1885 Letter to the Editor

Printed in Toronto on 7 Aug 1885

STURGEON POINT

To the Editor of The Mail.

Sir, - I have read your editorial in to-day’s Mail on “The Holiday Season and Summer Resorts” with unusual interest, for the fact that you seem to be trying to divert the Toronto tourists in this direction.  In enumerating the beautiful Canadian places for summer resorts you have omitted, perhaps, the most beautiful of all – Sturgeon Point – and certainly the most convenient for the people of Toronto.  The Sturgeon Point hotel, under the excellent management of its present well-known and gentlemanly proprietor Mr. Dunham, is fast becoming a popular resort for tourists.  The point is a lovely place; free from musquitos and sand flies, cool and healthy, with communication twice a day with Lindsay by boat.  The point is so desirable a place that eight permanent summer residences have been built in the vicinity of the hotel by gentlemen of Lindsay and are now occupied by their families.  On leaving Toronto by the morning train the point is reached at 3pm, and by leaving Toronto at 4pm the hotel is reached at 9pm.  On leaving the point in the morning Toronto is reached by 11am, almost in time for the day’s business.  If any of my friends in Toronto who may be about to take a holiday trip, and may not be able to afford to climb the mountains of Switzerland or go a great distance from home, and may have any doubt whether “the home article be as good as the foreign one” let them give the benefit of the doubt in favour of the point, and I am sure they will be pleased.

Yours, etc.

WM. Logan

The Rectory, Fenelon Falls, Aug. 3

The Sturgeon Point Hotel, built 1876

I love that the Rev Logan points out the ease and speed of the trip.  That you could climb on a train in Toronto.  Travel by rail, changing trains in Cobourg, all the way to Lindsay... then take the ferry across the lake and accomplish it all in the space of 5-hours is impressive! 



Lake steamer loading passengers at the Lower Warf in front of the Hotel

Rev. William Logan was the minister of St. James Anglican in Fenelon Falls.  He was born in Scotland in 1824.  He died in Toronto on 10 April, 1896.  His wife was Margaret and they had six known children: Margaret, Charles, Kathleen, and the twins John & William.  The family appears in the Canadian Census for Fenelon Falls in 1871, 1881 and 1891.  They would have be part of the second Anglican Church - the one that now stands is the third church.