to the east side of Point Pelee. Here, they beached their canoes and fell into an exhausted sleep when, during the night, they were suddenly awakened by a terrifying sound. “Astonished to hear the lake roaring so furiously [Dollier] went to the beach to see if the baggage was safe, and seeing that the water already came as far as the packs that were placed the highest point cried out that all was lost.”
At this they decided to abandon their mission and return to Montreal. But rather than retracing their exhausting route through Lakes Erie and Ontario, they opted for the by then more familiar route by way of Lake Huron and the French River.
Although they were not likely the first Europeans to see Lake Erie, they have left behind the first written account, a detailed and grim description of that untouched “paradise.”
During the French occupation of Canada, little was happening west of Montreal. This was a time when the government of New France was trying to solidify its trading relationships with the northern tribes such as the Ottawa and the Ojibwa and the southern tribes such as the aggressive Iroquois. Their only built presence in southwestern Ontario were Fort Frontenac at Kingston, Fort Niagara on the south shore of Lake Ontario with its opposite number, Fort Rouille on the site of today’s Toronto, while Fort Detroit guarded the entrance to the Detroit River. It was only in this latter location that the government granted lands to French settlers. Their long-lot pattern of farms and their place names survive to this day both within Windsor and throughout the surrounding rural areas of Essex County.
Following the Treaty of Paris, which in 1763 ended of the Seven Years’ War (or the French and Indian War, as it was known in North America) between England and France, Britain assumed control over what is today Ontario. During the postwar period the shores of Lake Erie remained quiet. But the American Revolution was soon flaring, and those who had remained loyal to Britain were forced to flee their American homes. As compensation, Britain granted land in New Brunswick and Ontario to those refugees known as United Empire Loyalists. While the first refugees took up their land grants in eastern Ontario in the 1780s, farm lots were being surveyed along the shores of Lake Erie as early as the 1790s. In 1784, Tyendaga chief Joseph Brant was granted all the land along the banks of the Grand River, ten kilometres back, from its mouth at Port Maitland to its source near present-day Dundalk.
But the military presence was never far away. Fort Malden was built between 1796 and 1799 (and known at first as Fort Amherstburg) at the western end of the lake to guard the entrance to the Detroit River, and in 1764, the first Fort Erie had been built to guard the Niagara River on the east. In between, naval reserves were laid out at Port Maitland, Point Pelee, and Turkey Point, where a fort known as Fort Norfolk was started, but hostilities ended before it was completed. But, even as a handful of squatters began to move into such accessible lands as those on Long Point and Point Pelee, the lakeshore’s first legitimate settlement scheme was about to unfold.
In 1792, when Colonel John Graves Simcoe arrived in Upper Canada to assume his new duties as governor at Newark (today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, a capital which he soon moved to York), he had with him his private secretary, Lieutenant Thomas Talbot. In 1803, Talbot was granted the authority to issue land grants to prospective settlers in the area east of today’s Port Rowan. To help them settle, Talbot ordered the laying out of a road that would extend from Talbotville Royal (today’s St. Thomas) to near Point aux Pins (Rondeau), near the lake. Much of that route to this day is known as the “Talbot Road.”
Dressed in period uniforms, the troop at Fort Malden fires off a round, as they might have during the War of 1812.
Talbot was known for being particular as to whom he granted the land. While he rejected many on a whim, he was also considered generous in other ways. He spent his own money to assist many to begin their new lives, would marry them, christen their babies, and conclude his transactions with the passing of a whisky bottle. Still, a parliamentary report in 1834 would raise questions about what happened to the moneys he received for settling the vast tract.
But it was the amount of land that he received that would guarantee his wealth, namely sixty hectares for every twenty hectares he succeeded in granting. By 1820 it was estimated he had acquired fourteen thousand hectares for himself. 1 Of course, not everyone waited for Talbot to show up for their appointment. United Empire Loyalists had begun showing up as early as the 1780s.
They moved along the shoreline and up the small rivers and streams to begin their life in the new land. When water power permitted they threw together first sawmills, and then gristmills. Schooners and skiffs crowded into the little coves and inlets. At first industry was very local, supplying the basic needs of the pioneering communities before they expanded enough to consider exporting.
As the settlements grew, the first exports were raw materials such as gypsum, which were barged from mines on the lower Grand River and transshipped to markets by way of Dunnville and Port Maitland. From the naval reserves, pines tall and straight were sent off to England and the burgeoning Great Lakes shipyards for use as ships’ masts. The main lumber export from the shores of Lake Erie, however, consisted of oak, harvested from the lush Carolinian forests and the open oak savannahs, while red cedar from Pelee Island and Point Pelee was popular with the military and used at Fort Malden.
Fishing, which today has become one of the lake’s most famous industries, began with local fishermen who simply used small rowboats, known as “punters,” from which they would attach pound nets to stakes driven into the shallow waters, and sold their product locally only. Following the arrival of the railways, commercial fishing became centralized in larger ports, while the variety and quantity of fish species turned this freshwater fishing fleet into the world’s largest.
Although the lake and the Grand River remained the main thoroughfares for travellers, crude roads also began to appear. Toll roads were extended from London to Port Stanley and from Chatham to Shrewsbury, while the legendary plank road was opened between Hamilton and Port Dover. Thomas Talbot’s early Talbot Road already linked St. Thomas with Rondeau.
The war of 1812 halted economic growth in the little lake settlements. Despite early victories at Fort Detroit, the British began to suffer a series of setbacks. At Put-in Bay, near Sandusky, Ohio, despite superior odds, they lost a strategic naval battle. Then, in May 1814, in response to the sacking and burning of Buffalo and Lewiston, American Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell landed with a force of eight hundred men near Port Dover. After allowing the women to carry off their movable items, his soldiers put the torch to the houses, mills, and barns. The hogs were butchered and the meat carried off. The next morning the fleet appeared off Port Ryerse, where the invaders destroyed the mills there and at Finch’s Mills (now Fishers Glen).
Later that year, General Duncan McArthur led a force of mounted American riflemen from Detroit along the shore of the lake, burning nearly everything in his path. Strangely, the only mills to escape his wrath were the Backhouse mill north of Port Rowan, and Tisdale’s mill at Vittoria — the latter, because, it is suggested that McArthur, a Mason, wished to spare the community of Masons in the area the hardship of losing their vital mill. While the Vittoria mill is now gone, the Backus mill (as it is now called) still rests on its original site and continues to produce flour using the power from its water wheel.
As part of the Backus Heritage Village, the mill also shares the grounds with other heritage structures, as well as summertime campers and picnickers. Run by the Long Point Conservation Authority, the Backus Heritage Village contains more than thirty heritage features
