HASKIN'S POINT
For over two centuries, Haskin’s Point has been the scene of the ‘summer action’ at Seeley’s Bay. All Rideau Canal boat traffic passes within a few feet of its shoreline. Located at the end of a peninsula forming the south shore of Seeley’s Bay, Haskin’s Point is an outcropping of Canadian Shield rock known as the Frontenac Arch. The ‘Point’, as it is known to locals who favour it as a swimming spot, marks the entrance to Little Cranberry Lake to the south of Seeley’s Bay with Broad’s Bay to the southeast. Local legend insists that from the mid-1820s through canal construction, a trading post (in the form of a tepee) was available here for itinerant paddlers. The legend also holds that the trading post was operated by ‘Granny (Ann) Seeley’, one of the first settlers living at the Seeley’s Bay site. |
HISTORY OF THE TIPI IN CENTENNIAL PARK
The name Seeley’s Bay comes from Ann Seeley who was the owner and occupant of Lot 4, on the 8th Concession of Leeds, when the Rideau Canal was completed and the bay flooded. Ann was the second wife of Justus Seeley who was an innkeeper from Elizabethtown Township. Justus’s son, John, who lost an arm in the Battle of Lundy’s Lane during the War of 1812, had obtained title to Lot 4 in the eighth concession of Leeds, as heir of his mother, Matilda Read, to whom it was originally granted. |
BROAD'S BAY
The story of Broad’s Bay is one of a dramatic transformation of the natural environment engineered by human workmanship. Visitors from paddlers to cross-country skiers will appreciate the efforts of Lieutenant-Colonel John By’s Royal Engineers and the Irish workmen who turned a stinking bog into a beautiful, rural village landscape with public water access – surrounded by loon calls, the splash of beaver tails and rising fish. A Rideau canal boat trip through the main channel of Little Cranberry Lake, or the view south-west from Haskin’s Point, reveals Broad’s Bay, named after George Broad whose family had established a home at the village site by 1840. This wide-mouthed, pristine bay is now a haven for anglers and wildlife alike. |