The Bronte Harbour Company: by Andrew Armitage

Bronte's preferred mill site, Lot 31, adjacent to Twelve Mile Creek, was purchased by Joseph Hixon for 257 pounds, 50 shillings. Unlike William Chisholm of the Village of Nelson who, at a second auction in 1827 purchased a 960 acre reserve at the mouth of Sixteen Mile Creek and quickly built a mill at what became Oakville, However, Joseph Hixon failed to erect milling facilities, putting the future of the emerging village of Bronte on hold.

For a time, Bronte's development was slow, but in 1833, at the direction of the government of Upper Canada, the Deputy Land Surveyor William Hawkins surveyed a town site, creating a town plan of five ranges of development blocks divided into lots of various sizes. In his report on the town survey, Hawkins strongly recommended the development of a harbour at the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek. ¹

Unlike the neighbouring community of Oakville where by the late 1820s, William Chisholm had succeeded in raising sufficient funds to finance a harbour privately, development of a similar facility was delayed until Samuel Bealey Harrison arrived in Bronte.

Samuel Bealey Harrison, born in Manchester, England in 1802, opened a private law practice in London in 1832. Well known as a barrister and jurist, his promising legal career was cut short by ill health, altering his life. Immigrating to Upper Canada, in 1837 he bought a section of the former Mississauga Indian reserve in Bronte where he proceeded to build both grist and saw mills.

Harrison, however, soon entered the Government of Upper Canada. In 1839, he was one of three commissioners appointed to enquire into the state of education in Upper Canada with a view to the improvement and expansion of educational opportunities. Two years later Harrison was appointed to the Executive Council as provincial secretary for Canada West. When his brief political career ended in 1844, Harrison was made judge of the District Court, a judicial career that only ended with his death in Toronto in 1867. ²

Well connected with the government of the day, Samuel Bealey Harrison, along with 34 other citizens forwarded a petition to the House of Assembly. The petition from "the Village of Bronte, and its vicinity, in the District of Gore, praying for the incorporation of a company to construct a harbour at the mouth of the twelve mile creek at Bronte." The result was Royal Assent to "An Act to incorporate certain persons, under the name and style of the President, Directors, and Company of the Bronte Harbour". ³

However, the formation of the Bronte Harbour Company languished on the order table until 1846 when it was revived by an Act of Parliament and once again, received Royal Assent. Appointed to direct the affairs of the company were Samuel Bealey Harrison, Ashman Pettit, Elijah Williams, James Belyea, Philip Sovereign, John Bray, Joseph Hixon, John Riggs, Edward B. Palmer and Joseph Simons. The Act incorporating the Bronte Harbour Company provided that the company was authorized to have a seal and it set a rate of tolls for goods imported and exported through Bronte's harbour. ⁴

Appointed to oversee the laying out of Bronte's new harbour, which was expected to attract cargoes of potash, pearlash, pork, whiskey, flour, butter, salt beef, lard, wheat, and timber, were John L. Bigger, William Johnson Kerr and William Chisholm of Oakville. ⁵

The flooded river mouth of Twelve Mile Creek was hindered by an extensive area of marshland, creating an immediate need for dredging. After Bronte's harbour was dredged and deepened, the eastern entrance became the main access to the business centre of the town that was situated along lower Trafalgar Street. Now, schooners and barges were able to enter the harbour to gain access to Harrison's grist and sawmills, a sawmill operated by James White, and, most importantly, the Bronte Steam Mills, opened in 1858.

The Bronte Steam Mills were built by the company, Jones, Williams, and Cummer on the west side of Trafalgar Street between Triller Street and Chisholm Street. At that time, it was one of the largest steam grist mills in Ontario. A three-storey building with a tall, brick smokestack, the steam grist mill was a Bronte landmark for nearly a century.

To complete the construction of Bronte's harbour, two piers were constructed at the new entrance of the harbour. A lighthouse was erected at the southern end of the east pier. By 1856, construction of Bronte's harbour facilities, including the erection of warehouses, was essentially completed and the port was open for shipping.

By the closing years of the 1860s, Robert Chisholm, a son of William Chisholm of Oakville, owned a majority of the share of the Bronte Harbour Company. However, by 1873, the harbour, which had silted up, was badly in need of additional dredging and an extension of the existing piers to allow heavily loaded vessels to enter and exit its waters.

Nothing seems to have been done to improve the harbour's ability to host larger vessels until 1897. In February of that year, a deputation of Bronte's leading citizens presented a petition to the Trafalgar Township Council requesting that that body purchase the Bronte Harbour Company from Robert Chisholm. After much consideration the request was granted and, acting on a grant of $5,000 from the federal government, the harbour was upgraded to accommodate Bronte's thriving fishing and stonehooking industries. In a span of less than fifty years, Bronte's once inaccessible harbour had been transformed from shallow marshland to a harbour with sufficient depth, piers and wharves to sustain itself as a thriving Lake Ontario port. ⁶

Footnotes

1. Mika, Nick and Helma Mika. Places in Ontario. Part 1. Mika Publishing, Belleville, Ontario, 1977. P. 277.
2. Metcalf, George. "Samuel Bealey Harrison." Dictionary of Canadian Biography. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1993. P. 369.
3. Philip Brimacombe, The Story of Bronte Harbour, p. 13.
4. Ibid.
5. Dorothy Turcotte, Places and People on Bronte Creek, p. 85.
6. Brimacombe, p. 24.