Aug 2/2005
by Vince Versace, Staff Writer, Northumberland News

COBOURG - Stand at the end of the Division Street pier, close your eyes and listen closely. The serene waterfront sounds of today are a far cry from the rumble of rolling coal cars, ship whistle shrieks and train engine roars which once defined golden ages of activity in Cobourg's waterfront.

"It was always a busy place down there. You had the trains going back and forth, the ferries and ships blowing their whistles, as they came and went and the fog horn also," recalls Bud Barr, 83, a lifelong Cobourg resident whose great-grandfather settled in Cobourg in 1844. Mr. Barr is a former member [and still a member in 2008 - Ed] of Cobourg's historical society and architectural advisory committee.

Another common sound in the waterfront during the summers of Mr. Barr's youth were the screams of children hurtling down a wooden slide in a toboggan on wheels. The slide stretched out over the water and into the harbour.

"The slide was in the area between the east pier and where the beach ended," says Mr. Barr. "It was run by the Lavis family who had fishing boats and a fish house on the east pier."

The slide is now a thing of the past, as are some other waterfront features which helped popularize Cobourg's harbour. However, one of today's most prized waterfront features was also popular as far back as the early 1800s. Cobourg's main beach was used as a stopover location for travellers along the Lake Ontario 's north shore well before Cobourg's incorporation in 1837, reports Percy Climo in his book 'I Cover the Waterfront'.

"The beach was a place of stopover and encampment, especially at the west end of the beach where the large stream entered the lake," wrote Mr. Climo. "The estuary provided a harbour for small boats and good supply of fresh water fish."

After 1837, immigrants to the Newcastle District, which included the areas of Oshawa, Peterborough and Belleville, used Cobourg's main beach as a camping and recreation location, added Mr. Climo. Before Cobourg's first harbour was built, Midtown Creek, which is now covered south of University Street and runs through the centre of town, was large enough to allow boats to float as far north as James Street. Lake Ontario's shoreline was further north than it is now and it created a bay where it met Midtown Creek. This bay stretched south of Albert Street from Division to George streets, notes Rob Mikel, local historian.

In the late 1820s schooners with cargo and passengers had to anchor well off shore because Cobourg's harbour was nothing more than a landing wharf, note various Cobourg historical texts. Passengers and freights could only be transported to shore after being transferred to smaller boats. To eliminate this problem and capitalize on commercial activity in the harbour, the Cobourg Harbour Company was established by a group of prominent Cobourg businessmen on March 20, 1829.

"The early settlers in the area were zealous in their ambitions," says Mr. Mikel "In 1830 they had the main pier built, which was a remarkable feat."

The harbour company's earliest accomplishment was building the wooden Eastern Pier, at the foot of Division Street , which stretched 500 feet into the lake and was 30-feet wide. The pier was completed in 1832 and a storehouse, which extended across Division Street soon followed, notes Mr. Mikel. Cobourg's harbour now had two options for vessels because it still had the old George Street wharf where steamboats like the Frontenac and Niagara docked.

"By the early 1860s, Cobourg's harbour was not of much importance," says Mr. Mikel.

In 1874 the Canadian government built the Langevin Pier, a long breakwater which extends from the foot of Hibernia Street , to help control the problem of sand filling the harbour. The breakwater would be the last pier added to the harbour, giving it the shape it still has today.

The founding of the Cobourg, Peterborough and Marmora Railway and Mining Corporation in 1866 helped revitalize commercial activity in the waterfront. The railway had steamships on Rice Lake which carried iron ore from Marmora across the lake to connect with trains on Rice Lake 's south shore. The trains then ran their route south, through what is today Hamilton Township, into Cobourg along Spring Street and to the waterfront. The ore was then transferred to ships and sent to Rochester.

The railway attracted American industrialists and eventually led to a new chapter in the Town's history known as the American Summer Colony (see our section on this) because of the large number of tourists from the United States. The summer visitors created a wave of new grand hotels to be built in the areas just north of the shoreline and around Victoria Park. Hotels like the Arlington, on King Street at the top of Victoria Park, the Columbian, on McGill Street and the Cedamere Hotel, at the south end of Ontario Street, were examples of Cobourg trying to meet the demands of its newest boom industry, tourism.

"The Arlington was right at the top of Victoria Park and was a perfect setting. The park then was just one long lawn which belonged to the hotel," says Mr. Mikel. "The grass just eventually connected to the beach."

What is now Victoria Park and considered "the crown jewel" of Cobourg, along with Victoria Hall, by Mayor Peter Delanty, was actually privately owned in 1874 but still accessible to the public.

"It is amazing that what is the park has remained as open space for as long as it has," notes Mr. Mikel. "It is right in the middle of town and was never developed."

A proposed project for the summer colony era, which never was developed, was a boulevard which stretched along Cobourg's shoreline from west to east.