All the King's horses...

Photo by Barry Wallace

                                   Heavy horses on a farm between Snowball and Kettleby

In 1885, A Brief History of Canada and the Canadian People, published in Toronto, included a report on the status of agricultural pursuits in King Township and it stated that in 1881 there was a population of 2,917 horses in the township.   Apparently, there were also 4,088 cattle, 5,337 sheep, and 2,282 hogs.   The report stated: "Stock raising is carried on to a greater extent in King than in any other township in the country".   The late 1800s was probably the zenith for horse-rearing in King Township, as self-propelled farm machinery was about to huff-and-puff across the land.   131 years later, no one would suggest there are almost 3,000 horses in King.   Let's see now...that would be 100 farms with an average of 30 horses each.   No, I don't think we're there.   It would be interesting to know what that number is however.   Meanwhile, King Township and many of its citizens are avid promoters of the idea that King Township is the horse capital of Ontario, perhaps all of eastern Canada.   I, for one, never tire of driving the concessions and sideroads and seeing all that horseflesh.   What beautifully made creatures...and almost in our backyards.

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Barry Wallace   

Round The Bend Farm Market turns a corner

Photos by Barry Wallace

The walls are up and the roof is on, at Round The Bend Farm Market's new poultry barn on Jane Street in Kettleby.   The old barn was destroyed by a devastating fire, last fall, that killed  1,500 turkeys.   Friends and neighbours in the community rallied around the Feddema Family to quickly help them back on their feet.   Turkey-farming friends of the Feddema's also supplied part of their bird stocks to get the Feddemas through the Christmas period.
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Barry Wallace    

Sir Henry's barn slowly slips away

Photos by Barry Wallace

Broken windows, doors ajar, bricks crumbling ..... the great barn at Marylake slowly crumbles into disrepair.   It was once the pride of Sir Henry Pellatt, of Casa Loma fame, and the centrepiece of his summer retreat and hunting lodge, just north of King City.   He purchased the land 100 years ago and in short order created a magnificent country estate that even featured its own railway spur line.   Sadly, by 1935, it had all come to a sorry end for Sir Henry.   Marylake was sold and the land became the Marylake Augustinian Monastery and later Our Lady of Grace Shrine.   While religious pursuits still thrive at Marylake, agricultural activity has undergone change, and has left the grand farm buildings empty.
   

Even though it sits in the shadow of a shrine, the great barn at Marylake seems a poor candidate for salvation.   It begs for a miracle, at this stage.  

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Barry Wallace

Winter interrupts construction

Photo by Barry Wallace

New home construction has been briefly interrupted by wintry weather, for one of the very few times, so far this winter.   The halt included construction of the new Holy Name Catholic Elementary School off Dufferin Street south of the King Road, on the east side of the village.   The school is set to open in just over six months and is reported to be on schedule, as of the latest online report (Feb. 9).

Meanwhile, the view, from King City's main intersection, of the existing Holy Name Catholic Elementary School, on the the south side of the King Road, at the west end of the village, has been obliterated by the very large condominium apartment development under construction.   This development has raced ahead under ideal, winter-weather, construction conditions. 

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Barry Wallace

We may get some winter yet

Photo by Barry Wallace

King Road interchange on the 400

February 24 dawned and actually looked like a bonafide winter day.   There have been very few such days, so far, during this remarkable winter.   Not that we're complaining, right?   The snow today however was much less than predicted and we coped quite well with another day in the winter-that-wasn't.
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Barry Wallace 

Parking problems plague GO Train passengers

Photos by Barry Wallace

This is the new bicycle shelter at the GO Transit Station in King City.   Not surprisingly, for this time of year, there is only one bicycle in the racks.   Even if the racks were completely full, it would do little to alleviate the huge, chronic parking problem at King City's south end.   Every day, parking regulations enforcement personnel issue tickets to offenders, many of whom seem to regard the tickets as just an additional cost of transit to Toronto.   All sorts of proposals are being made as solutions, including remote parking lots with shuttle connections to the station.   I have to wonder why no mention has been made of extending the existing parking lots to the swamplands to the south, even by expropriation, if need be.   Below are three views of the normally full lots.

