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Sunnyside?

       Old York

       Toronto’s Islands

       The Port of Toronto

       The Eastern Beach(es)

       The View from Here: Atop Scarborough’s Towering Bluffs

       Chapter 5: The Ghost Ports and the “Newports”

       Port Union

       Rosebank

       Dunbarton/Fairport

       Ajax

       Port Whitby

       Camp X: Birthplace of Bond?

       Port Oshawa

       Port Darlington

       Bond Head

       Port Granby

       Newtonville Station

       Wesleyville

       Port Britain

       Port Hope

       Cobourg

       Lakeport

       Gosport

       Presqu’ile Point

       Chapter 6: ’Round the Bay: The Ports of the Bay of Quinte

       Trenton

       Belleville

       Point Anne Ghost Town

       Shannonville

       Deseronto

       Napanee

       Chapter 7: The Bath Road: A Loyalist Trail

       Adolphustown

       Bath

       Amherst Island

       Chapter 8: Quinte’s Isle: The Tranquility of Prince Edward County

       Carrying Place

       The Murray Canal

       Wellers Bay

       Consecon

       Wellington

       Beneath the Dunes: Sandbanks

       The Wild South Coast

       The Rum-Runners of Main Duck Island

       Point Traverse

       South Bay

       Milford

       Port Milford Ghost Town

       Black River Bridge

       Waupoos/Waupoos Island

       Prinyers Cove

       Glenora

       Picton

       Green Point

       Northport

       Demorestville

       Big Island

       Massassauga Point

       Rednersville

       Chapter 9: The Old Stones of Kingston

       Kingston

       Portsmouth

       Barriefield

       Epilogue: If You Go

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       About the Author

      The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful staff at Ontario’s many fine archives and museums. Archivists and curators at the facilities in Napanee, Archives Ontario, the City of Toronto Archives, and the Toronto Reference Library provided excellent service. I would, however, like to single out the staff at the Oshawa Community Archives and Museum and at the County of Prince Edward Archives for their generous assistance in this project. The staff at the Ministry of Natural Resources at Glenora and the Presqu’ile Point Provincial Park were also generous with their time and resources. Thanks to them as well. Many fine archival images are available on a series of excellent websites. The Niagara Public Library, the Queen’s University Archives, and in particular the website for the tiny community of Deseronto, which, despite its small size, has one of the finer archival websites online. To my family, my wife June, thanks for your patience with my various absences while prowling the shores of this unusual and historic lake. Finally, I am most grateful to my editor, Jane Gibson of Natural Heritage Books, and copy editor, Allison Hirst of the Dundurn Group, for unearthing and rectifying my various grammatical slip-ups. Any errors in content are strictly mine.

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      Lake Ontario’s shoreline is not old. In geological time it is but a newcomer. Exactly what the land looked like before the last ice age is anyone’s guess, but it was after the last great ice sheet finally trickled away that today’s lake began to take shape.

      For about two hundred thousand years, massive glaciers moved back and forth over the land that is now Ontario, gouging gullies and depositing mounds of sand and gravel. As the ice began to melt, around twenty thousand years ago, the waters pooled behind the ice, creating lakes of varying shapes and levels. The earliest postglacial lakes formed to the western end of what is now Ontario, draining in a southwesterly direction. Later, as the ice continued to retreat northeast, the lakes found another outlet, and drained southerly through the Mohawk Valley of New York. At this time, the body of water that would one day become Lake Ontario, what geologists call Lake Iroquois, began to form. Due to the ice dam to the east, its level was much higher than Lake Ontario is today.

      While at that level, the lake washed into glacial deposits, leaving behind a series of shore bluffs that today stand high and dry. As the ice sheet shifted from the east end of the lake, the water found a new outlet — down the St. Lawrence River — resulting in the lowering of the lake level. The land, suppressed from the weight of the ice sheet, remained low, and ocean waters moved into the area of today’s Brockville, bringing with them marine life. (The discovery of whale bones in these oceanic deposits gave rise to a myth of whales in Lake Ontario.)

      When the ice left for good, the east end of the lake, now freed from that weight, rebounded, raising the levels at the western end of the lake and flooding existing river mouths. This inflow created lagoons along the shoreline that provided shelter for aboriginal villages, and later for the schooners and small boats of the early settlers. By then, Lake Ontario had assumed the configuration that it retains today — 311 kilometres long

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