November 3, 2000 J.R. Booth slow to get to Lake Nipissing

The original Booth farm and barn in Chisholm Township in the 1880s.

As stated last week, the entrepreneurial J.R. Booth established various operations throughout our area, from Mattawa to the French River, north to Temiskaming and into north Parry Sound. 

Today I want to look at the period leading up to his entrance onto Lake Nipissing and its rivers. 

Booth was slow coming into the Lake Nipissing area because of simple geography. The water east of lake Nipissing flows east, and the water to the west, to the west. With Booth's mills in Ottawa, getting the Lake Nipissing logs over the escarpment between these two watersheds, and into the Mattawa-Ottawa watershed and to his mills, was a monumental task. Before looking at how he solved the problem, let's step back and examine the conditions prior to his arrival on the lake.

By the 1860s, Booth had pushed to the end of the Ottawa-Mattawa watershed into the north east corner of Chisholm Township and into the prime pine limits there, and to the south-east. He accessed Chisholm and removed his logs by taking them on the Nosbonsing River, across lake Nosbonsing and down the Kabuskong River to the Mattawa River route. The Nosbonsing River penetrated deeply into Boulter Township, where Booth took squared timber and saw logs for years.

The rest of Booth's limits in Chisholm and parts of Boulter and Ballantyne Townships were drained by the Wasi River which flows into Lake Nipissing at the Wasi Falls in South East Bay, south of Callander. 

At one time, Booth decided to dam the Wasi River north of Wasi Lake to raise the water level to the point where he could make the water flow east into the Nosbonsing River and into the easy outlet to Ottawa mentioned above. When the government got wind of his efforts, they told him to stop.

Booth then decided on a remarkable plan that would not only give him an outlet from the Wasi River watershed, but would give him access to the vast pineries on Lake Nipissing. He built a water powered jackladder beside the Wasi Falls, pulled the logs up the 75-foot escarpment, and put them on a railroad he built to Lake Nosbonsing. From there, of course, he was back into the Mattawa-Ottawa route to his mills. Details of this operation, starting in 1885, will be provided next week. 

In the meantime, let's go back to the Booth operation that opened up Chisholm Township in the 1860s. By the time the township was surveyed in 1880, Booth had cleared enough land to have first rights to eight 100-acre lots, which he purchased for his operation. The core of his territory was between Lake Nosbonsing and Wasi Lake, where he established a store, office, farm, manager's house. Post office and school. For years, local people also bought supplies there and travelled on Booth's roads throughout the township. An early voter's list has Booth's Depot as a polling station.

I recently got permission to look at this depot property to see if there were any signs of the original operation. 

The photo above shows the farm manager's house and barn before the turn-of-the-century. I travelled with John Leach, who owns some of the old Booth land on the Nosbonsing River, and Doug Cox from the Powassan Historical Society whose relatives own part of the property. As we travelled north from Booth Road, on lot 25, concession 15 we found an old road, shown on old maps, that led to the depot. It was obvious that the road had been heavily travelled for decades.
 

John Leach and Doug Cox, examine the well-preserved foundation of the old house in the photo above, built over a century before.

When we waded across the Nosbonsing River, there were remnants of an old bridge that had crossed the river leading to the depot. Since almost everything at the depot was made of wood, little was left except the foundation of the farmhouse shown in the photo above. This beautifully laid out 24" wide foundation was clearly built by professionals and, with some work, could still be used today. The main part had a set of steps leading to a cold cellar. Several trees were growing there, and some pieces of metal were scattered about. 

As we walked around the property, we discovered a long earthen ramp leading from a low spot to a high spot, making it easier for Booth's men and animals to access the higher ground. A large rectangle of fertile grass showed the spot where the old barn was located. Doug Cox discovered an old pulley buried in a mound nearby.

I was reminded of the words of an 1885 clipping from the Canada Lumberman, where a visitor described a trip from Lake Nipissing to the Depot. After getting off Booth's steam tug the Nosbonsing, the visitor stated: "Three miles of a ride.brings us to the lumber depot, a farm of nearly 200 acres, with many log buildings, great sheds with hundreds of sleighs piled therein and a comfortable house." One could not help but think of the hundreds of pioneers who had come and gone there, and were no more.   

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