The Trail of the Swinging Lanterns. 1918

HEN Sir John Franklin, arctic navigator, with canoe crews of Indians and voyageurs, eastbound after exploring the Great Lakes, pitched wigwams in the summer of 1839 at the confluence of stream and lake where the nucleus of present Cobourg, Canada, was taking root, little did these adventurous and actual forerunners of easy steam locomotion think that from a point where they camped a railroad would thirteen years later bisect the unbroken forest. Yet, it is so, and the whirligig of time has, likewise, seen recorded the obituary of that railway—has witnessed the effacement of the name of those early laid metal ribbons from the time tables of a young country which still hungers and lobbies for more and more tracks and trams.

Cobourg and thereabouts, is ancient territory as settlements go nowadays. In 1796 the district was surveyed. Eluid Nickerson, who espoused the United Empire Loyalist cause, took out the first patent in 1802 during the reign of King George III., but in spite of its monarchial predilections, the locality has long been of interest to our cousins of high and low degree living south of Lake Ontario, and a few years after the construction of Cobourg and Peterborough Railway, of which I speak, several iron masters and capitalists from Pittsburg acquired the property, altering somewhat its original mission.

The prospectus of this pioneer Canadian line was mooted in 1851 by local promoters: it took definite form in 1852 and on February 7th, 1853, Lady Mayoress, Mrs. S. E. MacKechnie, officiated in the ceremony of turning the first sod amidst tremendous public enthusiasm. As early as 1844 a daily stage ran in winter from Peterborough to Cobourg and Port Hope, and in summer the steamboat “Forrester” plied to Harwood and connected with the stage coaches. Close in the wake of this propitious beginning construction advanced, while feathered and furry prowlers of the virgin woods had their curiosity piqued by strange sights and sounds. Under the supervision of chief engineer Ira Spaulding, contractors Zimmerman and Balch pushed the line through valley and glade to Rice Lake’s fertile, sloping shores at Harwood where, later, sawmills sawed the stately pines that arrived in drives from Otonabee. During the following year Mr. Zimmerman collaborated in the extension as far as Peterborough, his tragic death in the des Jardins Canal

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 disaster at Hamilton, March, 1857, terminating a useful life. Steel rails were an experimental luxury, iron scarce and expensive and timber often replaced them. Antique locomotives with impossible superstructures coughed and squeaked along, meanwhile eating a mighty hole in the wood pile, for coal and oil burners were not contrived, and what a risk it was to venture between the oscillating cars. Though crudely equipped, the road was nevertheless, a startling and welcome innovation for abbreviating space. The Grand Trunk Railway had not yet been built and the saddle horse and coach were the only substitutes for pedestrianism. Picture, if you can, a journey inside a two teamed springless stage, tediously winding westward past bear haunt, swamp and river; for instance, over the historic, old military road from Kingston. It must have been a hunter’s paradise.

The bridging of Rice Lake was a large undertaking at the period and proved a burden from which the management never recovered. This structure became notorious later for several reasons. From Harwood to Tick Island, some distance off shore, a filling was made and the bridge trestles were projected two miles across the westerly loop of the lake to where Hiawatha Indian settlement still harbors the fishing and rice gathering sons and daughters of sires long since passed to the happy hunting grounds. You may see them any summer day vieing with “Alderville” redskins from near Roseneath, in deftly wielding the paddle, as of yore when their forebears fought fiercely all around that favored camping place.

In winter of 1857, when the frost and ice heaved the bridge, four-horse sleighs transported passengers inland between Harwood, the Indian village and station at Ashburnham, seven miles north. To take charge of this old depot, which afterwards became a canoe factory, Donald Sutherland was the first appointed and Mr. Roe Buck became the Cobourg representative. William Von Ingen, now collector of His Majesty’s Customs levy at Woodstock, Ont., collected tickets covering the run of about twenty-five miles which cost $1.00 per capital and entitled one to all privileges save the compartment sleeper and electric fans, which had not yet been adopted.

It is said that John Fowler, charter corporation member and first manager, whose regime did not fill the company’s coffers, made towards the close of his term, a financial coup d’etat with the Midland, Port Perry, Lindsay & Beaverton Railway. He was succeeded by Lieut.-Colonel D’Arcy E. Boulton, a Cobourg aristocrat who rented the “C. & P.” property in 1857 and battled valiantly against odds in an endeavor to place the road on a paying basis. This railway’s legitimate traffic—forest products and lumber—were hauled for several years from the interior to the docks at Cobourg, thence by schooner to various lake ports, but time wrought changes and debt became the most formidable obstacle to progress……………………….