Presentation of a plaque in honour of John Antoine at Frontenac Park

Sep 01, 2021

Family moved to Sharbot Lake where their presence is still felt.

Frank Antoine, along with his grand-daughter Sophia (not pictured) were on hand for the unveiling of a plaque at the entrance to Frontenac Park last week. The spot where the Antoine family lived on Devil Lake in the mid 1800s was named Antoine Point. That part of Devil's Lake is located within what is now Frontenac Park.

The Friends of Frontenac Park decided to commission the plaque in order to bring the Indigenous history of the park to the forefront.

John Antoine was originally from Lake of Two Mountains, near Montreal. He had at least 6 children with his first wife, Sophie Legere, and at least 7 more with his second wife, Elizabeth (Eliza) Hollywood.

There is a reference to John Antoine in The Enduring Spirit, a book about Frontenac Park that was published by the Friends of Frontenac Park in 1997 and is still available at the park.

“Several Indian families, most notably the John Antoine family, lived for many years in the park’s immediate area. John Antoine’s family resided on Antoine Point in Devil Lake, just within the northern boundary of the park. The shadowy indentation of his cabin outline is still visible today on the point.”

There is another Antoine Point in Frontenac County. It is also named for John Antoine.

John Antoine moved from Devil Lake to Sharbot Lake and established a homestead at what is now known as Antoine Point on the east basin of Sharbot Lake, off of the Shibley Road.

Shibley Road was named for Frederick Shibley, whose family were landowners in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Counties. He came to own an island on Sharbot Lake, which he named Aspinwall Island. Fred Shibley lived in New York, and he hired John Antoine to care for his property on Sharbot Lake, which was adjacent to Antoine Point, where John had settled with his second large family.

Shibley wrote an essay about John Antoine. He knew John Antoine near the end of Antoine’s life. In it, Shibley wrote, “I knew John Antoine intimately during the last fifteen years. I have received from his comradeship and his friendship more than from any other man, He and I came very close together in the later years. It is a tribute of love that I now pay his memory.”

He describes Antoine as a “hunter, a trapper, a guide, adding to these strenuous occupations of his youth, that of a gardener in his later years. The world beyond the woods meant little to him. He never saw a great city or conceived the intensive struggle of men and women for wealth, place and power. Ambition was to him merely a word. Nevertheless, he was exceedingly wise in forest lore and the ways of the creatures of the wilderness. There was a peculiar kinship between him and the birds. Crows talked to him as if he were an old but somewhat severe friend. He would touch a flower as tenderly as if it were a curl on a baby's head.”

Frank and Joanne Antoine are John Antoine’s grandchildren. Their father, Fred Antoine, was the 6th child born to Eliza, in 1913. He died in 1999. Joanne and Frank were born and raised in Sharbot Lake and eventually moved to Kingston, where they now live together. Frank requires some support after having a stroke a few years ago.

John Antoine’s youngest son, Arthur, was born in 1915. He remained in Sharbot Lake and died in 2015, at the age of 99.

Fred and Arthur Antoine both fished and guided on Sharbot Lake when they grew up. In an article about Arthur that was published in the Frontenac News upon his death, family friend Peter Rupert wrote “One short story about Arthur goes like this. I asked him how he got to know the location of the deep shoals, which all fishermen desired to find to catch the big one. Arthur simply said, “Pete, my brother Fred and I simply took 25 feet of rope, tied a stone on it, and rowed around the lake, marking each one with sight lines on the shore.”

Another Antoine descendant who remained in Sharbot Lake was Don Antoine, who wrote extensively about World War 2, in which he fought, and about the intertwined histories of the Antoine and Shibley families.