Lincoln's location between the southern shore of Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment provides for a moderate climate with mild winters. The area is known in Canada for its orchards, vineyards, wineries and restaurants that feature local produce and wines. Fruit crops grown in Lincoln include cherries, peaches, apples and pears, and during the summer attract many tourists from all over Ontario, particularly Toronto. Since November 2017, the town has been served by the "uLinc" bus network, which runs three routes. GO Transit also serves the town.[2]
Communities
The township comprises the communities of Beamsville, Campden, Jordan, Jordan Station, Rockway, Tintern, Vineland and Vineland Station.
History
Lincoln's earliest known inhabitants was the Neutral Confederacy, also called the Attawandaron. Archaeologists from the Royal Ontario Museum found evidence of a Neutral encampment with a long house about two kilometers east of Beamsville, on Cave Springs Farm. Until vandals destroyed them about 30 years ago, there were a number of Indigenous faces carved in stone high on the Escarpment wall nearby.
The Neutrals were decimated by the Iroquois in 1653. When the first European settlers arrived in 1777, there were only a few semi-migrant native people living in the caves near Beamsville.
The earliest European settlers were ex-Butler's Rangers who had fought on the side of Britain in the American Revolution. United Empire Loyalist Jacob Beam began what is now the town of Beamsville in 1788. Both of his homes the original one located on The Thirty (creek) and the one near downtown Beamsville are still intact today. Senator William Gibson is another key figure in the history of Beamsville. His mansion is now the Girls' Dorm at Great Lakes Christian College.[3] Beamsville was also home to the annual Lincoln County Agricultural Fair, usually held on or around the first weekend of September. This fair was very well known fair throughout the area, and attracted thousands of people every year since its inception in 1857. The Fair is no longer held in Beamsville since the grounds were sold to become a housing development.
In 1898, hockey player William Fairbrother, in the town of Beamsville, was the first to make use of a hockey net. The town was also home to the first Japanese-Canadian home for the aged in 1967.[3]
Mennonites (Pennsylvania Dutch) walking north from the United States in 1799 founded the villages of Jordan and Vineland. An Ontario Historical Plaque was erected at the Jordan Museum by the province to commemorate the first Mennonite Settlement's role in Ontario's heritage.[4] The First Mennonite Church in Vineland, adjacent to the cemetery at the corner of Regional Road 81 (former Highway 8) and Martin Road, organized in 1801, is the oldest Mennonite congregation in Canada.[5]
Beamsville market stall at railway
Good hunting and fishing as well as excellent soil and waterways attracted these early settlers. Agriculture flourished, and tanneries, grist mills, saw mills and woollen mills sprang up in Glen Elgin (now known as Ball's Falls), Tintern, St. Mary's, called Jordan after 1840, Rockway, The Thirty (now vanished) and Beamsville.
With a large natural harbour at the mouth of Twenty Creek, Jordan and Jordan Station became busy shipping centres for the export of logs for masts, tan bark, hides, ashes used in industrial centres for the manufacture of soap, as well as grain, flour, fruit and fruit products. A small ship building industry existed for a time on the banks of the Twenty.
Today, Lincoln is a leading area for tender fruit production and grape growing. Its wines are achieving international recognition and winning awards for quality. "Greenhouse Friendly" Lincoln also has the largest concentration of greenhouse operators in Canada.
In its earliest days what is now Lincoln was regarded, and governed, as an extension of the province of Quebec, but in 1791 the Canada Bill placed it in English Upper Canada. Colonel John Graves Simcoe, first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, divided the province into 19 counties. He named Lincoln County after its English counterpart, and each of its 12 townships, including Clinton and Louth, after towns in Lincolnshire, England.
The first township councils, formed in 1793, had no legislative authority. In response to the Rebellion of 1837, the 1849 Municipal Act gave local councils much more power to deal with local matters.
The Town of Lincoln came into existence on January 1, 1970, a municipal corporation created by the Legislature of Ontario through the amalgamation of the Town of Beamsville, the Township of Clinton, and approximately half the Township of Louth. Through a vote of citizens, "Lincoln" was chosen to be its name.[3]
People
The town is home to numerous Dutch and United Empire Loyalist families, as evidenced by the large number of Dutch Reformed and Anglican churches in the area. Other ethnic groups include Italians - one family which founded the Commisso's Food Markets supermarket chain - Germans, East Asians, and Indians.
