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Jeff Green | Apr 20, 2006

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Sharbot Lake Historical Walking Tour

byJeff Green

Over the years, the Oso District Historical Society has been accumulating information about the history of the Sharbot Lake area and storing it at the public library.

Shirley Peruniak, the mainstay of the historical society, has often wondered how to get the information out to the public.

A couple of years ago her daughter in-law showed her a brochure that was put out in the town of Athabasca, Alberta . Athabasca ’s heritage as the gateway for transporting goods to the Canadian North had been commemorated in a handsome booklet, and Shirley thought a Sharbot Lake Walking Tour booklet could be developed as well.

Later on, Shirley was at a meeting of a group called the Friday Night Ladies, when Janet Gutowski mentioned that the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation (FCFDC) had money available for community-based projects, and sure enough the FCFDC found a grant for the project from the Eastern Ontario Development fund which would provide funds for the brochure on the condition that a matching amount be raised from the public.

Shirley’s partner in the project, Sandra Moase, then approached several businesses and individuals in the community to donate $200 each. The Frontenac News was approached to produce the brochure, and agreed to do so.

Charlotte Duchene from Arden then typed up all the material and helped get the historical photos together for the brochure, and the rest is history.

The Sharbot Lake Walking Tour includes 28 stops from the Medical Centre, which is located in front of what used to be a three-storey brick hotel. From there the tour meanders through the village, past sites that no longer exist, such as the Thomson and Avery Sawmill, and other sites that have been transformed as Sharbot Lake went from being a commercial centre to its present status as an administrative and tourism-based village.

Some historic homes in the village are well preserved and the tour passes by several of them.

There is a wealth of information in the 36-page brochure, which will be available for the nominal fee of $2, to be used to finance future printings, at the Sharbot Lake Pharmacy and several other locations in the coming weeks.