that were captured more vividly than the communities near her home.

Anne Langton’s Road to Blythe is the first depiction of Fenelon Falls as a whole. At the time, the best vantage for seeing the community was the Anglican Church hill—which for many years was the lookout over Fenelon Falls—and the actual site of the chapel. It was almost a century before the first aeroplanes made it possible to fly above the trees and actually see the whole community. It is likely that she had to imagine or exaggerate the perspective of some of the locations to make them fit.

Anne labelled the buildings that are visible along the top margin, which conveniently identifies them for posterity. Her family’s home, Blythe, is obscured at the left, and on the right she notes the locations of genteel settlers’ estates on Cameron Lake—close friends of her family. It is the only known depiction of the original store and tavern. Then as now, Maryboro Lodge (Mr. Wallis’s behind the trees) stood in the ancient oak grove overlooking the mouth of the Fenelon River at Cameron Lake.