Tweed, Ontario is a community on Stoco Lake and the only urban centre of the Municipality of Tweed in Hastings County, central-eastern Ontario, Canada. It had a population of 1,701 in the 2016 census. The principal thoroughfare is Highway 37.
Tweed, Ontario is a community on Stoco Lake and the only urban centre of the Municipality of Tweed in Hastings County, central-eastern Ontario, Canada. It had a population of 1,701 in the 2016 census. The principal thoroughfare is Highway 37.
Tweed was first settled in the 1830s, originally named Hungerford Mills, after the surrounding township of Hungerford. The settlement was renamed Tweed after the River Tweed in Scotland. The economic development of the community was enabled by lumbering and mining developments during the mid-19th century. Tweed became a service centre for area farmers. [1] It was incorporated as a Village in 1891.
In 1967, Tweed was the site of the first all-women municipal council in Canada. [1]
In 1998, Tweed was amalgamated with the Township of Hungerford and the Township of Elzevir & Grimsthorpe to form the Municipality of Tweed.
In 1996 the town made news when resident Presbyterian minister Larry Turner and Russel Moon applied for a CFL team, in an attempt to become the Green Bay of Canada. Had the attempt been successful, the team would have been known as the Tweed Muskies.
In 1989 the Ottawa branch of the Elvis Sighting Society declared Elvis was alive and well and living in Tweed. Since that time, an "Elvis is Alive" festival has been held in July every year. More recently Tweed and Elvis made the headlines when a reporter from the Toronto Sun came to investigate if there was truth to the rumours. The only evidence that remains now that Elvis may have ever been in the community is a very short road now called Elvis Lane. Oddly enough not far from the proposed site of the Tweed Muskies stadium.
Between 2007 and 2009, a series of crimes occurred in Tweed and neighbouring Cosy Cove including 2 sexual assaults, but mainly numerous thefts of women's undergarments and clothing. In February 2010 Jessica Lloyd of nearby Belleville was found dead in Tweed after Russell Williams led police to her body, confessing to her murder, as well as that of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, a military flight attendant stationed at CFB Trenton, but living in neighboring Brighton. Williams pleaded guilty to all charges on October 18, 2010.
The history of Tweed became entwined with the Canadian Pacific Railway when, in 1884, Canadian Pacific (through its indirectly managed subsidiary, the Ontario and Quebec Railway , or O&Q) constructed a line through the village of Tweed. This placed Tweed in between two junctions between the O&Q and other significant rail lines: the Central Ontario Railway (COR), which connected to the O&Q line at Bonarlaw to the west, and the Kingston and Pembroke Railway (K&P), which connected at Sharbot Lake to the east. This positioned the O&Q line as CP's east-west mainline connecting these Eastern Ontario locations with Toronto, and creating valuable connection points for freight brought in from the fully independent COR and K&R lines. In 1889, Tweed became a junction in its own right when the Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway (which would be reorganized under the Bay of Quinte Railway , or BQ, in 1881) was extended north to it. In a final push, BQ would extend their line another 20 miles (32 km) to Bannockburn in 1903, where it crossed the COR before terminating. [3]
Over the next hundred years, the historic short line railways were gradually assimilated into the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National rail conglomerates; CP managed the O&Q as an internal part of the company, and the O&Q itself laid essentially dormant, with the line being referred to internally as the Havelock Subdivision . Meanwhile, the COR was acquired by a succession of interests including the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) in 1911, which was nationalized in 1918 and merged into Canadian National in 1923; thereafter, the COR became CN's Maynooth Subdivision. After the K&P encountered financial difficulties, Canadian Pacific negotiated a lease for the entire company and line in 1912, which ended the K&P as a legal entity and turned it into CP's Kingston Subdivision (not to be confused with the CN Kingston Subdivision). Finally, the Bay of Quinte Railway also became a part of CN, but was gradually abandoned, starting with the Tweed to Bannockburn section in 1935, then the Tweed to Yarker section in 1941, thus ending Tweed's nearly 50-year history as a rail junction.
The problems with the O&Q came to a head in the early 1970s as CP began to quietly sell off the company's assets and pursue abandonment of sections of the line. In the midst of a $422 million lawsuit with the company's minority shareholders over the profits from sell-off of the company's assets, CP abandoned the section from Glen Tay to Tweed, thus making Tweed the end of the line. Legal proceedings at a provincial level stretched from 1977 to 1978, when the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that CP had acted illegally in its management of the company, including abandonment of sections of the line over several decades, and that CP had violated the terms of its lease, which required it to "efficiently work, maintain and keep in good order and repair, the said railway and the rolling stock and appurtances ... and all the property hereby demised." [4] Canadian Pacific continued the legal battle and, in 1987, won its appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. In the same year, it abandoned the Havelock to Tweed section, ending its hundred-year presence in the village of Tweed.
In the late 2010s, Via Rail began to promote the idea of high-frequency rail (HFR), which would potentially bring passenger rail service to Tweed again. Via's HFR plan is currently not finalized. [5]
Tweed is a municipality located in central-eastern Ontario, Canada, in Hastings County.
Lakeshore East is one of the seven commuter rail lines of GO Transit in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Union Station in Toronto to Oshawa GO in Durham Region. Buses from Oshawa connect to communities further east in Newcastle, Bowmanville and Peterborough.
The Ontario and Quebec Railway (O&Q) was a railway located in southern and eastern Ontario, Canada. It was initially chartered in March 1881 by managers of the Canadian Pacific Railway to run between Toronto and Perth, where it would connect, via a short branch line, to the CPR-controlled Brockville and Ottawa Railway. Construction began in 1882, and the line was completed in August 1884.
