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4 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, July 21, 1987 Editorial Comments The School Site It's not official at this time, but there are strong indications the Durham Board of Education will abandon its action to expropriate seven acres of land at the Port Perry Fairgrounds as the site for a new elementary school. The reason? The potential price tag for that seven acres is just too high. There is no doubt the Board could get the Fairground site if it pushes ahead with expropriation. The kicker is the compensa- tion order the Board could be facing to relocate the Fairgrounds to a new site near the Scugog Arena. A consultants report prepared for the Township puts the Fair relocation price tag somewhere in the $1.5 million range. Granted, those are figures which would provide the Fair with a 'Cadillac' of new facilities, far superior to what the Fair has now. But even if the price tag was whittled down by $500,000 or $700,000, the cost is more than the Board of Education is willing or able to spend on a chunk of land for a school. It would appear that the protracted wrangle over this school site which has dragged on for some 18 months is going to whither and die. It has not been a happy wrangle by any means. The dispute has been damaging to all concerned: the Township council, the Fair Board, the Durham Board of Education and the community at large. It has caused deep rifts over the past 18 months, pitted friends against friends and in some cases family members against family members. If, as indications suggest, the Board of Education gives up on the expropriation action, it is high time for the community of Scugog to bury the hatchet, and not in somebody's back. This is not the time to continue pointing fingers or hurling personal accusations. For those involved, it has been a painful experience and we hope the damage done is not beyond repair. There are several things that should come out of this issue. First- ly, the Port Perry Fair is an enormously important institution in this community. It has been part of the community for over a century and we hope it's still part of the community a hundred years hence. The Fair this year is less than six weeks away. It needs broad community support, and we hope it gets it. Secondly, the Township owned lands behind Scugog Arena (some 60 acres) have been designated as the site for the develop- ment of recreational facilities: tennis courts, baseball diamonds, jog- ging and cycling tracks, passive and active parklands, even an in- door swimming pool, banquet hall and second ice pad. Nobody ex- pects this development to take place overnight or even in the next three to five years. But eventually, this area will be home to these facilities if our Township council does a little each year, including - development of a site for-a Fair. After all, the Fair Board's lease on the present grounds expires in 1996. And finally, the matter of a new school, so badly needed in Port Perry as both R.H Cornish and Prince Albert P.S. are groaning under the sheer numbers of students and sprouting portables on every available square inch of land. It is unfortunate the Board's plans to build a new school here have been delayed by well over a year, but that is water under the bridge now. Wishing otherwise won't alter reali- ty. The Board has no choice but to move quickly to find another site and get that new school built and open for the young students of this community. It was suggested that one option the Board might pursue is to expropriate the entire 22 acre Fairgrounds site, take the seven acres - it needs for a school and sell the rest as building lots to re-coup its costs. That would not be a wise move. It would force Scugog Township which owns that 22 acres, to jump into the fray and oppose the ex- propriation. The legal fees would be astronomical and the Township would demand adequate compensation. It would be a nasty fight that would further split the community and result in a no-win situation for \ A \ N \ "IF YOU'RE ANYTHING LIKE YER OL' MAN, SON, YOU LL PROBABLY NEVER AMOUNT 70 Muck everyone concerned. Port Perry (Qa EE | 235 QUEEN STREET - PORT PERRY, ONTARIO Phone 985-7383 PO Box90 LOB INO J. PETER HVIDSTEN Member of the Publisher Canadian Commfuhuty Newspaper Association ba v Intario Community Newspaper Association Advertisin nag Ing L rtis 8 Ma er Published every Tuesday by the Port Perry Star Co Ltd Port Perry Ontario J.B. McCLELLAND Editor Authorized as second class mati by the Post Ottice Department Ottawa. and for cash CATHY OLLIFFE payment of postage in cash News & Features Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Lo CLAN COmy -- rant Uno - (Qa Yeo o% i [A Areey ayy 08 Subscription Rate In Canada $20.00 per year Elsewhere $60 00 per year Single Copy 50 COPYRIGHT -- All layout and composition of advertisements produced by the adver tising department of the Port Perry Star Company Limited are protected under copyright and may not be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher