Pike Lake, in the upper part of Minto Township, is not known to many of the residents of Wellington County. The original settler there, Thomas Ryan, arrived in 1852. A couple of decades later, in the late 1870s, several residents of Mount Forest began to view Pike Lake as a recreational asset. Ryan owned most of the shoreline, except for a small portion. The interlopers challenged Ryan’s legal rights to the lake.
Ryan was an Irishman, and came to Canada in 1852 with his wife, mother-in-law, and seven children, driven from his homeland, he claimed, by famine, lack of opportunities, and an overbearing landlord. Two years earlier he had sent his 18-year-old eldest son, William H., to scout possible places to settle in Upper Canada.
After a horrendous voyage, during which two of his children died, Ryan arrived at Gross Island, the notorious quarantine facility near Quebec City. In June of 1852 he and his family met up with William in Galt. Ryan was not a poor man. He later claimed that he came to Canada with about $5,000, a small fortune in the 1850s.
Ryan sought employment as a teacher and at several other trades in Galt, but was unable to find a position except as a common labourer. He believed that his lack of success was due to his Irish ancestry. That was a plausible explanation, as anti-Catholic feeling was then very strong, and the Irish were generally considered as a hard-drinking, fighting, uneducated race.
After three months of snubs, Tom Ryan and his son William set off for the north and Minto Township, which was then dense wilderness, interrupted only here and there by small clearings made by squatters. After wandering around the area for several days the men stumbled on Pike Lake. The spot appealed strongly to them, and they decided that it was their destination.
The two immediately chopped a small clearing and built a shanty. William then set off to return to Galt and bring the rest of the family.
The mother-in-law decided to remain in Galt with the two youngest children, staying with friends for the winter. William engaged a teamster with a wagon, and the rest of the family set off for Minto. The journey turned into a series of mishaps. The teamster decided to go only as far as Wright’s Tavern, near the future site of Harriston. The family found a nearby settler who agreed to take them and their possessions the remainder of the way to the crude homestead. It was not a great distance, but the trip took two days through the unbroken forest.
Minto had by then been surveyed into farm lots, but the land was not sold by the Crown Lands Department until the fall of 1854. Ryan claimed two lots, surveyed as Lots 8 and 9 in Concession 14. Those lots contained the majority of Pike Lake and its shoreline.
Ryan and his family struggled through that first winter, and managed to harvest small crops through the late 1850s. He worked on a crew that rebuilt the first bridge at Mount Forest, strengthening it and raising it above the flood level of the Saugeen River.
It would seem that Tom Ryan enjoyed playing the role of a martyr. He may well have exaggerated his hardships on his trip to Canada and the treatment he received in Galt. As well, he had an inflated opinion of his own skills and abilities.
In 1881, Ryan wrote a long account of his 29 years at Pike Lake, outlining his contributions to improving the lake and its shore, and castigating all who had opposed him, who had taken advantage of his hospitality, and who had harmed his property in one way or another. He sent the piece to the Mount Forest Confederate, which published it in its Sept. 15 issue.
In his account, Ryan took full credit for the work done on the first Mount Forest bridge, and for building and improving the road between Concessions 14 and 15. Township minutes contradict that latter assertion. Ryan also claimed that “man’s injustice drove me from public life,” but he never served on the township council.
Ryan claimed that in the early years he was generous with visitors who desired to hike around the lake. Soon, though, he was much less accommodating. He claimed that visitors used rifles to shoot fish, which “they carried away by the sackful in the spawning season.” Others used torchlights and spears to fish at night. Trespassers decimated the populations of ducks, rabbits, partridge and deer, he claimed, often outside the hunting season. Some of fishermen and hunters started bush fires that decimated his land.
The list of destruction and damage grew longer during the 1870s. Visitors took Ryan’s rowboats and scows, sinking and burning them. Eventually the fires burned all the pine forest around the lake, leading to massive erosion of the soil. What annoyed Ryan the most was that the trespassers included some of the most prominent men in Mount Forest, with names such as Yeomans, McMullen (the future senator), and Hampton.
Those men made excuses that the lake was public property, and in other ways disputed Ryan’s title to the land on its shores, using dubious legal arguments. They considered that Pike Lake was the natural recreational facility for their town.
In the late 1870s, Ryan sold the land and lake to his son, with the promise that he “make no compromise with Mount Forest.” He portrayed himself as the victim of the rich and powerful, and defended his position using British common law.
Ryan’s ire was not directed only at the Mount Forest elite. He had an equally low opinion of Minto council. Though he was writing in September of 1881, his main complaints dated to the term of Archie Harrison as reeve of the township, during the period 1857 to 1864. Ryan accused Harrison of blocking funding for a bridge over the outlet of Pike Lake, even though the majority of council favoured it.
Ryan bestowed the nickname Plug-Ugly Harrison on the former reeve, claiming that he had refused funding for the bridge to force residents to take their trade to Harriston, rather than Mount Forest.
Much of Ryan’s account was directed at those in Mount Forest who had prospered over the previous 20 or 30 years, and who consequently began to view themselves as an elite group entitled to special respect and privileges.
In promoting themselves, Ryan argued, the Mount Forest elite belittled the achievements of others, including himself. Ryan claimed a major role for himself in founding Mount Forest’s schools by having the town detached from the adjoining townships for educational purposes. Ryan had at that time been appointed as school superintendent. Later he was removed from that position, and quite unjustly, he argued.
Ryan claimed that he had made most of his purchases over the years in Mount Forest, much of it in the stores of Hampton and McMullen. “Now they are rich and I comparatively poor, and consequently, in their eyes I am of little account,” he concluded.
Tom Ryan undoubtedly had real complaints about the misuse of his land, and the damage done by trespassers.
His claims to the legal possession of the lake seem to have been well founded, but no case ever went to the courts. But Ryan was his own worst enemy. His view of himself as a martyr, constantly abused by others, and his obvious jealousy of those who enjoyed material success, undermined any public sympathy he might otherwise have enjoyed.
His lengthy diatribe in that 1881 Mount Forest paper is a fascinating document, offering a somewhat different view of the early history of the area than appears in other sources. Today, 130 years later, Tom Ryan’s words provide a richer understanding of our local history than would otherwise be the case.