Community The Lindsay Advocate
The recent rhetorical flourish about Canada becoming the 51st state, coupled with ongoing economic sabre-rattling from south of the border, have prompted Canadians to prioritize their own backyard when making travel plans this summer.
It was in this spirit that I recently pointed my bicycle northwest and made tracks for Eldon Station – now a lonely place located some 40 km northwest of Lindsay, but once a fairly bustling community situated midway between Kirkfield and Argyle on the old Canadian National Railway line.
I leave Lindsay shortly before 9 a.m. on a Wednesday. The sun is shining and, while rain is forecast for later in the day, it mercifully holds off while I zigzag my way into the depths of Eldon Township. Two and a half hours later, my left knee beginning to throb after pedalling up and down the gravel surface of Prospect Road, I reach my destination.
Greeting me at the intersection of Prospect and Eldon Station Roads is a snake – possibly a northern water snake or fox snake – looking almost as sleepy as the little hamlet unfolding in front of me. For ever since CN took up its tracks in 1965, Eldon Station has largely faded into obscurity and today amounts to a small cluster of buildings both ancient and modern. A pair of new homes jostle for space among the still-surviving relics of an earlier age: the long-since deconsecrated church, the heavily altered general store, and a couple of farmhouses ensconced behind the ubiquitous and fragrant lilac bushes.
I turn left onto the hamlet’s namesake road and ease my bicycle to a stop in front of what was once St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. Built around 1885 out of pale-coloured brick and sporting Gothic Revival windows on either side, it was by the 1920s doubling as a performance space for the Eldon Station Dramatic Club. On March 23, 1927, the club presented Home Acres, a three-act production by American playwright Arthur Lewis Tubbs, before a sold-out audience.
Things had quieted down considerably between 1982 and 1989, when the Rev. Dr. Ron Wallace served as minister at Eldon Station. “The congregation was already in an advanced stage of decline and was only kept going because of the determined efforts of descendants of three pioneer families, the McInnis family, the Campbell family and the Imrie family, totalling seven members in all, who looked after the church building and property,” Wallace remembers. “During these last six years, there were only three services per year, one in the spring, one in the summer, and one in the fall – all of which were held at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. The congregation took great pride in the fact that there was always 100% attendance at these services, with all seven members always present.”
But as with many such buildings in the countryside, it has gained a new lease on life as a picturesque dwelling-place. “We were starting a family and wanted to raise our kids in the country,” recalls Jen Hardie, who with her husband have made Eldon Station home for the better part of the last 35 years. “We quickly fell in love with the old church and the surrounding area. Converting the church to a home has been a labour of love that 35 years later is still a labour!”
A short distance down the road from the church is the site of the railway station, which has been gone for more than 60 years. Cutting through the well-tilled fields immediately north of Eldon Station Road is the distinctive embankment on which the tracks of the Toronto & Nipissing Railway were first laid in 1872. One hundred years ago, Roy Forman shipped hogs from this station platform to points farther south, and local residents gathered here to bid adieu to sons and daughters who had pulled up roots to relocate elsewhere. Today, the only nod to the community’s receding railway heritage is a model locomotive mounted on top of a mailbox opposite the two-storey general store.
That store was once owned and operated by Wilfred Fleming, whose son Victor later ran the well-known general store in nearby Argyle. As was the case elsewhere, the store supplied local residents with not only provisions but also a panoply of local gossip that invariably made its way into Lindsay’s papers. “The hustlers amongst the housewives of this community are joyously heralding the early spring by beginning the house cleaning,” remarked one nosy correspondent in 1927. “Some of the most enthusiastic have been caught raking their back gardens. This is confined to a very limited few.”
Stories also abound of bootleggers that plied their trade around Eldon Station throughout the 1920s – but for other thirsty travellers, a refreshing bottle of pop from Fleming’s store would probably suffice. Speaking of refreshment, I check my phone and note that it’s almost noon. Lunchtime. Parking my bike just west of the wee hamlet, I find a shady spot in the long grass at the roadside and delve into a picnic lunch consisting of ham and roast beef sandwiches, some salted cashews, a pair of pastries, and a large carrot and apple – all washed down with a swig of Orange Crush.
And as I eat, I ponder my long trip back to Lindsay. Hmmm. If only Eldon Station still had its station!