History of Torrance Wood Township

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The following excerpt was taken from, "Muskoka, Past and Present", written by Geraldine Coombe published in 1976 by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited. The book is no longer in print, but can be found at your public library or through inter-library loan.

The story of the first settlers around today's village of Torrance in Wood Township was told in The Early History of Torrance, a booklet by Mrs. G. R. Jestin, dated December 1938.

The township was named after the Hon. Edmund Burk Wood, Provincial Treasurer of Ontario (1867 -71) in J. Sandfield Macdonald's government. In 1867, at the time of Confederation, he was elected to the Canadian House of Commons. He had only one arm and was known by the nickname "Big Thunder" because of his powerful voice and roaring speeches full of references to scripture, poetry and the words of the famous orators before him. At the time of the "Pacific Scandal" over the great railway which was to join British Columbia on the west with the Maritime provinces on the east, E. B. Wood entered loudly into the fray, which led to the defeat of Sir John A. Macdonald's government. Subsequently he was appointed Chief justice of Manitoba in 1874, and held this post until his death at Winnipeg in 1882.

Wood township was opened for settlement in 1869, and Mrs. Jestin tells about three men from Eramosa (a village near Guelph in southern Ontario) who travelled to Muskoka that summer to investigate the government offer of free land. The hardware merchant, William Torrance, with two farmers, Joseph Coulter and George Jestin, took the train to Orillia and then a stagecoach to Gravenhurst. From Gravenhurst the steamer Wenonah took them part way up Lake Muskoka and they disembarked on the west shore. The country was rough and rocky, full of lakes and streams, the trees untouched by the lumberman s axe. Old Indian trapping trails through the woods guided them from lake to lake. Two locations were chosen on Lake Muskoka and one on Clear Lake.

Before returning south to Eramosa, Torrance and Coulter stayed long enough that summer to build their own log houses. Jestin's house on Clear Lake was to be built by the only other man the three settlers had found in the area, a French-Canadian lumberman named Jannack, who had a log house on an island later named Bala Park. (The narrows at the south end of Bala Park Island are shown on today's maps as "Jeannette," but local people use the name "Jannack Narrows," which appears to be historically correct.)

The following spring, in 1870, the three men returned to Gravenhurst by wagon with their families and supplies for a year. As the road ended at Gravenhurst, the drivers and teams were sent back to Eramosa, and the settlers and their supplies were transferred to their destination by steamer. When Jestin found that Jannack had disappeared without having even begun construction, the three men and their sons had to build a cabin quickly for the Jestins.

The next year oxen and farming implements were brought in to break up the ground between the stumps of the felled trees. About a dozen more Ontario families and two from England settled on Black Lake, Hardy Lake and East Bay. The older settlers helped the new arrivals to build houses and clear the land, using the oxen in the logging operations.

Jestin gave an acre of cleared land on Lake Muskoka to the community, half to be used for a school and half for a cemetery. A ratepayers' association was formed and responsibility allocated, a school was built and a teacher engaged. In 1875 when the settlers petitioned for a post office, William Torrance was appointed Postmaster and the hamlet took his name. The mail was then brought from Gravenhurst by steamer in the summer and by stagecoach in winter, for by this time the Musquosh Road from Gravenhurst to Port Carling up the west side of Lake Muskoka was well under way.

Around 1878, Olaf Willison came from Sweden and began a settlement around Gullwing Lake and Clear Lake (sometimes called Torrance Lake), which soon included other Swedish families, among them the Strombergs, Walstroms, Fergussons, and Nelsons.

Mrs. Torrance, one of the first three women, died in 1877 giving birth to a boy when no doctor was available. A twelve-year old daughter then took over the mother's job of keeping the house and looking after six other children. Mrs. Coulter was consumptive and did not live long, leaving at least five children. Mrs. Jestin survived to raise her children, but tragedy befell the family of her eldest son, William.

William Jestin married Elizabeth Parker after she had taught for a year at the Torrance school. One day in the summer of 1882, William Jestin returned home in the evening to find his wife, the maid Emma Bailey, the baby and his two other children missing. He called on his neighbours but nobody knew where they had gone and a search was organized. The next morning they found the two children alone on Pewabic Island in Bala Bay. The little girl was fast asleep. Although the boy was wide awake, he was terrified and had not answered the calls of the search party because he thought they were the screams of wild animals. William Jestin learned that his wife had taken the children and the maid to pick huckleberries on the island. Somehow the baby had fallen into the water and his wife and the maid were both drowned attempting to rescue him. Their names are inscribed on the stone, which marks William Jestin's grave in Torrance cemetery on the East Bay Road.