Railway Lands, Pt. 1

Railway Lands is a two-part series exploring Parry Sound's history with railroads.

The other lost railway local to the area is the Parry Sound-Arnprior-Ottawa Railway, built at the turn of the 19th century and completed nearly a decade before any other railways came to Parry Sound. It did not end in Parry Sound; it ended in Depot Harbour, on Parry Island. Depot Harbour was located in a natural deep water harbour on the north shore of Parry Island.

The harbour was sheltered and had a large entrance. The land secured for the terminus was flat and sandy, which is an oddity for the area. A small town was built there. The railway was connected to the mainland at Rose Point with a low swing-bridge across the South Channel, which was the main water route into the town for passenger steamships. Steamships were taller than the bridge, so the bridge had to be able to move to let ships pass. At one time it was possible for a train, a car, a ship and a person to use the same space in a short period of time. The bridge, originally meant only for trains, is only a single lane to this day.

The wharf at Depot Harbour

More about Depot Harbour after the jump...


The railway was completed thirty years prior to an upgrade of the St. Lawrence Seaway, so it was the fastest way to transport goods from the interior of Canada to the rest of the world. Ships would load and unload cargo in Depot Harbour, where they would travel by train to Ottawa or to other lake ports like Chicago, Fort William (Thunder Bay), Duluth, and others. After the St. Lawrence Seaway opened up in the thirties, most cargo travelled along the seaway as it was cheaper. But some products still moved along the railway until the late seventies. I remember seeing a train cross the Rose Point Swing Bridge; it was memorable for a boy obsessed with trains.

The rails were ripped up in the eighties, and the town of Depot Harbour drifted into the woods, but some structures can still be seen. Portions of the roundhouse can be seen looming over one of the roads that lead to the old village.

The roundhouse

For those that don't know, old steam engines were mono-directional and had to be physically turned around. This happened in the roundhouse. The wharf where the ships docked and were unloaded is still present with its large, heavy mooring posts; a reminder of the ships that used to berth there.

A memory of times past

There aren’t too many uses for a narrow, flat, and mostly straight strip of developed land, so like they did in town, the old rail bed is now a trail: The Seguin Trail. Now one can walk or ride ATVs and snowmobiles over large portions of the old railway. My family used to go for walks along the portion that began at Rose Point every once in a while. You can see the marks that old lovers used to make before the use of spray paint became common: initials carved into the rock.

History peeks through the foliage

The trail has been cut in two at the Highway 400 extension, but there is a bridge that joins the portions together and easy access to the trail is granted at the service station there. But the old access point at Rose Point still remains, and there is even a of couple parking spots for hopeful hikers.


-- By Aubrey Jackson