Highlands East is a

township municipality The following is a list of the types of local and supralocal territorial units in Quebec, including those used solely for statistical purposes, as defined by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy and compiled by the Inst ...

located in

Haliburton County Haliburton is a county of Ontario, Canada, known as a tourist and cottage area in Central Ontario for its scenery and for its resident artists. Minden Hills is the county seat. Haliburton County and the village of Haliburton are named after Tho ...

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 to ...

History

The township was incorporated in 2001 through the amalgamation of the former townships of Bancroft, Cardiff, Glamorgan, and Monmouth.

Communities

Cardiff is a former

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

community; Bicroft and Dyno Mines opened in 1956 and closed several years later. The chief mineral being mined in Cardiff was

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

. Cardiff is located on Highway 118 between the towns of Bancroft and Haliburton. The Cardiff Elementary School is a small school. The community also has a

Royal Canadian Legion The Royal Canadian Legion is a non-profit Canadian ex-service organization (veterans' organization) founded in 1925. Membership includes people who have served as military, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provincial and municipal police, Royal ...

hall, a Catholic and United church, an outdoor pool, which is popular during the summer, a post office, a municipal office, a library, and a skating rink that doubles as an outdoor basketball and floor hockey court. The entrance to the townsite, off of Highway 118, is marked by a large metal sculpture of a dragonfly. Gooderham is bordered on the south end of the municipality in proximity to the Irondale River and Pine Lake to the north. It is located on a now defunct railway line, the Irondale, Bancroft and Ottawa (IB&O) Railway, part of which has been since converted into a trail network. The village of Gooderham is at the intersection of the

Monck Road 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 ...

from the East and the Buckhorn Road from the South. The origin of the name Gooderham is not known for sure although it is likely that it was named after a member of the distillery-owning Gooderham family donated money for a local church. In any case, it was called Gooderham by the time the first post office was established in 1873. The first mills were built by 1875 using the waterfall between Gooderham Lake and the Irondale River. Logging and farming were the original attractions of the Gooderham area and Gooderham still has an active lumber mill. Wilberforce was established as "Pusey", a station on the IB&O Railway, and named for railway president Charles J. Pusey. This little railway had initially been built to carry iron ore from open pit mines at Irondale. Although the mines had closed, the railway had high hopes of extending to Bancroft, and even higher hopes of reaching

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the c ...

. At Wilberforce, where the railway skirted the southern shore of Pusey Lake (now Dark Lake), the Wilberforce Lumber Company put up a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

. In 1909 the Wilberforce mill was leased to James Lauder and Joseph Spears, of

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

. The IB&O Railway was taken over by the

Canadian Northern Railway The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Man ...

in 1912. Messrs. Lauder and Spears along with Lucien B. Howland, (the former General Manager of the IB&O), looking for new business opportunities, acquired a sawmill on the new CNR line north of

Parry Sound, Ontario Parry Sound is a town in Ontario, Canada, located on the eastern shore of the sound after which it is named. Parry Sound is located south of Sudbury and north of Toronto. It is a single tier government located in the territorial District ...

. The three men eventually established the community of Lost Channel in the

Parry Sound District Parry Sound District is a Census divisions of Canada, census division of the Canadian province of Ontario. Its boundaries are District Municipality of Muskoka, District of Muskoka to the south, the Sudbury District to the north-northwest, the Fre ...

and went

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

in the process. Wilberforce is known among geocachers as the " Geocaching Capital of Canada." The first cache in the town was "Wilberforce be With You" placed by Geofellas. The township also contains the smaller communities of Cheddar (ghost town), Cope Falls, Deer Lake, Dyno Estates, Essonville, Harcourt, Highland Grove, Hotspur, Ironsides, Maxwells, Pusey, South Wilberforce, Tory Hill, Upper Paudash, Ursa and Ward. Highland Grove was home to "Camp Diamond", the site of a fabled, but unfounded diamond mine. The site was used as a hockey camp for a short period of time and later became an all girls summer recreational camp. Highlands East has 5 fire halls located throughout the municipality, with stations located in Cardiff, Highland Grove, Gooderham, Wilberforce and Paudash. The Highlands East Fire Department only has one full-time employee, its fire chief, with all of the firefighters being volunteers.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultu ...

, Highlands East had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Lakes

* Salerno Lake *

Paudash Lake Paudash Lake is a lake in south central Ontario southwest of Bancroft along Highway 28. The lake is located just north of Silent Lake Provincial Park in Haliburton County, south of the panhandle of Algonquin Provincial Park. The nearest communit ...

* Gooderham Lake previously Pine Lake * Billings Lake previously Wolf Lake * Lake Wilbermere (also known as South Wilberforce Lake) * Glamour Lake previously Bear Lake or Big Bear Lake * Stormy Lake *

Eels Lake Eels Lake is a lake located between the Kawartha lakes and Haliburton Highlands region of Ontario, Canada. Eel Cow, an Ojibwe chieftain, for which the lake is named, claimed this area and surrounding land as his family's hunting and fishing terr ...

References

External links

* {{Geographic location , Centre = Highlands East , North =

Dysart et al The United Townships of Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde, commonly known as the Municipality of Dysart et al, is a municipality in Haliburton County in Central Ontario, Canada. Shows the area of the mu ...

, Northeast =

Hastings Highlands Hastings Highlands is a township in the Canadian province of Ontario. Located in the northernmost portion of Hastings County, the township had a population of 4,078 in the 2016 Canadian census. Big Mink Lake is one of many lakes located in Hast ...

, East =

Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, ...

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North Kawartha North Kawartha is a township in northern Peterborough County, Ontario, Canada. North Kawartha was formed in 1998 through an amalgamation of the Townships of Burleigh and Anstruther and the Township of Chandos. For a while after this merger, it w ...

, Southwest =

Trent Lakes The Municipality of Trent Lakes is a lower-tier township in the rural, mostly wooded northern section of Peterborough County, Ontario, Canada. The municipality has a primarily cottage and tourist industry based economy but has grown year round res ...

, West =

Minden Hills Minden Hills is a township in and the county seat of Haliburton County, Ontario, Canada. It is an amalgam of the townships of Snowdon, Lutterworth, Anson, Hindon and Minden. It is usually referred to as Minden, after its largest community. The ...