PAGE 10, WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22,1987 PORT WHITBY in 1909 (looking east to Heydenshore Park>. The pumphouse (with smokestack) still remains. Public Archives of Canada photo Whitby harbor Many changes in past century By JANET BROWNE Whitby harbor wasn't always the pleasure boater's haven that it is today, with yachts floating comfor- tably in the slips, and fishing buffs out on Ontario's waters for a day of sport. Over a century ago, the scene at the harbor was quite different. Sailing vessels, carrying huge shipments of barley, wheat, corn and oats grown on the fertile gar- mland where the town of Whitby lies today, moved in and out of the second largest port on the north shore of Lake Ontario. As Whitby archivist Brian Winter relates, Port Whitby was thriving, and so was the bustling community which surrounded the port. Big Bay was the original name of the harbor, until the land was given to an Englishman by the name of John Skatting in 1802. He changed. the name of the land he wished to settle to Windsor Harbor, the name of the land he owned in Devonshire, England. When the mail began to go astray because of the other Win- dsor, near Detroit, the name of Port Whitby was decided, and it stuck. The first shipment of grain didn't leave the harbor until 1833, and because the bay was not dredged, the grain had to be transported from shore to ship on little railway tracks over the mudflats, to the mouth of the harbor where the ships waited. The future of the grain expor- tation business must have looked promising to Peter Perry, who in 1836, proposed to take trade from Boston, N.Y., bring it to Whitby, and then build a railway stretching all the way to Georgian Bay. His request was denied by the gover- nment, but he was given money to build docks at the harbor, and have it dredged so the boats could be moored at the harbor's edge. In the 40's Perry made a second attempt to have a road built to Georgian Bay, and this time his request was granted. Unfor- tunately, only the top end and the bottom end was constructed, and the middle was not. The harbor as a commercial port experienced its peak years between 1850 and 1857. The grain export business was booming, and in the harvest months, farmers with wagon loads of grain were lined up all the way from Rossland Road waiting to load their produce the ships, and the loading would con- tinue from early morning to mid- night. The town itself was flourishing from the success of the grain trade. and there were then more building; than now, Four hotels were con- structed for grain merchants, and several grain elevators were erec- ted at the harbors' edge. Port Whit- iby even had a local gang, affec- tionately known as the Bay Rats, ifor their rough and tough ireputations, and their history of running teachers out of schools. A large quantity of the grain that left the harbor in the 40's and 50's was sailed to Kingston. When tne heavy grain was unloaded, it was necessary to fill the boats up with something equally heavy in order for them to. stay upright and afloat on the voyage home. Limestone, cut by prisoners at Kingston penitentiary, served as ballast for the ships, and served an equally important pur- pose when the ships returned to Whitby. Many of the houses built at this time had basements of this Kingston limestone. Two well- known Whitby buildings, the St. John's Anglican Church on Victoria St., and the Thomson House on Manning Rd. were constructed from the limestone, and are still standing today. In 1857, a depression hit the har- bor and did a great deal of damage to the grain trade. Plans for the long-awaited railway fizzled out as government funds were running low. The harbor stoped thriving, the town stopped growing, and the population remained static at about 3,000 for a long time afterwards. As- the depression eased off, the construction of the railway began. By 1871, it had reached Port Perry, and by 1877, it had reached Lin- dsay. The railway extension helped renew the life of Port Whitby, and by the early eighties, it was suc- cessful again. Lumber, mainly in the form of squared timber that was used in the construction of boat masts, was brought down by rail- from the north, and shipped to Britain. The grain trade was. still strong, in Whitby, but a source of lumber was non-existent since it had been cleared out for the sake of farmland. By the 1890's the same fate had befallen some of the nor- thern areas, and the lumber trade decreased. The harbor experienced its final crushing blow in 1890, the onset of the McKinley Tariff Act, which placed tariffs on Canadian grain going into the United States. Previously, there had been almost free trade relations between the two countries. With the Americans no longer buying Canadian grain, the Port Whitby grain trading businesses failed, although not completely. The harbor remained quiet following the trade disaster, and in 1910, the port was acquired by the government. In 1913, the last ship- ment of grain left the port. During the 1920's and 1930's the federal government began to replace the original wooden docks with cement, but no dredging was done, and the harbor began filling up with sand. The transition of Port Whitby from a commercial port to the recreational harbor it is today came about in the 1930's, especially with the introduction of a yacht club in 1933, which lasted until the beginning of World War II Still, there was commercial fishing going on, the most well- known fisherman being Joe Stevens. The concrete docks in the harbor were rebuilt in the 1950's by the government. The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 brought new hopes WHITBY HARBOR in 1920. of re-establishing the Whitby har- bor as a commercial port now that the trade doors to the world were open. But any hopes were soon dashed when . the harbor was dredged, and a floor of bedrock was discovered. The port which could accommodate the sailing vessels of the past was too shallow to allow access to the heavy freighters, and there was no way to dredge into the rock. In 1967, the federal government officially designated the harbor as recreational, while the Oshawa harbor was decidedly commercial, SEE PAGE 15 Ontario Archive% photo