There is a Gordon Point Wharf ( Government Road ) somewhere around West Green Harbor, Nova Scotia ( New Scotland ). It is only mentioned on a canoe enthusiasts website as far as I know. It isn't the Gordon's Point that I was looking for but it is interesting to note that on that website Ragged Island is mentioned and Ragged Island was settled by Locke and Churchill of Massachusetts back in 1761 or 62 and they registered it in Liverpool, England as the township of Locke Island. In 1907 the named Lockeport was used when the town was incorporated. Interestingly at about the same time James Stobie was mining and prospecting on the Vermillion River near Stobie Falls and was sending his mineral ore all the way up to Lockport near St Joseph Island in Ontario. Lockport was initially called Stobie and it was not distant from Gordon Lake.
But that Gordon Lake was not the same Gordon Lake that is just downstream from Stobie Dam in Chelmsford.
Did I say Gordon ?
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| Stobie Dam is nowhere near Gordon's Point... However, follow the Vermillion river down stream and find a good guide like Mr Graverod and he'll lead you right to LaCloche where the Hudson Trading Post was. From there he could basically take you to St Joseph Island, or to Gordon's Point, or to Drummond Island, or even to Cleveland, Ohio. |
Gordon's Point is a place found near Penetanguishene, Ontario, which is right next door to Midland, Ontario, and only a neighbourhood away from Victoria Harbour, Ontario.
All three of these places are on the southeastern shores of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay and through the north channel of Georgian Bay a Voyageur can travel to St Joseph Island and to Lockport. With a bigger canoe any trader could have taken Stobie's stockpiled ore's and transported them to the smelters of Cleveland, Ohio.
Of course when Mond came along and set up his own smelters at Victoria mines in Fairbanks township the refining game changed for Sudbury Basin prospectors.
Why Victoria Harbour ?
Ancient history teaches us that religious ministers like Etienne Brule ( pardon the accents ), Jean de Brebeuf, Lalemand and Masse came to the area in the early 1600's and that by 1798 the local native tribes had pretty much all but lost or sold their land rights to the Europeans.
But it would be too convenient to blame all the changes happening in America at this time on religion. The corporate establishment is as much, if not more, too blame on the rise of these towns and trading centers in Ontario's northwest.
Victoria Harbour was at one time Hogg's Bay and a settlement of sawmill laborers. Hogg's Bay was renamed in honour of Queen Victoria. That story is a mid 19th century story. She likely is the dignitary behind Victoria mines also which is a story of the late 19th century.
Penetanguishene is a story that dates back to a century earlier when the US and the British were fighting for sovereignty over nations and land. Midland, the town, was a story formed when sawmill operators decided to form a co-op in order to manage and probably control the lumber and grain trade of the wild northwest. Midland the district was also known as Mecklenburg for a short period of time until Queen Victoria came along. Mecklenburg is a real German term and it is used in a period just before the English monarchs go on a mission to try to cover their German heritage. At least that is how I understand it.
And along came Gordon the Scotch trader........
His name was George Gordon and he had at one time been one of the many people living around Drummond Island.
The story of how he ends up near Midland is best told in the book " The Migration of Voyageurs " which says :
Several residents of Drummond Island appear to have taken time by the forelock (act quickly and decidedly ). A Scotch trader named Gordon from Drummond Island made, in 1825, the first permanent settlement at Penetanguishene, on the east side of the harbour, just beyond Barrack's Point, and called it the " Place of Penetangoushene ". It subsequently became known as Gordon's Point.
It would be nice to end the story with that but this blog is about the development and events that happened in Chelmsford so we must go on and find out how or if George Gordon is a factor.
He met and married his first wife at Gordon's Point. She was the daughter of a metis women named Agnes Landry. Her name was likely Agatha Agnes Landry Gordon. Gordon's father, if my genealogical source is correct, was a Montreal based Colonel Gordon who was killed during a West Indies voyage. There is a story about a son being born to Agatha and George while on Drummond Island. That story goes that on a trip the boy was lost and was devoured by a wolf pack. Agatha also died and George Gordon remarried Marguerite Langlade.
It might be legend....but Marguerite is believed by some to have been a descendant of the Ottawa ( Keepers of the Trades according to a c. 800 AD Council of Three Fires treaty ) nation war chief Nissowaquet. How so ?
Augustine Langlade was a fur trader who married Domitilde and she was a sister of the war chief of the Ottawa nation. Augustine Langlade, it seems, learnt the native traditions but also studied under Jesuit missionaries. If anything, he certainly seems like the type who could fit the shoes of the character "Mister Graverod" mentioned in that other book. But certainly he isn't.
In that post we might have put the carriage in front of the horse when we said that George Gordon was a Scotch Whiskey trader. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't...........
Was George Gordon of Gordon's Point related to, or an ancestor of, O B Gordon who was associated to other bankers who ran a mercantile bank when F W Bradley was making a name for himself near Nevada and California ? Was George Gordon an ancestor of J R Gordon who spent his summers at his cabin on Gordon Lake while the claims of James Stobie, Alphonse Ollier, who was a lodger in the home of Rosario Rheaume, and others were being explored. Rosario Rheaume was located right where Errington would build a mine with the financial backing of Bradley and Treadwell Yukon Mining.
Most of the French names seen in the Chelmsford story are found in genealogical records of Tiny Township which is about where George Gordon settled and died at Gordon's Point.
I find that interesting and extremely mysterious....almost bordering on conspiracy. But it isn't conspiracy as much as it is the nature of the game of republican democracy vs liberal democracy at work. Some people just seem to know how to work the odds and how to keep the horses in front of the wagon at all times. That game only gets dangerous when socialist values push democracy into the realm of communism or when republican values push democracy into the realm of fascism.
Politics and religion.............what a world we live in......
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