Mathew Street - Controversy, or branding opportunity

Sep 07, 2022

Mathew street has existed in obscurity for decades. Dwarfed in size and stature by the two other streets in downtown Sharbot Lake, the bustling Elizabeth street, home to two churches, a pharmacy, a post office, grocery store, and the local township office, and the crosstown Garrett street with the township hall, employment office, and pickleball courts on an abandoned public school site . Even lowly Robert Street boasts access to the public library in town.

Mathew has only a few homes, and is a mostly ignored access road to the beach, whose only claim to fame is that people use it on Canada Day to get to the store for pop and ice cream sandwiches, and it is the site of the annual traffic jam after the fireworks display.

Notably, when every other street in the village was rebuilt two years ago in a $3 million project that cemented Sharbot Lake’s status as the New York of Central Frontenac, Mathew was left out. Now, thanks mainly to the drain at the foot of Mathew that is failing, it is getting some attention and is ‘in the news’ around the village.

But controversy surrounding a decision to turn Mathew into a one-way street has dogged the project, which is now underway.

It is another humiliation for a street whose very name was misspelled in the first place. According to local legend, the street is named after Matthew Garrett, as is Garrett Street for that matter, and Elizabeth Street is named after Elizabeth Garrett.

In 1875, the Garretts purchased the 95 acres that comprises most of what is now downtown Sharbot Lake for what was then the princely sum of $75. They also bought the boarding house that is located where the Sharbot Lake Country Inn is located, and were poised for prosperity when the K&P railway was coming through in the mid-1870s.

As outlined in the article below, it all went badly when Matthew Garrett was murdered in a mishap with 4 drunken customers on November 18, 1876. Elizabeth moved back to the farm on Bass Lake in Olden Township, where she died 12 years later, and the family eventually dispersed, leaving only the street names behind.

Somehow, over the years, Matthew Street lost its second ‘t’ and became Mathew Street.

Now, with Mathew Street having a ‘moment’, including a social media presence on Change.org no less, that spelling error could be the branding opportunity of the decade, because of an athlete who is the world’s best, who lived in Sharbot Lake as a child and maintains a strong family connection to the hamlet to this day.

Mat Fraser won the Crossfit Games in 2020, for the 5th time in a row, and surpassed the record of 4 consecutive victories by Rich Fronig. It was a runaway victory as he accumulated almost double the point score of the second-place athlete, in the 10 events sport that is staged like a decathlon over two grueling days.

The only Crossfit athlete in the 20-year history of the sport whose accomplishments are as, or more, impressive than Mat Fraser’s, is Tia Clair-Toomey, who won her 6th consecutive title last month in the women’s competition.

Mat Fraser, the fittest man alive, the fittest man in history, can not only be legitimately claimed by Sharbot Lake. His parents spend much of their summers in Sharbot Lake to this day. His grandmother Dorothy Fraser ran the Sharbot Lake 39’ers until her death earlier this year, and he celebrated some of his Crossfit wins by coming home to Sharbot Lake, hanging out at the Cardinal Café, just like any other summer local.

And, the best part is that his full name is Mathew, with one T.

The tourism marketing people in Sharbot Lake and Frontenac County must now see a way forward for this. Much of the controversy surrounding the Mathew Street one-way, two-way debate, centres around the idea that the Sharbot Lake Beach will become a tourist mecca and the crowds using Mathew Street will be a common summer occurrence instead of a once-yearly cult event.

What better than to rebrand the street after Mathew Fraser. There is a precedent. At the Sharbot Lake Beach there is a statue of Simon Whitfield, the Olympic Gold and Silver medal winning triathlete who never lived in Sharbot Lake, but got his start in the sport, at the Kids of Steel Triathlons, in the early 1990’s.

Why not a plaque, at least, for Mathew Fraser, at the foot of the eponymous Mathew Street, celebrated with a ribbon cutting, sometime in the summer of ’24, with treats from the ‘Feeding the Frasers’ recipe book, which was written by Mat Fraser’s partner Sammy Moniz, being served after the ribbon cutting, prepared at Belong Sharbot Lake (fingers crossed) and the Cardinal Café, using produce from the Sharbot Lake market.

As anyone who has watched a Crossfit Games would know, Mathew street would have to be an uphill street to live up to rebranding, and preferably pedestrians should be encouraged to run to the top, and then descend backwards while carrying a medicine ball.