Publisher's Synopsis
Port Hope is located in Southern Ontario about 109 kilometers (68 miles) east of Toronto and about 159 kilometers (99 miles) west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County. Port Hope's nearest urban neighbor (25 kilometers to the west) is the City of Oshawa.Before Canada became a nation in 1867, Port Hope was already a boomtown. Its main streets were thronged with horse-drawn carriages and farmers' wagons, its plank sidewalks crowded with shoppers and merchandise. Wood-burning locomotives pulled heavily loaded trains through town on their way to a harbor filled with schooners and steamships. Solid brick commercial blocks and houses lined the streets.The town grew rapidly from four families of English descent who arrived by boat in 1793 and settled at the river mouth. The first European settlers came from the new United States. They had chosen to follow the British crown after the American Revolution. So had Elias Smith, a Montreal merchant who, with two partners, Jonathan and Abraham Walton, financed their arrival. In return for settling forty families on the land and building a sawmill and flourmill to serve them, the partners received a grant of land roughly the size of modern urban Port Hope.More families arrived including blacksmiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and merchants. The mills drew farmers from fifty and sixty kilometers away. Grain that could not be milled was bought by distilleries-there were eventually five along the river-that produced a famous Port Hope whisky. Its most rapid growth began when railways revolutionized travel in what is now Ontario.
