September, 2017:

Drayton, Ontario and area – My Top 6 Picks

Centre Wellington is a township in south-central Ontario.  The primary communities in the township are Elora and Fergus.  Some of the smaller communities are Alma, Salem, and Speedside.

Parker was a settlement in Ontario, located along the Elora-Saugeen road. Settlers moved to the area to begin new lives and to farm. To provide accommodation for travelers in horse-drawn vehicles, a hotel opened in 1850.  In 1865, Thomas Burns opened a post office which brought a few neighboring businesses to the area.  As travel became more modern, the need for overnight stay diminished and the town began to dwindle. It is still used for farming today but the hotel and post office have closed. The school house is still standing and is a private home, painted pink.

Conestogo Lake Conservation Area is in the heart of Mennonite country. It is on a y-shaped lake that stretches six kilometers up each arm. A unique feature of this area is the huge concrete flood control dam and reservoir surrounded by large tracts of forest, giving the appearance that the park is in northern Ontario. This is a multi-recreational use park for camping, power boating, sailing, water skiing, canoeing and fishing.

Glen Allan is located in Wellington County southeast of Conestogo Lake.

Yatton is located in Wellington County. The area was settled by people in the early 1820s, when Black Loyalists, African-Canadians and African-American immigrants arrived in the wilderness of the Queen’s Bush. Until the late 1840s the Queen’s Bush remained an unorganized territory. Three African-Canadian churches were constructed in the Queen’s Bush and one of them was in Yatton which Reverend Samuel H. Brown established on his farm.

Drayton is a community in Wellington County.  The village is on the corner of Wellington Road 8 and Wellington Road 11, and is located northwest of Fergus and southwest of Arthur.

Aylmer, Ontario – My Top 10 Picks

Aylmer is located in southern Ontario just north of Lake Erie on Catfish Creek.  It is 20 kilometers south of Highway 401. It is located on Highway 3 between St. Thomas to the west, and Tillsonburg to the east.

In October 1817, John Van Patter, an emigrant from New York State, obtained 200 acres of land and was the first settler on the site of Aylmer. During the 1830s a general store was opened and village lots sold.

Originally called Troy, in 1835 it was renamed Aylmer after Lord Aylmer, then Governor-in-Chief of British North America. By 1851 local enterprises included sawmills and flour-mills powered by water from Catfish Creek.

By the mid-1860s Aylmer, with easy access to Lake Erie, became the marketing center for a rich agricultural and timber producing area. Aylmer benefited greatly from the construction of the 145-mile Canada Air Line Railway from Glencoe to Fort Erie.

The coming of the Great Western Air Line Railway in 1873 encouraged manufacturing and mills, a foundry, a pork-packing house, a milk-evaporating plant, and shoe factory were among the main establishments. An Airfield for training was established nearby in World War 2 which became the nucleus of the Ontario Police College.

The Aylmer Canning Factory was established in 1879; it packed peas, beans, cider, pickles, vinegar, sauces, meats and fruits.

Imperial Tobacco Canada built a plant in 1945. At its peak, it employed more than 600 full-time and seasonal workers. In its prime, the plant could store 110 million tons of tobacco and had an October to April production capacity of 100 million tons. Of this, 20 to 25 million tons were for export to other countries, making it one of Canada’s leading exporters. The rest of the processed tobacco was shipped to Imperial’s cigarette production plant in Guelph. After declining tobacco sales in Canada, Imperial began downsizing in the 1990s and closed in 2007.

Dorchester to Aylmer, Ontario – My Top 6 Picks

Thames Centre is a municipality in Middlesex County located in southwestern Ontario a few kilometres east of London.  Communities in the township include: Avon, Belton, Cherry Grove, Crampton, Cobble Hill, Derwent, Devizes, Dorchester, Evelyn, Fanshawe Lake, Friendly Corners, Gladstone, Harrietsville, Kelly Station, Mossley, Nilestown, Oliver, Putnam, Salmonville, Silvermoon, Thorndale, Three Bridges, and Wellburn. Dorchester is the residential and commercial core of the township.

 

Mossley

Until 1840 the Mossley area was an untouched wilderness of pines, maples, and beeches.  The first settlers from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales worked hard to clear the land for farming. They came with few tools but great hope for a better way of life, and they prospered.  In the 1800s this area was known simply as “The Corners”. In 1865 John Henry Amos opened a general store and was the first postmaster.  The name Mossley was chosen from two family names, the Mossips and the Lees. Mossley had a hotel, a cheese factory, a harness repair shop, and there were dressmakers and music teachers.

 

Malahide Township was named for Malahide Castle in Malahide, Ireland, birthplace of land grant administrator Colonel Thomas Talbot in 1810. The township comprises the communities of Candyville, Crossley-Hunter, Copenhagen, Dunboyne, Fairview, Glencolin, Grovesend, Jaffa, Kingsmill, Lakeview, Little Aylmer, Luton, Lyons, Mile Corner, Mount Salem, Mount Vernon, Ormond Beach, Orwell, Port Bruce, Seville, Springfield, Summers Corners and Waneeta Beach.

Palmerston, Ontario – My Top 7 Picks

Palmerston is located in Wellington County, west of Arthur, northeast of Listowel, and northwest of Kitchener and Waterloo.

The opening in 1871 of a station on the main line of the Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway soon to be completed from Guelph to Southampton, provided the nucleus around which a community developed.  In its original concept the railroad was to run from Guelph to Harriston and would not have gone through Palmerston.  Listowel needed to be linked to the railroad and it was decided to bend the route toward Listowel.  It was also decided that a yard with maintenance shops would be needed.  As soon as the railroad decided where it would build, people started buying property around the area for businesses and homes.

Thomas McDowell was the first settler in 1854 on the site.  In 1872 McDowell and William Thompson who owned adjoining land, began selling town lots and by 1873 the community had 150 inhabitants.

In 1873 a branch line to Listowel was completed and a post office called Palmerston, named after Lord Palmerston, a celebrated English statesman, was opened.