Chatterbox by Cathy Olliffe --+--~GHOST TOWNS In the last week of August, I am going hun- ting for ghost towns. That's my vacation for the year, one week of driving, hiking, portaging, and rail riding through the backwash of northern Ontario, searching for the remains of shattered dreams. And while most people, like editor John B., (who is right now, even as we speak, lounging around at a cottage with a cold one in his hand), like to use their vacation for relaxing, I'm gear- ing up for what could be the adventure of my lifetime. Not that I'm going alone. Heavens, no. You wouldn't catch me camping alone in a ghost town in the middle of the night. -I'm going with my husband, Doug, and one of our best:pals, Mark from Markham, and we're leaving the minute we get off work on the second last Friday of August. It seems like eons away. I can absolutely not wait. Just the thought of exploring these abandon- ed streets, dilapidated homes and boarded up shops sends my pulse racing. The whole idea for our trip came from two books, written by Toronto geographer and historian Ron Brown. Called Ghost Towns of On- tario, Volume I and II, they feature brief descrip- tions and photographs of some of the best ghost towns in our province. If you think there aren't any ghost towns in Ontario, you're absolutely wrong. Canada's richest province, bursting to the seams with money, apartment buildings, and people, is home to a greater variety of ghost towns than any other province. Where there is lush farmland, there were once crossroad hamlets serving horse and buggy travellers, with inns, general stores, and thriving grist mills. Where pavement covers city streets, once stood bustling villages on the banks of flowing rivers. Where the railways of northern Ontario first . pushed through thick forests, appeared stations used for loading timber, and entire towns for 'lumbermen to live. 'And where men of the 18th and 19th century discovered gold and silver, grew mining towns - with all the rowdy history of the Yukon. When cars replaced horse and buggies, the crossroad hamlets lost their reason for existance, and inns locked their doors. When greedy lumber companies stripped the province of its trees, the lumber towns disappeared. When the gold and silver mines tapped out, so did the towns which depended on them. And now, in many cases, there is nothing left to these towns but memories. But in other cases, due to their remoteness / @® mostly, entire towns still stand, empty and unus- ed, slowing giving way to the ravages of wind, snow, rain and time itself. Ron Brown's books are full of these towns, in every corner of the province, including this area. North of Sunderland lies the partial ghost town of Vroomanton. Stephen's Gulch, a vanish- ed village, is north of Bowmanville. Several ghost - towns hover near Brougham, including the vanished village of Howell's Hollow, and the par- tial ghost towns of Glen Major and Glasgow. On Highway 12, north of Greenbank, lies the vanish- ed village of Derryville. And across the lake from Caesarea is Port Hoover. According to Ron Brown's atlas to ghost towns, "In days of steam it had docks, mills, stores and hotels. Now a quiet cottage community." On Canada Day, Mark, Angie Kroonenberg and I toured another area ghost town, called Mount Horeb, just north of Bethany. According to the book, Mount Horab was "'A one time crossroads village,"' and still has several abandoned structures. Eagerly, we travelled the 20 minutes or so to the site, and were rewarded with several in- teresting bits of history, including an old log house which looked as though it hadn't been: lived in-. §-- since before the days of electricity. The short trip spawned our interest in explor- ing bigger and better ghost towns, all to be found in northern Ontario. Ninety-five miles west of Thunder Bay, for ex- ample, lies Burchell Lake, one of Ontario's best ghost towns. In Volume Two, Ron Brown writes, '"'Although the trailers are gone, the bunkhouses dismantled and the store demolished, much of the town remains intact. The bungalows still line the curving streets, their yards overgrown. Rusting fire hydrants hide in tall grass, while beside the school young trees push through the mesh of the baseball cage. : '""At the end of Highway 802, at the entrance to town, is a 1950's style "BA" gas station. Its win- dows are broken and its white paint peeling, it ap- rs to have been abandoned in a hurry for cans of oil still line its shelves. Nevertheless, Burchell Lake has suffered little vandalism and is one of the best preserved of Ontario's recent ghost towns." From the early part of the 1900's, it produced tonnes of copper, but in 1966 a repressed market forced the copper mine to close, and the townsfolk to leave. Now Burchell Lake stands empty, waiting for people like myself to photograph its haunting remains. And while Ron Brown considers Burchell Lake one of the best ghost towns of Ontario (we certainly plan to visit), I think the best in the pro- (Turn to page ©' RL - IETS ES f TE 8 I.