Lakeshore, Ontario

Lakeshore
Town (lower-tier)
Town of Lakeshore
Lakeshore Municipal Office
Seal
Lakeshore
Coordinates:
Country	Canada
Province	Ontario
County	Essex
Formed	1999
Government
• Mayor	Tom Bain
• MP	Tracey Ramsey (NDP)
• MPP	Taras Natyshak (NDP)
Area
• Land	530.32 km2 (204.76 sq mi)
Population (2011)
• Total	34,546
• Density	65.1/km2 (169/sq mi)
Time zone	Eastern (EST) (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	EDT (UTC-4)
Website	www.lakeshore.ca

Lakeshore is a town near Lake St. Clair in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. The town was incorporated in 1999 by amalgamating the Town of Belle River with the townships of Maidstone, Rochester, Tilbury North, and Tilbury West. It is part of the Windsor census metropolitan area.

Lakeshore has a significant concentration of Franco-Ontarians, and is one of only three communities in Southern Ontario (excluding Eastern Ontario) where francophones, as a percentage of the community's population, exceed the provincial average of five per cent (the other two are Welland and Penetanguishene). In the 2011 census, 7.7% of the population reported French as their mother tongue, and 17.2% reported knowledge of both official languages. Lakeshore is also the site of a historic black community along the Puce River.

Communities

The town comprises the communities of Belle River, Comber, Deerbrook, Elmstead, Emeryville, Haycroft, Lighthouse Cove, North Woodslee, Pike Creek, Pleasant Park, Puce, Ruscom Station, South Woodslee, St. Joachim, Stoney Point, and Strangfield, as well as the far eastern section of Tecumseh.

A small portion of the township's easternmost area is considered by some to be part of Tilbury, although Tilbury proper is located in the neighbouring municipality of Chatham-Kent.

Geography

Although incorporated as a town, the vast majority of Lakeshore is rural, being made up of cleared farmland predominately used for the cultivation of cash crops such as soybeans and winter wheat.

Like the rest of Essex County and Chatham-Kent, the terrain is extremely flat and regular. The terrain slopes very gently from the southern border of Lakeshore on Highway 8, with an average elevation of 188m, to the shore of Lake St. Clair at 176m. The highest land is in the southwestern corner of the town, near the town of Essex, at an elevation of 193m.

The area is drained by a series of slow-moving rivers and creeks, all of which flow northward into Lake St. Clair: from west to east, these are Pike Creek, the Puce River, Belle River, the Ruscom River, and finally Big Creek and Baptiste Creek, which form the northeastern border of Lakeshore at their junction with the Thames River.

The major transportation arteries through Lakeshore, including Highway 401, the Tecumseh Road, and County Roads 42 and 46, all follow an east-west parallel toward Windsor and Detroit in the west and toward Chatham-Kent in the east. The only significant exception is Highway 77, which connects Leamington to Highway 401 via Staples.

History

The coast of Lake St. Clair and lots fronting the Puce, Belle, and Ruscom rivers were first surveyed in 1793 by Patrick McKniff. The area was not fully divided into concessions and lots, however, until the rear lines of the townships and the Middle Road (today County Road 46) were surveyed by Mahlon Burwell in 1823. Land speculation was endemic in Essex County as in many other parts of Upper Canada and much of the present town of Lakeshore was once owned by a single speculator, the fur trader John Askin: by 1797, he held 80 lots, concentrated primarily along the Pêche (Pike) Puce, Belle, and Ruscom rivers.

French Canadians from nearby Detroit and Sandwich were the earliest settlers in the area. They were followed beginning in the 1840s by Irish immigrants, and later by additional waves of French Canadians from Quebec. Development was slow until the construction of a series of railroads through the area. These include the Great Western Railway, opened in 1854 and passing through Belle River, and the Canada Southern Railway (later owned by New York Central and Michigan Central), opened in 1872 and passing through Comber.

Following the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire, the Lakeshore region became one of several end points of the Underground Railroad. In 1851, the Refugee Home Society was founded in Detroit by Michigan and Ontario abolitionists, and under the direction of Henry Walton Bibb, the society purchased scattered lots in and around Maidstone, Puce, and Belle River for refugee blacks.

The two oldest communities in Lakeshore are Comber and Belle River. Comber was settled in 1837 by two Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from Comber, Ireland, John Gracey and William MacDowell. It was named after their home town in 1848 or 1850, when a post office was opened there in John Gracey’s home.

Belle River was incorporated as a village in November 26, 1874, but its origins can be traced back to the Jesuit Mission of St. Jude. The mission was founded in 1834 to serve the religious needs of the local population of French Catholics. The mission did not receive a resident pastor until 1857, after the Great Western Railway opened the area to large scale immigration. Over the course of the 1870s, the town’s population was tripled by an influx of settlers from the province of Quebec. The earliest industries in the town were operated by Luc and Denis Oulette, who established a sawmill and gristmill on opposite sides of the river.

In 1881, the population of Comber was 250 and that of Belle River was 650. Stoney Point was settled by 1851 and incorporated as a village in 1881, at which time it had a population of 375. The church of St. Joachim, which became the centre of the village of the same name, was completed in 1882 and enlarged in 1891. It was established to serve the needs of French Catholics in the area along the Ruscom River who were distant from the existing parishes in Belle River and Stoney Point.

In the 1920s, James Scott Cooper, a well-known local entrepreneur and bootlegger, built mansions in Walkerville and Belle River. The Cooper Court Motel and Bar in Belle River, built in 1920, still operates today. Cooper was a philanthropist and contributed greatly to the construction of Belle River's first high school, Belle River District High School.

Belle River was well known for bootlegging during Prohibition in the United States. The Wellington hotel, once located on Notre Dame, the town's main street, exported alcohol to the United States along with many American-owned cottages on Charron Beach Road.

Economy

Lakeshore’s economy is based primarily on agriculture and manufacturing. Over 27% of the workforce of Lakeshore is employed in the manufacturing sector. The prominence of manufacturing is an outgrowth of the town’s proximity to Windsor and Detroit, the historic centre of North American automobile production. The economy of Lakeshore remains closely tied to that of Windsor: over 50% of the town’s total workforce is employed in Windsor.

In recent years the town has seen important developments in renewable energy, particularly in wind power. It is the site of the 72-turbine Comber wind farm.

Sports

The community's hockey team is the Lakeshore Canadiens, who play in the Great Lakes Junior C Hockey League.

The youth sports teams are Belle River Jr. Canadiens (Hockey), Lakeshore Lightning (Girls Hockey) and Belle River Braves (Baseball)

Belle River is the birthplace of retired NHL player Tie Domi, and NHL player Aaron Ekblad was raised in Belle River.

Since 1989, Belle River has been known as the "Jet Ski Capital of Canada" due to the number of personal watercraft riders and racers in the town, many of which are American visitors. The community's racing team is named after the URL: www.belleriver.com which successfully competed on the Midwest Watercross Tour.

Images

• 

  Thames River Lighthouse in Lighthouse Cove

• 

  St. Joachim

• 

  Church in South Woodslee

• WoodsleeCemetery.jpg

  South Woodslee Cemetery

See also

• List of townships in Ontario
• List of francophone communities in Ontario

External links

• Official website