The Kingston railway station is an inter-city passenger rail station in Cataraqui, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It is served by Via Rail trains running from Toronto to Ottawa or Montreal, along the Corridor route. It is located on John Counter Boulevard, northeast of Princess Street and northwest of downtown Kingston.
Napanee station in Napanee, Ontario, Canada is served by Via Rail trains running from Toronto to Ottawa. The 1856 limestone railway station was an unstaffed but heated shelter with telephones and washrooms, which would open at least half an hour before a train arrives. The platform is wheelchair-accessible. As of February 2023, the shelter was locked.
Harrowsmith is a community in South Frontenac, Ontario, Canada. Located north of Kingston, it was once noted for the cheddar cheese produced by the Harrowsmith Cheese Factory. As a farming village in an area resettled by many back-to-the-land emigrants from urban areas in the 1960s–1980s, the village gave its name to the country living magazine Harrowsmith.
The Kingston and Pembroke Railway (K&P) was a Canadian railway that operated in eastern Ontario. The railway was seen as a business opportunity which would support the lumber and mining industries, as well as the agricultural economy in eastern Ontario.
The Kawartha Lakes Railway was a Canadian rail line. It was created in 1996 to assume the operations of the Havelock and Nephton Subdivisions of the Canadian Pacific Railway which serve the Peterborough, Ontario area.
The Ontario Southland Railway, Inc. is an independently held short line operator. The company was founded in 1992 to purchase 27 kilometres (17 mi) of track between Tillsonburg and Ingersoll, Ontario from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). In 2009, a second line was added, as 51 kilometres (32 mi) of CPR track from Woodstock to St. Thomas, Ontario were integrated into the system. In 2015, Ontario Southland began leasing the ex-Canadian National Cayuga Subdivision between St. Thomas and Delhi, Ontario, which had been abandoned by its former shortline operator the St. Thomas and Eastern Railway in 2013.
Canadian National Railway's Kingston Subdivision, or Kingston Sub for short, is a major railway line connecting Toronto with Montreal that carries the majority of CN traffic between these points. The line was originally the main trunk for the Grand Trunk Railway between these cities, although there has been some realignment of the route between these cities. The majority of the Kingston Sub runs close to the northern bank of Lake Ontario and the Saint Lawrence River.
The Brockville and Ottawa Railway (B&O) was an early railway in Upper Canada, today's Ontario. It ran north from the town of Brockville on the Saint Lawrence River to Sand Point on the Ottawa River. It was built primarily to serve the timber trade on the Ottawa Valley, shortcutting routes that led into the city of Ottawa, further downstream. The first railway tunnel in Canada, the Brockville Tunnel, was dug in order to allow the B&O to reach the port lands on the south side of the city, which sits on a bluff.
The Central Ontario Railway (COR) was a former railway that ran north from Trenton, Ontario to service a number of towns, mines, and sawmills. Originally formed as the Prince Edward County Railway in 1879, it ran between Picton and Trenton, where it connected with the Grand Trunk Railway that ran between Montreal and Toronto. After being purchased by a group of investors and receiving a new charter to build northward, the company was renamed the Central Ontario Railway in 1882, and it started building towards the gold fields at Eldorado and newly discovered iron fields in Coe Hill.
The Georgian Bay and Seaboard Railway (GB&S) was a former short-line railway in Ontario, Canada, owned and operated by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The first sections opened in 1908, and the entire 140 kilometres (87 mi) route was fully completed in 1912.
The Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario, a rail museum in a former CNoR station, stands on the abandoned right-of-way of a Canadian Northern Railway line which once led southwest toward Napanee. Established 1985 as the Smiths Falls Railway Museum, the RMEO works to preserve the 1913 Canadian Northern (CNoR) station and a collection of historic rolling stock, equipment and railway memorabilia.
The Bay of Quinte Railway was a short-line railway in eastern Ontario, Canada. It was formed as the Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway (NT&QR), chartered in 1878 by Edward Rathbun and Alexander Campbell, with plans to run from Napanee through Renfrew County and on to the Ottawa Valley. Lacking funding from the governments, development never began.
The Irondale, Bancroft and Ottawa Railway (IB&O) was a short line railway in Central Ontario, Canada. The line was originally opened in 1878 as the Myles Branch Tramway, a horse-drawn wagonway connecting the Snowdon Iron Mine to the Victoria Railway a few miles away. The line was taken over by a group looking to build a northern extension of the Toronto and Nipissing Railway (T&N) as the Toronto and Nipissing Eastern Extension Railway. This extension was never built; instead, the company rechartered as the IB&O and used the Tramway as the basis for a new line with the ultimate aim to connect Orillia to the Ottawa area.
The Havelock railway station is a former Canadian Pacific Railway station in Havelock, Ontario. It is recognized as a Designated Heritage Railway Station. The station is located at mileage 93.70 of the Canadian Pacific's Havelock Subdivision.
The Glengarry and Stormont Railway (G&SR) was a short line railway running from the town of Cornwall in eastern Ontario to connect to the Canadian Pacific Railway's (CP) Ontario and Quebec Railway (O&Q) mainline just inside the Quebec border, a total distance of about 45 kilometres (28 mi). The name refers to the counties it passed through, today amalgamated as Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry.
The Canadian National Railway (CN) Bala Subdivision is a major railway line in Ontario, Canada. It runs between the provincial capital of Toronto in Southern Ontario and Capreol in Northern Ontario, where the line continues as the Ruel Subdivision. It forms part of CN's transcontinental mainline between Southern Ontario and Western Canada.
The Canadian National Railway Alderdale Subdivision was a railway line in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It originally opened in 1915 as a part of the Canadian Northern Railway's transcontinental mainline. It connected Brent in the east with Capreol in the west. At Capreol it formed the eastern component of an east-west-south wye junction. The line's divisional point was at Alderdale.
