The coolness of Fort Willow

I need a digital camera. Because only with a digital camera, can I truly show you how cool our time was at Fort Willow (near Barrie, ON) this past weekend.

Here's a little picture that might help:


I wonder how that will come out. Hmmm...

Anyways, in brief, Fort Willow was a supply depot for military and trade goods and is located on the Nottawasaga River. It also seems likely that it was in an earlier incarnation (pre-1796) a trading post for the North West Fur Trading Company - Hudsons Bay's biggest trading rival! But Fort Willow proper, was run by the British and was inhabited until at least the 1850's. Which makes sense, since the Nottawasaga River was actually a pretty important transportation route from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario.

In the fifties and sixties there were a series of excavations to determine the boundries of the fort and the buildings in between. It's been restored, somewhat, but not extensively so. There are outlines of the buildings that were there and some interesting paths you can take around the Fort that talk about other possible sites and buildings and settlements.

I get the impression that for many years Fort Willow was kind of left to moulder - unjustifiably so, because it was located so far "north" (or what Torontonian consider north - Barrie), is not located near a major highway, and is cared for by a mild mannered conservation authority who have a small budget that has to spread far.

But about 10 years ago, a volunteer group formed(with the blessing of the conservation authority) called "Friends of Willow Creek" decided to pool their efforts and interests into building up a better awareness and appreciation of Willow Creek.

Now I first heard of them earlier this year, visiting up in New Lowell again and reading about this archaeological excavation in the newspaper. Done for credit by high school students, it was supervised by an archaeologist. We were a little mystified as to who this archaeologist could be - our contacts hadn't mentioned anything. And we were a little pinched by the fact that these students got to work on such a cool site. I think that might've been a week where we were field testing an area with not an artifact to be found.

We could've been feeling a little bitter is what I'm saying.

Well we found out this weekend when we went to Fort Willow's Open House (so to speak) that the licenced archaeologist was a high school history teacher. He'd held on to his licence and basically started an archaeology club. Cool. That rocks, and I wish I could've had a club like that at my high school.

But Fort Willow had lots more to look at this weekend - it was the big focal point of the Nine Mile Portage Heritage Festival. First the place was filled with re-enactors - good ones. Get this, they'd all come the night before and set up canvas tents, much like the ones we see in painting and old, old photographs, then they set up their demonstrations the next morning. There was nothing significant or noticable of the 21st century on them.

So, I chatted with the candlemaker, the surgeon, , the traders, the cooper - which is a barrelmaker (interesting family note, our paternal great grandfather Vineham was a cooper!), a blacksmith who offers lessons.... maybe, someday, boatmakers(Dayle is thinkind of joining them because they may build a schooner), a fur trade fort, a travelling doctor show, costumers who made everything from scratch - it was all wonderful.

There were also military re-enacters, specifically the Historic Military Establishment of Upper Canada. Their area of focus is from 175o's to 1880's. However, their main historical portrayal is that of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (RNR). They seemed to be in charge of the whole event and demonstrated drills, muskets, cannon operations. At one point, they were getting about 15 children to march in line. Fun for the children, but a little eerie to watch. And there were children there - some were part of the re-enactments with the families, some were clearly there with the families but not involved themselves, and there were hordes more, streaming around the fort and the paths surrounding it.

Dayle and I stayed there for about four hours and were some of the last ones to leave. That was because every conversation we got involved was with a person who was witty, knowledgable and a great enthusiast of whatever part they were playing.

A great Satuday.