Haileybury, The Hardy Boys and the Devil’s Rock – Lake Temiskaming and the Tri-Town Area (Part 2)
Many young men will surely remember the exploits of brothers Frank and Joe Hardy better known of the Hardy Boys. Although they are but simple stories written during the 1920’s to the 1940’s they still resonate with readers today (including a much younger version of this writer) for their take on boyhood masculinity as well as their sense of adventure and mystery. The intrepid duo was the creation of a certain Franklin W. Dixon Edward, a renamed created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the created of the Nancy Drew the female equivalent to the boys mystery novels. The pen name was assigned to many writers working for the syndicate over the years including, most prominently associated with author Leslie McFarlane. This tangent leads us back to Haileybury itself. A native of Carleton Place, Leslie spent his summers growing up absorbing the wild untamed nature, and the idyllic town to help forge his stories. For those of you who have read the stories you may recognize the city here, immortalized and frozen in time, and to be honest not much has changed.
Today New Liskeard and Haileybury have merged form the Municipality of Temiskaming Shores, while nearby Cobalt has not entered into this confederation. Yet historically these three cities were part of the powerful Tri-Town area, even being linked by a streetcar system. As such when one visits Haileybury, they should include the other two towns. Thus this post should be read in conjunction with my posts on:
New Liskeard, Pete’s Dam and Triangle Rock – Lake Temiskaming and the Tri-Town Area (Part 1)
Cobalt – Lake Temiskaming and the Tri-Town Area (Part 3)
Table of Contents
Welcome to Haileybury
I first arrived in Haileybury from the nearby town of New Liskeard to the north. The Lakefront drive along the road is magnificent and offers several stopoffs with views of lake, giving you an idea of the enormity of the body of water. As you take this road into town millionaires, you will be able to take in Millionaires Row where Haileybury’s leading figures such as Lumber and Mining barons built their homes with a view of the lake. One of these homes, has been turned into a fancy hotel called Les Suites des Presidents (The President’s Suites).
For those of you who read the Hardy Boys novels, Haileybury is the fictional town of Bayport, a place that has not changed much since the 1950’s and will give you a good indication of what kind of place the author lived in during his time here!
Finally Lakeshore Road will reach the town’s Main Street. The small section before it does is home to many of the towns shops, restaurants and services. Among the most recognizable business are L’Autochtone bar and the Wiskeyjack distillety.
Pick up a growler or two from Wiskey Jack if you are not staying in town. If you are staying I recommend going out in the evening to l’Autochtone.
At the intersection with Main Street you will find a beautiful sculpture of a trumpeter above the doorway.
Just east of this intersection, down the hill, you will find the Haileybury beach and its waterside.
If you continue south you will find one of Haileybudy’s finest structures, the stone church of the Paroisse Sainte Croix.
Passing by the beautiful church you will come across a relic of modern history, the abandoned shell of the Peter Grant Mansion, the largest of its kind in Canada. Built for a lumber mogul, the decaying structure was meant to serve as a display room / corporate office and home to its founder. The lumber industry crumbled, along with the financing for the house. Walk along the property to find a hole in the fence and go exploring on the inside, or pull into the massive marina to see where Peter would have parked his yachts. The doors are unlocked and are popular with urban explorers. Sadly this monstrosity of a house does not fit the village aesthetics or feel and I do understand the locals resentment towards it.
Finally, if you continue west up the hill, you will be on Main Street, the heart of the town.
On this street you will find a park with a war Cenotaph and a statue of Charles Cobbold Farr, the founder of Haileybury. Having settled here in 1889 he quickly tried to attract more men with leaflets advertising “The Lake Temiskamingue District”. It would later become incorporated as a town in 1904, as a bedroom community for the nearby town of Cobalt. You see two developments would help the town expand, the first being the extension of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway to the area in the early 1900s, and the subsequent discovery massive silver deposits in the town of Cobalt in 1903. Like Kirkland Lake, Cobalt produced a hardy race of men and in 1909, the Haileybury Hockey Club was conceived. An early NHA team (National Hockey Association – Later would merge to become the NHL) they were later moved to Montreal and become the famed Montreal Canadiens.
Behind the park you will find an old heritage fire hall.
Facing the park you will find the Courthouse. In 1912, Haileybury became the judicial seat for the Temiskaming Region, a title it has yet to relinquish, making it a center for government services.
The beautiful building is likely the most beautiful in the region and offer a fantastic view of the lake and the town from its elevated position on the road.
If you drive towards the town of Cobalt, you will find one of Haileybury’s most intresting attractions, the Haileybury heritage museum. On display you will find several items including an old tugboat, one of the fleet of fifty that once called the lake home. The ship’s name M.V Beauchene. The tug had a long laundry list of industrial activities under its belt during its illustrious career ranging from picking up errand logs to delivery of log booms to mills.
One of the other items is a streetcar. During the Great Fire of 1922, Haileybury suffered the worst damage of the Tri-Towns, losing nearly ninety percent of its structures. Only only Millionaire’s Row and a few other structures remained intact and 3500 people were left homeless. To respond to this crisis, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC),send many old train cars to serve as temporary shelters during reconstruction.
The last attraction in Haileybury is an academic one, the local college. While driving there you will encounter several beautiful buildings.
The masonry building was founded in 1912 as the School of Mines and is one of the leading mining institutes in Canada.
Its main attraction is its Rock Walk park, an giant outdoor display of minerals and other mining related exhibits. I admit that this may not be the kind of attraction that you will read all the signs at but it can be worth seeing if you have the time.
The Devil’s Rock
Made famous by the Hardy Boys novel, The House on the Cliff, The Devils Rock is the most impressive viewpoint in this corner of Ontario. Located just south of Haileybury, you will find a small parking lot and trailhead along Roadway 567. From here you can walk though the birch forest to the rock itself. The white barked trees make for a beautiful green cover as you move down deeper into the woods. The trail from parking lot A is only about two km to the rock and another two back. Alternatively a second connecting trail B can be taken.
When you finally reach the rock itself you will be privy to a fantastic view of lake Temiskaming. This same view was one encounter by the original Ojibwe people, who attributed the precipice with a legend about “rock demons,” also known as Memequayshowak.
One day the local Ojibwe people surprised several strange people living in the rock’s crevices. After capturing one of them, and his knife, they withdrew. One of the remaining “devil’s” retreated inside a deep crevice, and proceed to create a noise so fearsome that his captors threw back the stolen knife towards the opening of the crevice. Terrified the Objibwe assumed that this was the entrance to the underworld, thus the name Devil’s Rock took hold.
A fun fact (if you are into that sort of thing!) is that Ontario’s One-Horned Sasquatch has been spotted at the rock!
The cliffs themselves rise 91 meters (300 ft) above Lake Timiskaming. More impressively is that they extend nearly as far underwater as they do above ground, this the Devil’s Rock has a total a cliff face of nearly 180m (600 ft). This is something that surprised me. I had no clue that the lake was so deep, even reaching a maximum depth of 216m.
Be carefully around the edge, on a cross at the rock’s main viewpoint a sign had been placed with pictures of a local kid who had fallen from the viewpoint to his death.
For the Hardy Boy fans reading this post I have included the description of the rock found in the House on the Cliff story.
“The cliff jutted up out of very deep water and rose to a great height…The face of the steep rock was uncompromising. There seemed to be no foothold for man or beast. It was just an unscalable , craggy wall… There were rocks at the base of the cliff. One of them, black and sharp, like an ugly tooth, jutted out from the water almost immediately at the side of the boat…”
The House on the Cliff, pp. 118
Anyway! Enjoy your time at the Devils Rock and happy Sasquach hunting!