Katherine "Kay" McKeever, also known as the "Owl Lady of Canada," spent over forty years saving, rehabilitating, and breeding owls in Lincoln. In 1965, McKeever rescued her first owl, leading to her lifelong passion of rescuing and understanding owls. In the 1970s, Mckeever and her husband Larry founded The Owl Rehabilitation and Research Foundation, an Ontario non-profit corporation dedicated to helping injured owls. In 1994, the Foundation was re-incorporated as a Canadian non-profit corporation and renamed The Owl Foundation.[6] The Foundation's facility, located in Vineland, has 26 acres of property and can host up to fifty owls. The facility usually handles between 100 and 150 injured owls each year. McKeever is recognized as one of the world's foremost experts in owl behavior. She has written and published a number of books, has two honorary doctorates, is a member of the Order of Canada, and has received numerous wildlife and volunteer awards.[7]
The band Rush practised in Beamsville in their earlier days. Drummer Neil Peart was raised in nearby Port Dalhousie.
Industry
The region is in the heart of Ontario's wine country and contributes greatly to the wine industry in the Niagara Peninsula. Many wineries from the area have taken home top awards, including Grape King at the Niagara Grape & Wine Festival, as well as international awards. Wineries in Lincoln include Malivoire, London Born Wines, Mike Weir Winery, Thomas and Vaughan, Thirty Bench, Angel's Gate, Peninsula Ridge, Cave Spring Cellars, Daniel Lenko Winery, Hidden Bench, Magnotta, Mountain Road Winery, Legends Estates, Crown Bench, Megalomaniac, Featherstone, Tawse, Vineland Estates, Honsberger Estate and Corner Stone.
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Lincoln had a population of 25,719 living in 9,555 of its 9,826 total private dwellings, a change of 8.1% from its 2016 population of 23,787. With a land area of 162.74km2 (62.83sqmi), it had a population density of 158.0/km2 (409.3/sqmi) in 2021.[11]
Culture
The Lincoln Public Library has branches in Beamsville and Vineland. The Fleming Branch in Beamsville, founded in 1852, had been located in the old Clinton-Louth town hall built in the mid-19th century. The upper floor of the building has been used by Freemasons for over a century. In June 2014, the Fleming Branch was relocated to the new community complex at 5020 Serena Drive.[12] The Moses F. Rittenhouse Branch is located in Vineland.
Vineland is host to a large craft fair that takes place over a period of four days on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Craft stalls are set up on the main street, Victoria Avenue, and at the Ball's Falls Conservation Area. This festival also extends into the ball park in Jordan.
St. Catharines is the most populous city in Canada's Niagara Region, the eighth largest urban area in the province of Ontario. As of 2017, St. Catharines has an area of 96.13 square kilometres (37.12 sq mi) and 140,370 residents. It lies in Southern Ontario, 51 kilometres (32 mi) south of Toronto across Lake Ontario, and is 19 kilometres (12 mi) inland from the international boundary with the United States along the Niagara River. It is the northern entrance of the Welland Canal. Residents of St. Catharines are known as St. Catharinites. St. Catharines carries the official nickname "The Garden City" due to its 1,000 acres (4 km2) of parks, gardens, and trails.
Icewine is a type of dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, allowing for a more concentrated grape juice to develop. The grapes' must is then pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a smaller amount of more concentrated, very sweet juice. With icewines, the freezing happens before the fermentation, not afterwards. Unlike the grapes from which other dessert wines are made, such as Sauternes, Tokaji, or Trockenbeerenauslese, icewine grapes should not be affected by Botrytis cinerea or noble rot, at least not to any great degree. Only healthy grapes keep in good shape until the opportunity arises for an icewine harvest, which in extreme cases can occur after the New Year, on a northern hemisphere calendar. This gives icewine its characteristic refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity. When the grapes are free of Botrytis, they are said to come in "clean". This results in a very complex and sweet wine. Much icewine is made from the grapes Riesling, Vidal, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, but there is also icewine made from Shiraz, Merlot, Sangiovese and others.
The Niagara Peninsula is an area of land lying between the southwestern shore of Lake Ontario and the northeastern shore of Lake Erie, in Ontario, Canada. Technically an isthmus rather than a peninsula, it stretches from the Niagara River in the east to Hamilton, Ontario, in the west. The peninsula is located in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario, and has a population of roughly 1,000,000 residents. The region directly across the Niagara River and Lake Erie in New York State is known as the Niagara Frontier.
The Regional Municipality of Niagara, also colloquially known as the Niagara Region or Region of Niagara, is a regional municipality comprising twelve municipalities of Southern Ontario, Canada. The regional seat is in Thorold. It is the southern end of the Golden Horseshoe, the largest megalopolis in Canada.
Gamay is a purple-colored grape variety used to make red wines, most notably grown in Beaujolais and in the Loire Valley around Tours. Its full name is Gamay Noir à Jus Blanc. It is a very old cultivar, mentioned as long ago as the 15th century. It has been often cultivated because it makes for abundant production; however, it can produce wines of distinction when planted on acidic soils, which help to soften the grape's naturally high acidity.
