Steamboating on Lake Simcoe

Photo by Alan L Brown - Posted June, 2004

Plaque Location

The County of Simcoe
The City of Barrie
Near the breakwater at the west end of a park
on Lakeshore Drive, just west of Mulcaster Street

Coordinates: N 44 22.725 W 79 41.336

Plaque Text

The "Sir John Colborne", launched in 1832, was the first of many steamboats on Lake Simcoe. A link in the land-water transportation route connecting the Upper and Lower Great Lakes, steamboats opened lands around Lake Simcoe to settlement. They carried passengers, freight and mail to developing ports and catered to tourists and excursionists as the region prospered. Steam tugs were used by the lumber trade to tow log booms across the lake. By 1887, railways encircled the lake and thereafter monopolized freight and passenger traffic. Steamboats continued to run pleasure cruises until the popularity of private motorboats brought Lake Simcoe's steam era to an end in the 1920s.

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