Morpeth is a community in
Southern Ontario
Southern Ontario is a primary region of the province of Ontario, Canada, the other primary region being Northern Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada. The exact northern boundary of Southern Ontario is disp ...
,
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 ...
that is between
Blenheim and
St. Thomas on
Highway 3 in the municipality of
Chatham-Kent. It is located less than an hour and a half away from
Windsor
Windsor may refer to:
Places Australia
* Windsor, New South Wales
** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area
* Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland
**Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...
.
History
The community is named after
Lord Morpeth, who was once a guest of Col.
Thomas Talbot.
["Morpeth," ''Encyclopedia of Canada'' (Toronto: University Associates, 1948), IV, 338]
Morpeth was an area of notable commerce in the 1880s. However, when the railroad went through, it instead went through nearby
Ridgetown, Ontario, which eventually grew faster than Morpeth.
Archibald Lampman, one of Canada's
Confederation Poets, and "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in
English" (''
Canadian Encyclopedia'') was born in Morpeth on November 17, 1861.
[Michael Gnarowski,]
Lampman, Archibald
" ''Canadian Encyclopedia'' (Hurtig, 1988), 1169. The ''
Dictionary of Canadian Biography'' says: "The Morpeth that Lampman knew was a small town set in the rolling farm country of what is now western Ontario, not far from the shores of
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...
. The little red church just east of the town, on the
Talbot Road, was his father’s charge."
[Lampman, Archibald]
" Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Web, Mar. 22, 2011.
Commerce
Forms of
commerce
Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, nation ...
present in the village include a
zoo,
[ a trailer park, and a marina/ campground.][ To the south, nearby ]Rondeau Provincial Park
Rondeau Provincial Park is the second oldest provincial park in Ontario, Canada, having been established with an order in council on 8 September 1894. The park is located in Southwestern Ontario, on an 8 km long crescentic sand spit exten ...
provides recreational activities.[ Morpeth is also an attractive retirement community, with housing available specifically for this need.
]
Tourism
Greenview Aviaries, a park and zoo, is located less than a mile east of the village in Ridgetown, Ontario on the former Highway 3. It attracts visitors from a wide area and has expanded over the years to house many additional animal species, including Big Cats (Tiger, Lions, Jaguars), Wild Game (Buffalo, Elk, Zebras), Primates, Reptiles and Birds.[Greenview Aviaries Park and Zoo]
" Web, Apr. 28, 2011.
Morpeth also sees a number of visitors traveling to nearby Rondeau Provincial Park
, Web, Apr. 28, 2011.[Wildwood by the Lake]
Web, Apr. 28, 2011.
References
External links
Chatham-Kent website
{{authority control
Communities in Chatham-Kent
Populated places on Lake Erie in Canada