Lincoln and Niagara was a federal electoral district represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1883 to 1904. It was located in the province of Ontario. This riding was created from parts of Lincoln and Niagara ridings.
Beamsville is a community that is part of the town of Lincoln, Ontario, Canada. It is located along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and lies within the fruit belt of the Niagara Peninsula. It contains century-old brick buildings, an old-fashioned downtown area with barbershops, women's dress shops, a bakery, a print shop, restaurants, banks, and other businesses, and plenty of orchards and vineyards.
Vintners Quality Alliance, or VQA, is a regulatory and appellation system which guarantees the high quality and authenticity of origin for Canadian wines made under that system in British Columbia and Ontario. It is similar to regulatory systems in France (AOC), Spain (DO), Italy (DOC), and Germany (QmP). The VQA system allows for sub-appellations, by which the grapes for wines are sourced from extremely specific geographical locations with different soil and climate. This is in accordance with the concept of terroir.
Vineland is an unincorporated community within the Town of Lincoln in Niagara Region. Located in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is bordered by the Twenty Mile Creek and Jordan to the east, Lake Ontario to the north, Beamsville to the west and Pelham to the south.
Canadian wine is wine produced in Canada. Ontario and British Columbia are the two largest wine-producing provinces in Canada, with two-thirds of the Canada's vineyard acreage situated in Ontario. However, wine producing regions are also present in other provinces, including Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Downtown St. Catharines is the central business district of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. It is defined by the city as the area between Highway 406 on the west and south, Geneva Street on the east until it reaches St. Paul Street then Welland Avenue north until it meets Niagara Street.
Jordan is a community located on the eastern edge of the Town of Lincoln, in the Niagara Region. Jordan is bordered by the Twenty Mile Creek and Vineland to the west, Lake Ontario to the north, St. Catharines to the east, and Pelham to the south. Lying roughly 100 km from Toronto and 65 km from Buffalo by road, Jordan is located along a major transportation corridor between Canada and the United States. In January 2014, Jordan was brought to international attention when Al-Qaeda-directed terrorists were arrested for plotting to derail a passenger train traveling from Toronto to New York on a rail-bridge crossing the Jordan Harbour.
Ontario wine is Canadian wine produced in the province of Ontario. The province has three official wine-growing regions, the Niagara Peninsula, the north shore of Lake Erie, and Prince Edward County, although wineries also exist in other regions in Ontario. Approximately two-thirds of Canada's vineyard acreage is situated in Ontario, with over 150 vineyards spread across 6,900 hectares. As a result, the province is the country's largest producer of wine, accounting for 62 per cent of Canadian wine production, and 68 per cent of all Canadian wine exports.
The Short Hills Bench is a sub-appellation of the Niagara Peninsula.
Beamsville District Secondary School was a secondary school in Beamsville, Ontario, Canada and was operated by the District School Board of Niagara (DSBN).
Henry of Pelham Family Estate Winery is a family owned, Ontario winery that released their first vintage in 1988. Brothers Paul, Matthew and Daniel Speck started planting vines in Niagara’s Short Hills Bench almost 40 years ago. Today, the St. Catharines winery Henry of Pelham features the historic buildings of the Speck family’s forefathers and a wine production facility.
Hernder Estate Wines is a Canadian winery located in Niagara Peninsula, Ontario.
Nova Scotia wine is Canadian wine produced in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia's wineries are primarily organized under the Wine Association of Nova Scotia, though not all wineries are members. The industry began in the late 1970s with the original Grand Pré Winery in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia.
L'Acadie blanc is a white Canadian wine grape variety that is a hybrid crossing of Cascade and Seyve-Villard 14-287. The grape was created in 1953 by grape breeder Ollie A. Bradt in Niagara, Ontario at the Vineland Horticultural Research Station which is now the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. Today the grape is widely planted in Nova Scotia with some plantings in Quebec and Ontario. Some wine writers, including those at Appellation America, consider L'Acadie blanc as "Nova Scotia’s equivalent to Chardonnay".
William Fairbrother was a Canadian ice hockey player who is credited with inventing the ice hockey net in the 1890s. During the 1880s, Fairbrother played for Beamsville, Ontario's Men's Hockey team. At first, two poles or two rocks served as goals, and an official would watch to see if a puck passed through the goal. However, disputes arose over goals and biased officiating. Then, Fairbrother, who played as a goaltender, got a net from a local fisherman and strung it from the poles. Players were immediately more satisfied with the new system.
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