Actinolite ( ) is a compact rural community within

geographic Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, a ...

Elzevir Township in the Municipality of Tweed,

Hastings County Hastings County is located in the province of Ontario, Canada. Geographically, it is located on the border of Eastern Ontario and Central Ontario. Hastings County is the second-largest county in Ontario, after Renfrew County, and its county ...

Central Ontario Central Ontario is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario that lies between Georgian Bay and the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The population of the region was 1,123,307 in 2016; however, this number does not in ...

, Canada. It is on

Ontario Highway 37 King's Highway 37, commonly referred to as Highway 37, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. It begins at Highway 401 in Belleville and travels north to Highway 7 in Actinolite. The route once cont ...

, just south of Ontario Highway 7 and north of the village of Tweed. The community also lies on the

Skootamatta River The Skootamatta River is a river in the Lake Ontario drainage basin in Hastings and Lennox and Addington Counties in Ontario, Canada. It flows from Joeperry Lake to join the Moira River in Tweed. The river's name is thought to come from Ojibwa ...

just north of that river's mouth at the

Moira River The Moira River is a river in Hastings County in eastern Ontario, Canada. It travels from its source in the centre of the county to the Bay of Quinte at the county seat Belleville . Name Originally named the Sagonaska River by the indigenous peo ...

History

When Actinolite was first founded in 1853, it was called Troy. A number of Billa Flint's

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 ...

s were built on the Skootamatta River here. In 1859, it became Bridgewater. In 1895, it was renamed Actinolite after a form of asbestos (

actinolite Actinolite is an amphibole silicate mineral with the chemical formula . Etymology The name ''actinolite'' is derived from the Greek word ''aktis'' (), meaning "beam" or "ray", because of the mineral's fibrous nature. Mineralogy Actinolite is ...

) that was being extracted from open-pit mines near the town. A

branch line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industr ...

of the

Bay of Quinte Railway 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 throu ...

(BQR) was built through Actinolite opening in 1903 that connected the BQR main line to the southeast to the Central Ontario Railway to the northwest. The line was abandoned in 1935. Ontario Highway 7 arrived in 1932.

References

Other map sources: * *

External links

Actinolite
at the Municipality of Tweed website Communities in Hastings County {{EasternOntario-geo-stub