Cramahe applying for heritage award

Heritage Cramahe is applying on behalf of the township for a heritage award presented by the Ontario Heritage Trust (OHT).

The award, now in its second year, rewards four communities in Ontario for exemplary leadership in built, cultural and natural heritage conservation and promotion. The communities must show an integrated approach to consrvation of heritage properties.

Heritage Cramahe reviewed its application for the Community Leadership Award on July 15, just prior to sending it on to OHT. Cramahe is competing in the under 10,000 population category.

Heritage Cramahe member Bruce Bowden is spearheading the application. Details from the submission can be found below.

Historical Context

Local newspaper editor Eileen Argyris’ history of Cramahe Township and Colborne in 2000 opens with John Ralston Saul’s phrase that “the past is not the past, it is the context.” Without an awareness of heritage that has been built over 200 years and that then is integrated into its modern life, Cramahe would lose its visible distinctiveness, its own narrative, its sense of place. Cramahe deserves recognition by the Ontario Heritage Trust’s Community Leadership Program, for heritage is a value that is a fundamental aspect for sustaining this community. We draw your attention in particular to the record of the years 1995-2009, during which an awareness of heritage has progressively been built, becoming a unifying force for the two distinct local entities that were summarily amalgamated by the province on January 1, 2001.

This summer marks the celebration by Cramahe Township of the 150th anniversary of the organization of Colborne into a separate municipality. The township – originally much larger - was officially created in 1792, and the town’s own history certainly predates the opening of the first store in 1815. Settlement in the township began to create a regional identity in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the very first “Late” Loyalist having arrived in 1793. Many of these settlers had ventured north from the Albany region of New York and west from Vermont while the area around Salem east of Colborne had been a land grant to an officer commanding a provincial regiment, Col. Peters. The founders that commissioned the first survey laying out a town-site around a village square (infrequently used in Ontario) were the first two generations of the Joseph Keeler family, the settlement originally being known as Keeler’s Tavern. (M. McBurney and M. Byers, Homesteads, U T P, Toronto, 1979, 144-155). Indeed, according to this source, two frame homes dating to the War of 1812 period and still in good condition on King St., (old highway 2) nearby each other might be the original Keeler tavern (146-147) for the one locally associated with the Keeler name was not actually family property until 1832. The town that had also been known as The Corners, was renamed while Sir John Colborne was Lt. Governor, possibly after a visit by Sir John to the Cobourg area with the Keelers. (E. Argyris, How Firm a Foundation, Boston Mills, Erin, Ontario, 2000, 39)

“Young Joe” Keeler (surely a distinctive Ontarioism) is also credited with advancing the project of building the Murray Canal to the Bay of Quinte at Carrying Place, as well as the founding of Norwood on the Trent River, and the mill village of Castleton ten kms. north of Colborne. (The Purdy grist mill with its equipment still stands in Castleton and its designation is currently being considered by the owner and the Heritage Committee.) Transportation links between these three settlements by stage coach from three railway stations in Colborne linked eastern Northumberland County, and the Grand Trunk/CN station remained in use from its opening in 1856 until its closure in 1968. Both Castleton and Colborne were therefore centres of local government until their amalgamation for this century, the one of a rural township, the other a small town whose economic fortunes were closely tied to the region’s agriculture.

For more - Heritage Cramahe's Full Application