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There was little need of shipping in the first years of
settlement as each homestead was self contained. One of the
earliest references to shipping was a story of Trueman
Proctor taking a raft of squared timber from Gosport to
Quebec City in 1844. There is a story that a 16 year old
Cornelius Hyucke took a row boat from Kingston to York with
a supply of pork for the soldiers during the 1812 war and
was in need of the above provisions.
When the Proctor House Museum was being restored in 1972,
a day journal was found in the Attic. From this record we
learn that John E. Proctor was fitting out a ship named the
Mayflower in 1853. There has been no later reference to a
ship by this name; but one named the E.R.C. Proctor comes
into the records. It is possible that John renamed the
Mayflower, after his first born son called Edward, Russell,
Chamberlain, Proctor. A verbal story of this ship has been
verbally handed down by the Proctor family.
In 1916 Charlie Proctor walked the beach every day after
working at the bank, searching for the body of his young
brother Hugh who had drowned. While on the beach John
Proctor age 5 was with his father, and asked what the big
pile of timber half buried was from.
Charles answered him saying they were the ribs of the
R.R.C. Proctor that had been wrecked along with 4 others
during the great storm of 1890. Many nautical stories are
told of Schooners being wrecked on the Great Lakes. Some of
their names are the Emerald lost in 1903, no one was saved.
The Belle Sheridan was wrecked near Wellers Bay after
failing to find a safe anchorage at Brighton.
John E. Proctor made history in the shipping business.
After the great boom of the square timber export during
the Crimea War of 1853 came the hops and barley boom from
1860 to 1890 when the McKinley Treaty put up very high
tarriffs to the U.S.A.
The earliest steam ships and railway locomotives used
cord wood for fuel but later used coal. Stories of huge
piles of coal were stored at Gosport on the site of the
present baseball diamond. The next boom was the dairy
industry and there were several farmers in the area that had
contracts to supply milk to Toronto. A milk train left
Belleville every morning and stopped at Smithfield at 7 am.
The farmers used eight gallon cans to ship the milk from the
train stations. It was during World War I that the canning
factory boom started and thrived in business until World War
II. Train loads of canned goods were shipped from Brighton
during canning season.
Later the trains gave way to the transport business.
Canadian Canners produced large vats of cider vinegar, which
was shipped by tanker trucks to the city. Through the first
40 years of this century apples were packed in barrels and
shipped to the overseas market, they left Brighton by
freight railway cars.
The Quick family and others remember when Grant Quick
made regular trips to the C.N.R. every evening with boxes
packed full of fish in ice, to be sent off to the city and
to destinations as far as Chicago and New York. Another
local fruit farmer Billie West also made regular trips in
his democrat pulled by a bronco he named after the famous
Standardbred Dan Patch, his several tons of fruit were
rushed off quickly on the evening C.N.R. Express. Grant
Quick's Pavilion at Presqu'ile was a popular spot and kept
Grant very busy during depression years meeting the East
bound express and received quantities of ice cream. Ice
cream cones were 5¢ at this time.
Modern boom in shipping seems to be more imports than
exports. The busy exports seem to have stopped during these
last few years. Large tankers can be seen late nights or
early mornings delivering gasoline to the local outlets and
other large transports are also around early delivering food
to the local stores.
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