   

      
The two vehicles pictured here, in the foreground, were obvious offenders and were quickly ticketed by a parking enforcement officer while I was there.   Several others were dealt with in a similar fashion.
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Barry Wallace

Octagonal deadhouses in King

Mid-to-late 19th-century octagonal deadhouses were unique to south-central Ontario and seemed to be built particularly in the area of Yonge Street.   King Township has two such deadhouses, one in King City Cemetery and one in Kettleby Cemetery.   Deadhouses were used in winter to store bodies in coffins that could not be buried because of frozen ground.

King City Cemetery Deadhouse

The King City Cemetery Deadhouse was part of a 2011 walking tour of King City.   Cemetery Manager, Jim Wymss, transformed the deadhouse into a mini-museum of cemetery equipment and artefacts for the occasion.

Kettleby Cemetery Deadhouse

The 1899 Kettleby Cemetery Deadhouse is also notable for its impressive cut-fieldstone walls.

The cemetery at Schomberg does not have a deadhouse but it does have an small, pretty burial chapel.   On the chapel's south side are double-doors (pictured below) that once facilitated the in-and-out-passage of pallbearers and coffins, during funeral services.

Other deadhouses in the King Township area are to be found at Bolton, Aurora and Richmond Hill.   They are pictured below.

Laurel Hill Cemetery Deadhouse, Bolton ~ built 1894

Aurora Cemetery Deadhouse ~ built 1868

Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church Cemetery Deadhouse ~ built 1863

Other octagonal deadhouses are reported to exist in Queensville and one in Toronto.   Two more apparently exist in western Canada.   Research has been done that purports all of these octogonal deadhouse houses were the work of Aurora builder, Henry Harris.

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Barry Wallace

King Oaks all but sold out

Photo by Barry Wallace

Pictured above is one of two model homes in the new King Oaks subdivision, on Keele Street in the south end of King City, opposite the GoTrain station.   No homes have been built yet, but apparently all the homesites, except two, have been pre-sold.   Prices for the 'luxury estate living' homes are in the $1 million+ to $3 million+ range. 

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Barry Wallace

Holland Marsh finally takes on wintery look

All photos by Barry Wallace

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Barry Wallace

Thank God for cellphones

Photo by Barry Wallace

Southbound lanes of Hwy. 400 on a cold Sunday morn

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BtheB

Blind John Scott & Preacher David Moore

Cairns Photo Collection

John Baker Scott and David Moore

They were constant companions for over 30 years, but they never saw each other.   One would lead the way, tapping with his cane, while the other followed, holding onto his friend's coattail.   John Scott was born in England on October 19, 1840, in Devon.   He was the firstborn of William Scott and Elizabeth Baker.   He sailed to Canada, with his parents, in 1842 when he was 18 months old.   During the crossing of the Atlantic, the wee lad fell victim to "Immigrant Fever", or poliomyelitis.   One of his legs became weak and permanently withered, which meant he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.   His family first settled at Fisherville, near Thornhill, then moved to Springhill (King City), and then settled on a farm at Bales Lake, just north of Springhill.   Bales Lake would become Lake Marie, decades later, and become the site for the country estate of Sir Henry Pellatt, of Casa Loma fame.   John Scott lost the sight in one eye, at age ten, while whittling a broomstick for his mother.   A year later, he fell off a raft into Bales Lake and quickly developed an infection in his good eye.   Dirty water from the lake was blamed for the infection and poor medical care by a local retired army surgeon was blamed for the loss of sight in John Scott's second eye.   The Scotts moved back to Vaughan Township and lived for 20 years at Purpleville, near Kleinburg.   Three years into their stay at Purpleville, around 1856, an itinerant Presbyterian preacher, in his early 20s, named David Moore, showed up at the Scott Farm.   David Moore was blind.   He had heard of the sightless, teen-aged John Scott, and had walked from Toronto to offer the benefit of his experiences, as a blind child and young man.   David Moore had contracted Smallpox at age two and was left blind.   He had attended a school for the blind before becoming a preacher.   The Scotts and David Moore became instant friends and the young preacher was invited to live with the Scotts on a permanent basis.   The two young blind men became inseparable companions.   They were instantly recognized and welcomed wherever they travelled in Vaughan or King Township over the years.   After 20 years at Purpleville, and another five years on a farm at Honey Pot, near Richmond Hill, The Scotts and David Moore moved to Wheatley, in south-western Ontario, in 1883.   The move to Wheatley was a grand success for the farming family but the death of John Scott's father, William, after just five years, convinced David Moore is was time for him to return to the United Kingdom.   His plans failed and he stayed in Canada.   Sadly, he never re-united with John Scott or his family and how long he lived or where he ended his days was never known.   Blind John Scott lived out his days at Wheatley and and he died on February 26, 1923.     John Baker Scott was the great-great uncle of my wife Linda, on her mother's side.

