Huron: Grand Bend to Southampton

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Orr gives equal weight to text and archival photos in conveying the
essence of life in the Lake Huron towns and villages from approximately
1850 to 1950. The book looks at the Ontario (eastern) shore of Lake
Huron, which includes the towns of Grand Bend, Bayfield, Goderich,
Kincardine, Port Elgin, and Southampton, among others.

Settlement, industries and commerce, harbors, lighthouses and fishing,
tourism, and interesting people and events form the structure for the
work. Throughout, the power of Huron, that attractive but treacherous
Great Lake, dominates. A chapter is devoted to the storm of 1913, which
accounted for at least 178 deaths and eight shipwrecks.

The same power that makes Lake Huron so deadly also generates lots of
white sand. The area is famous for its beaches and for the
turn-of-the-century hotels that developed to benefit from the influx of
tourists lured by the sand and the cool lake breezes.

The book is rich with detail and benefits from solid research. The
author’s love of the area shows. The lack of an index is its main
weakness, undermining its value to local-history collections throughout
the region.