Qualla: Depot Harbour https://qualla.com/depot-harbour en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:18 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Depot Harbour https://qualla.com/depot-harbour Depot Harbour: Introduction https://qualla.com/depot-harbour/ The landowners of Parry Sound overplayed their hand. When John Rudolphus Booth came looking for a terminus for his railway in 1895, they demanded prices so steep that the lumber baron simply looked across the water to Parry Island -- an Anishinaabe reserve -- and built his port there instead. Using a provision of the Indian Act that allowed Indigenous land to be expropriated for railways, Booth negotiated the purchase of reserve land and, when that was not enough, took more by force of law in 1899. On that contested ground he raised a town from nothing: 110 houses, two massive grain elevators, docks, a hotel, shops, and a railway station. Within a generation, Depot Harbour was one of the busiest ports on the Great Lakes. Within two generations, it was a ghost town. Today, scattered concrete foundations and a single cottage are all that remain.

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]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/p/1/depot-harbour-wp/f0p1-depot-harbour-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Depot Harbour: Booth's Shortcut to the Atlantic https://qualla.com/depot-harbour/ John Rudolphus Booth was already one of Canada's wealthiest men when he turned his attention to grain. In 1891, he merged several railway lines to form the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway, creating a route from Georgian Bay through southern Algonquin Park to Ottawa. The ...

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]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/p/1/depot-harbour-wp/f0p1-depot-harbour-booths-shortcut-to-the-atlantic.mp3 0:06 2 full Depot Harbour: The Long Unraveling https://qualla.com/depot-harbour/ Booth sold his railway to the Grand Trunk Railway in 1904, and by 1923 it had been absorbed into the government-owned Canadian National Railways. The decline that followed was death by a thousand cuts. The reconstruction of the Welland Canal in 1932 opened a competing shipping ro...

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]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/p/1/depot-harbour-wp/f0p1-depot-harbour-the-long-unraveling.mp3 0:06 3 full Depot Harbour: The Fire on V-J Day https://qualla.com/depot-harbour/ The end, when it came, arrived with a bang. During World War II, cordite manufactured at the nearby Nobel munitions plant was stored in Depot Harbour's dockside freight sheds, directly across the inlet from the grain elevators. By the summer of 1945, the timber-frame elevators we...

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]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/p/1/depot-harbour-wp/f0p1-depot-harbour-the-fire-on-v-j-day.mp3 0:06 4 full Depot Harbour: Echoes in Concrete https://qualla.com/depot-harbour/ Depot Harbour refused to die quietly. After the explosion, the surviving wharf found new purpose as a coal distribution terminal for the Century Coal Company, a subsidiary of Canada Steamship Lines. When the coal market faded in the late 1950s, the National Steel Corporation took...

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]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/p/1/depot-harbour-wp/f0p1-depot-harbour-echoes-in-concrete.mp3 0:06 5 full Depot Harbour: The Land Returns https://qualla.com/depot-harbour/ In 1987, the Anishinaabe of the Wasauksing First Nation reclaimed the expropriated lands. The reserve that Booth's surveyors had trespassed upon in 1895, the territory carved away by legal force, returned to its original stewards. It is a quiet reversal of the story that created ...

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]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/p/1/depot-harbour-wp/f0p1-depot-harbour-the-land-returns.mp3 0:06 6 full