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Barry Wallace 

New railway pedestrian underpass

Photos by Barry Wallace

A new pedestrian underpass has been constructed beneath the CNR/GoTrain tracks in King City.   It is located just beyond the north-east corner of the senior public school's playing fields and adjacent to a new retention pond and new houses in one of King City's many new subdivisions.   The lighting for the underpass is provided by both solar panels and small wind turbines located on both the north and south sides of the tracks.   The underpass and its footpath will connect the new subdivision with Dennison Street, north of the tracks.   Meanwhile, the building of homes in the new subdivision (see photo below) has continued non-stop all winter.   The second photo below shows the new subdivision's proximity to the main branch of the King Township Library.   The view is from the front of King City Secondary School.   Many new patrons for the library for be no more than a stone's throw from the library's many offerings.

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Barry Wallace

Vestiges of the Schomberg & Aurora Railway

The Schomberg & Aurora Railway (S&AR) existed from 1902 to 1927.   It connected the village of Schomberg, in north-west King Township, with a station on Yonge Street in the south-east corner of King Township.   The southern terminus was known as Schomberg Junction, later to be called Oak Ridges, and connected with the electric railway that ran up and down Yonge Street from Toronto.   From 1902 to 1916, the S&AR , also known as the "Annie Roonie" (after a comic strip locomotive), was powered by steam but was then electrified until its demise in 1927.   Once electrified, cars on the Schomberg & Aurora Railway were interchangeable with the cars of the Toronto & York Radial Railway on Yonge Street.   In the photo above, the Schomberg station is seen at the right.   It was a red brick house that was converted for use as a train station.   When the railway ceased to exist, the train station reverted to its former use as a house.   It is pictured today, below.   

The one-time S&AR train station in Schomberg ~ 368 Main Street

Three kilometres east of Schomberg, the raised track-bed of the Schomberg & Aurora Railway can easily be seen today, from King's 8th Concession, a short distance north of the Aurora-Lloydtown Road.   The view above is looking east from the 8th.   The railway cut through the Pottageville Swamp, passing north of the hamlet, before making a long, semi-circular climb up onto the high ground where the Carrying Place Golf & Country exists today.   It then headed east and south, to the Kettleby Station, on the south-east corner of the 6th Concession and the Aurora-Kettleby Road.

Looking north-west from the corner of Weston Road and the Aurora-Lloydtown Road, one can  see the huge hill which presented a steep incline/decline  on its western flank, for trains to climb up or down.   The drop in elevation from the point at which this photo was taken (within a 100 metres of the the old Kettleby Station site) and the the Pottageville flats was 75 metres (300m. down to 225m.) within a distance of about 2 kms.

The S&AR's Kettleby station was on the south-east corner of the Aurora-Lloydtown Road and King's 6th Concession a hundred years ago.   Today the site is occupied by this modest gas bar/car wash/coffee shop.

The one-time railroad right-of-way today serves as private driveways in spots, or as seen above, as an assumed township street.   King Hills Lane angles off to the south-east from Jane Street, halfway between the 18th and 17th Sideroads.

Above, one of the more picturesque sections of old S&AR rail-bed is to be found on the grounds of Seneca College's King Campus (the old Eaton Hall Estate).   The rail-bed is now a hiking trail that begins just behind the gatehouse at the Dufferin Street entrance and heads north to a spot where it connects with the Oak Ridges Trail.

Although a long way from the village of Schomberg, the Schomberg Road in Oak Ridges angles north-east from the King Road, just west of Yonge Street, along the one-time S&AR route.   On the south side of the King Road, the old railway angled south-east for a couple of hundred metres before ending at the station and the place that became known as Schomberg Junction.   Below is an ancient photo of a S&AR train at the Schomberg Junction Station, on the west side of Yonge Street.   It was here that passengers could transfer between the S&AR train and the Toronto & York Radial Railway's electric trolleys on Yonge Street.   This photo would have been taken some time between 1902 and 1916.

Modern photos by Barry Wallace  ~  Old photos from Wikipedia

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Barry Wallace