Brudenell is a community in the township of

Brudenell, Lyndoch and Raglan Brudenell, Lyndoch and Raglan is a township in Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada. It was formed on January 1, 1999, through the merger of Brudenell and Lyndoch Township with Raglan Township. Communities The township comprises the smaller communiti ...

Renfrew County Renfrew County is a county in the Canadian province of Ontario. It stands on the west bank of the Ottawa River. There are 17 municipalities in the county. History Bathurst District When Carleton County was withdrawn from Bathurst District in 183 ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

History

The history of Brudenell is most often presented as a "boom and bust" narrative in which the village experience a period of rapid-paced development, peaking in the 1880s, followed by a period of steep economic decline and eventual abandonment. The village is now commonly referred to as a "ghost town" though this characterization does little justice to the history of the settlement, nor to current residents, many of whom are descendants of the original settlers.Derek Murray, "Narratives, Transitions, and the Spaces between Old and New: A Socio-Economic History of Brudenell through the 1871 Census of Canada," MA Major Research Paper, University of Guelph, 2009.
The community was established in the 1850s at the intersection of the

Opeongo Line The colonization roads were created during the 1840s and 1850s to open up or provide access to areas in Central and Eastern Ontario for settlement and agricultural development. The colonization roads were used by settlers to lead them toward areas ...

and the Addington Colonization Road with the completion of the latter road. During the 1880s, Brudenell became known as the 'sin-bucket' of the Opeongo Line due to its three hotels, offering gambling, alcohol and other

vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...

s. In 1893, the local portion of the

Canada Atlantic Railway The Canada Atlantic Railway (CAR) was a North American railway located in Ontario, southwestern Quebec and northern Vermont. It connected Georgian Bay on Lake Huron with the northern end of Lake Champlain via Ottawa. It was formed in 1897 through ...

was built, bypassing Brudenell in favour of nearby

Killaloe, Ontario Killaloe is a town located in Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada in the township of Killaloe, Hagarty and Richards. Geographically it is located in Eastern Ontario. The shores of Golden Lake are located to the east, which is well known for quali ...

, as decided by then-Prime Minister

Wilfrid Laurier Sir Henri Charles Wilfrid Laurier, ( ; ; November 20, 1841 – February 17, 1919) was a Canadian lawyer, statesman, and politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Canada from 1896 to 1911. The first French Canadian prime minis ...

. This led to a permanent economic decline for Brudenell.

Today

Brudenell is now home to a fire station and Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church, which hosts an annual supper to raise funds for the maintenance of parish buildings. The supper is famous for its traditional sand-baked beans. The church hall was also for a time the home o
Stone Fence Theatre
now performing mainly out of

Eganville Eganville is a community occupying a deep limestone valley carved at the Fifth Chute of the Bonnechere River in Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada. Eganville lies within the township of Bonnechere Valley. Eganville is also known as the Ordovician ...

. Performances were held there from 2003 to 2006, including a rendition of "Al Capone's Hideout," a musical comedy about the notorious gangster's brief stay in the area in the 1940s. The production was directed and co-authored by Barry Goldie in association with the Upper Madawaska Theatre Group, Stone Fence Theatre's predecessor company.

References

{{authority control Communities in Renfrew County