The Young Port Matures: by Deborah Lerech

Early on, farmers in the outer reaches of Trafalgar Township aided the young port's development by providing a steady flow of staves to the mouth of the Sixteen from their woodlots in the north. As soon as the spring runoff began, "men were hired to throw the selected staves into the creek and pilot them down the swollen stream?where a boom kept them from being swept into the lake". ¹ After being squared, pieces of white or red pine and oak timber were taken to the top of the bank and rolled down into the Sixteen, where they were either loaded onto schooners as cargo or assembled into immense rafts themselves. Since white oak was so dense that it would not float, enough cross-bars of pine were bound with it to give it buoyancy. When the raft was being towed down the lake by steamer, "close watch was kept to see that it remained intact."2 The early traffic of the port was centred around the wood industry since much of the gristmill's produce was used for the settlers and farmers themselves and little if any of the wheat left Trafalgar.

Schooners from Oakville's growing harbour, joined the fleets of sailing ships bound for market in Lower Canada. During the early 1830s, wood products made up "two-thirds [of the exports]". ³ As well as taking supplies out, the schooners returned bringing "salt?other merchandise, and immigrants." Customs Officer, William Chisholm used much of the merchandise deposited there as stock in the shop he had established at the portside. ⁴ Oakville was not a late developing area, by any means, however, by the time Oakville became firmly established as a port, the Erie Canal in the United States, finished in 1825, was creating changes in the early and well-established trade routes of the Great Lakes. The Canal had opened up the port of New York as an international shipping point for the produce from the western section of Upper Canada. ⁵ Rather than being oriented towards Kingston and Montreal, as all ports had been previously, they began to be oriented towards the Erie Canal. This orientation took Oakville's produce and lumber south to New York and other American states for the first time.

There were grand hopes for Oakville as the volume of trade increased. Because the harbour was a port centrally located between Toronto and Hamilton, it was expected "that the volume of imports would increase at a steady pace after Oakville became a Port of Entry." Oakville after all, as a port, was dependent upon duties collected on imports from the United States. However, instead of buying directly from Oakville, "the merchants continued to buy their goods from importers at Toronto and Hamilton. As late as 1842 the Customs Inspector found that virtually no imports came through the Port of Oakville. Not until the mid-1840s was the first shipment brought in from New York by Justus Williams. Gradually other merchants followed his lead". ⁶

After the initial flurry of success with lumber, the quantity of wheat shipped out of Oakville increased dramatically in the 1840s and 1850s. The "11, 234 bushels exported in 1840 rose to 165,839 bushels in 1850." The outbreak of the Crimean War raised wheat demands since the wood available from Russia had been cut off by trade embargoes. ⁷ In 1846, cargoes all over the Great Lakes "consisted primarily of bulk commodities: stone, lumber, wood, coal". ⁸ Hauling fees were a large part of the total cost of shipping. In 1845 it cost £10 per 1000 cubic feet or £4 per 1000 standard staves to ship along the north shore of Lake Ontario. ⁹

Small scale developments in Upper Canada, such as Oakville Harbour, began as private initiatives. Public support, however, was soon required, "either in the wake of escalating costs or in recognition that private returns from holding stocks or bonds would not justify investment in them". ¹⁰ The business of transporting grain, along with increased shipping in flour, whiskey, planks and pine boards, aided the Customs House in turning a profit but more help was needed. The 1840s first saw the town's trade rise for the first time and, after William Chisholm's death in 1842, his sons, Robert and George formed the Oakville Harbour Company to ensure the continuation of the good success of the enterprise. The company was designed to improve the harbour after fifteen years of its existence. In 1846 they set to work extending the pier and dredging the channel at the entrance to the harbour. Again in 1850 the harbour was improved "by the addition of 60 feet on the east pier". ¹¹

Between 1846-1850 the revenue from customs received at Oakville harbour tripled. Robert K. Chisholm, who was the customs officer at the time, was wealthy enough to build a new customs house at the foot of Navy Street, which also housed the Bank of Toronto. ¹² In 1850 Oakville was also granted license to become a warehousing port where foreign goods in transit between the US and Europe could land without duty. To accommodate this new trade, Robert K. Chisholm built a warehouse to house goods. In 1852-1853 it became apparent that more repairs were essential to the upkeep of the well-used harbour, and, in the late 1850s or early 1860s, the south end of the pier was enlarged for the purpose of docking more ships. ¹³

In retrospect, it is apparent that the 1850s were the height of the shipping trade in Oakville and the shipbuilders, merchants and tradesmen of the port were at the height of their success. The advent of the railway in 1856 would see the shipping industry falter and ultimately fail by the late 1860s. Oakville, which from its inception in 1827 had been centred around the harbour and its workings, would have to diversify to maintain its industry in the second third of the nineteenth century. The harbour would be abandoned only to be resurrected as a site for pleasure sailing a generation later.

Bibliography

Brimacombe, Philip, The Story of Oakville Harbour, Cheltenham Ont.: Boston Mills Press, 1975
Lestrang, Jacques, Cargo Carriers of the Great Lakes: the Saga of the Great Lakes Fleet North America's Fresh Water Merchant Marine, New York: American Legacy Press, 1977
Mathews, Hazel C., Oakville and the Sixteen: The History of an Ontario Port, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953
McCalla, Douglas, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784-1870, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993
McKeon, Clare & Joseph P., Oakville: A Place of Some Importance

Footnotes

1. Hazel C. Mathews, Oakville and the Sixteen: The History of an Ontario Port, p. 28
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 32
4. Ibid., pp. 32-33
5. Ibid., p. 178
6. Ibid., p. 85
7. Ibid., p. 195
8. Jacques Lestrang, Cargo Carriers of the Great Lakes: the Saga of the Great Lakes Fleet North America's Fresh Water Merchant Marine, (New York: American Legacy Press, 1977) p. 33
9. Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784-1870, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) p. 127
10. Ibid., p. 170
11. Philip Brimacombe, The Story of Oakville Harbour
12. Clare and Joseph P. McKeon, Oakville: A Place of Some Importance, p. 39
13. Hazel C. Mathews, Oakville and the Sixteen: The History of an Ontario Port, p. 202-203