Old Port Darlington—III: Forty Wolves Howled for Human Flesh: Schooner Days DCLVII (657)

by C. H. J. Snider

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OLD PORT DARLINGTON FORTY YEARS AGO AND FOUR OF THE FIVE GENERATIONS OF McCLELLANS INTERESTED IN IT

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ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE years ago twenty-four farmers, storekeepers, millers, hotel men, grain dealers and other substantial pioneers, gathered by cutter, sleigh and Shank's mare at Hinde's Tavern in Bowmanville on New Year's Day — and Port Darlington got going.

It is a port yet. Darlington was the name of the township in which the village of Bowmanville had grown, two miles inland from the then ice-banked shore of Lake Ontario.

It was in 1794 that John Burk, John Trull and Roger Conant had poled their batteau into a creek mouth 40 miles east from Toronto Island, and made the first settlement in this new township of Darlington. They came from Susquehanna to find fresh homes under the Union Jack. They had coasted with their belongings around tho shores of Lake Ontario from headland to headland while their one horse and two cows were led by others of the party along the lake beaches to the camping spot for the night. They had to be protected from wolves.

This last creek which they entered marked the end of their long journeying. It was afterwards called Barber's Creek, because Augustus Barber had land on it. The pioneers were even less imaginative than Governor Simcoe when it came to place names. He had a hope of reproducing England in Canada, hence "York" for Toronto and "London" in the bush—and Darlington after an English north country township. Barber's Creek supplied power for the pioneer mills around which the settlement of Bowmanville began to cluster.

Bowmanville and the lake front township soon felt the need of a harbor. The adjoining Township of Clarke already had one port at Smith's Creek [actually in Hope Township], curiously known for a time as Toronto, and later, and now, as Port Hope; and another, three miles west, where Samuel Marsh had built his pioneer cabin, and which was destined to become Port Britain.

But Darlington had none, and it was a long hard haul to get the wood, barley, pork, whiskey and ashes down to Oshawa or Port Hope over the heavy roads of Durham and Ontario counties, and to bring back the salt, fruit trees, implements, tombstones, drygoods and groceries imported from the United States for farm use.

The creek mouth with the wolf-haunted marsh behind it, was a natural harbor capable of development. Talking of wolves, an early settler named Richard Lovekin, with his neighbors, probably Burke, Trull and Conant had been chased out into the lake when they rowed up the creek to cut marsh grass for their beds. At first the boys had mocked one wolf howling at a distance, but their wolf calls were so good that forty grey beasts gathered and patrolled the marsh and creek bank until the hay cutters escaped into Lake Ontario. They landed near their shanty, got the rifles they had improvidently left behind and had wolf pelts to spread on their mattresses of marsh grass for the coming winter. The port which sprang up later might have been called Battlewolf, Wolf's Woe, Foil-The-Wolf or something else, but the times were strictly utilitarian. Port Darlington was its name.

The Darlington harbor project had begun in the Rebellion Year, 1837, and with the prospect of settled government in Upper Canada port development followed. So on this first day of January, 1839, the twenty-four stalwarts subscribed twenty-four pounds apiece, Halifax currency, $96 in folding money, for one hundred shares in the Port Darlington Harbor Company.

Half of them were Darlington Township men, including Daniel Galbraith, James McClellan, Donald Cameron, Wm. Warren, John Smart, D. F. Burk, John and Archie Tait, Timothy Soper, Geo. Loveman and H. S. Reid. Bowmanville men who subscribed for the £20 shares were A. Hinde, the hotelman; John Sumpter, John Lister, James Stephens, Peter Coleman, Luther Prise, John Gray, Alex. Fletcher, Charles Tiffany, C. Bavin and John Simpson. Alan Wilmot of Clarke Township was another subscriber.

Their enterprise was an immediate success. They built piers and a storehouse where sails were kept in winter and cargoes in summer a shed capable of 6,000 tons of coal — ten big schooner-loads — an office building and a lighthouse, upon whose clapboarded sides most of the hearts and initials in Bowmanville were eventually carved.

These improvements were not all made at once, but by 1853 the harbor company paid a 20 per cent. dividend, its business having increased "six hundred per cent., progress and prosperity perhaps unequalled in any other section of the province," to quote a modest annual report.

In the company's first year, 1840, Port Darlington shipped out £6,015 worth of goods. Ten years later the exports were valued at £38,475. There were 29,113 barrels of flour, nine times the 1840 figure; 27,818 bushels of wheat, 910 barrels of oatmeal, 700,000 feet of lumber, 5,830 bushels of potatoes, 188 barrels of whisky, which then sold at 5 cents a glass; 185 kegs of butter, 100 tons of bran, 1,000 cords of firewood, 80 barrels of pork, 23 barrels of ashes, and 300 bushels of barley. The barley trade was in its infancy.

Everything boomed with the Crimean War ending 1855 and the ten-year Reciprocity Treaty with the United States which followed it. The barley trade was at its peak in 1891, when the McKinley Bill duties knocked it out. Oswego's waterfront had been lined with breweries clamoring for Ontario barley. The McKinley Bill "protected" the American barley grower—and ruined the Oswego breweries.

It was a good thing for Ontario, for the land was becoming barley sick. We went back to wheat, oats, apples, peaches and tomatoes, and developed our dairying.

The burst of the barley boom did not kill Port Darlington. It had become a regular port of call for the Royal Mail Line, later the Richelieu and Ontario, and other steamers. The old sidewheelers and propellers calling there were the City of Toronto, built 1840; Admiral, 1843; Magnet, 1847; Dawn, propeller, 1852: and later Corsican, Spartan, Algerian, Passport, North King, Argyle (Empress of India), Erindale, White Star, Garden City.

Some of these continued their Bowmanille or Port Darlington calls up into the present century. The Garden City used to leave Newcastle, seven miles east, at 7 a.m., and call at Darlington and Oshawa and be in Toronto at 11 a m. The Erindale, burned at Newcastle, ran 25-cent excursions to Toronto, with music both ways.

Schooners continued to use the port. The Oliver Mowat, Capt. James Peacock, and Wm. Jamieson, Capt. Will Peacock, brought in 6,000 tons of coal in one season. The Flora Carveth, Capt. Sam Philp, and the Mowat and Jamieson continued to pick up grain cargoes. There were two grain elevators and a coal storage shed, and good wharfage up to twenty years ago.

The harbor company had spent $88,000 on harbor works by 1878, buying their oak and pine wharf timbers right in the township, and extending their piers out into the lake. All the Dominion ever did for Port Darlington, as far as can be learned, was to spend $5,000 in dredging sixty years ago.

The old port is still capable of development, and is now a popular site for cottagers. Fishermen still use it.

OLD PORT DARLINGTON FORTY YEARS AGO AND FOUR OF THE FIVE GENERATIONS OF McCLELLANS INTERESTED IN IT

JAMES McCLELLAN was the first wharfinger or harbormaster in 1854. His son JOHN succeeded him. His great-grandson, JOHN GUERNSEY, a little Toronto boy, will make a fine harbormaster when the time comes.

JOHN GUERNSEY McCLELLAN, 3 years old, and all ready to launch his boat in the waters of old Port Darlington.

J. GUERNSEY McCLELLAN, 14 Oriole crescent, Toronto, present secretary-treasurer of the Port Darlington Harbor Co.

JAMES ALEXANDER McCLELLAN, secretary-treasurer of the Port Darlington Harbor Co. for many years.

JOHN McCLELLAN, harbormaster of the Port Darlington Harbor Co. and son of the original harbormaster or wharfinger, Jas. McClellan.