The Municipality of Calvin – The Lost Township, by Richard Gould.

The Municipality of Calvin might be called the “Lost Township”, because many people don’t know where it is.  When someone says they are from Calvin, the common response is, “Where’s Calvin?” 

 Located halfway between Mattawa and North Bay, Calvin is a place of incredible natural beauty.   Within its boundaries are three Provincial Parks, the Ecology Centre, the Eau Claire Gorge, and three of the nicest waterfalls in the province. Despite this, it is often overlooked.  It has fast flowing rivers, quiet lakes, dark forests and historic landmarks and yet it is only 40 kilometers from an international airport and it has the Trans-Canada highway running along its northern boundary.  

Calvin’s first large scale settlement took place in the late 1800’s after the government introduced the Free Grants and Homestead Act.  This government legislation offered settlers a free 100-acre lot, with the option to buy more land at fifty cents an acre, provided they cleared 15 acres and built a 16-by-20-foot dwelling within five years. Settlers could source the building materials from their own land, and after some hard work, they would own their property free and clear.  For many, this was a dream come true.

Before the 1800s, Calvin saw very few people with the exception of those that travelled its most northern regions along the Mattawa River.  This river was a vital travel route for the Nipissing, Algonquin, and Ojibway peoples, connecting the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing. Later, explorers, missionaries, voyageurs, and coureurs des bois also traveled this waterway.

In the 1800’s, as square-timber logging became profitable, lumber camps appeared along the Mattawa and Amable du Fond Rivers, and farms sprang up to provide food and horses to the loggers.    By the mid 1800’s, Colin Rankin, an early mayor of Fort Mattawan (later, Mattawa) wrote about travelling on snowshoes from Mattawa along these rivers in order to trade at the DuFond farm.  The journey was long and he would stop at the Smith Farm on Smith Lake to spend the night.  Few other homesteads dotted the area at that time.

In 1881, Lawrence Tallan, a provincial land surveyor, officially surveyed Calvin Township and the township was established.  It was then incorporated in 1887 and 96 one-hundred-acre lots were registered.

The railroad reached the Amable du Fond River in October of 1881, with the first train station, the Old Renten, located a kilometre east of the twin bridges (now on Highway 630).  In 1894, a larger station, called the Eau Claire Station was built just east of the twin bridges. The arrival of the railway was enormously important to the township; many settlers arrived by train and walked south to claim their land.  Much of Calvin was settled between 1880 and 1900.  Names from that era remain familiar today.    

In 1882, William Mackey registered a number of lots and built a saw mill on the south side of the twin bridges. This became known as Eau Claire because of the clear water that flowed under the bridges.   It became a bustling centre with a couple of mills, a school, a catholic church, a boarding house and a company store.

In the following decades, as settlers moved further to the south, new schools, churches and stores opened elsewhere in the township.   One of the Smith descendants reportedly moved the old Renten train station to the corner of Peddlers Drive and Hwy 630.   Peddlers Drive was the main road to the west and this area soon became a new centre of commerce and education.   

In 1904, the federal government considered a massive project: a canal linking the Ottawa River and Lake Nipissing through Calvin. With $250,000 appropriated (about $8 million today), surveys were done to explore a canal with locks and reservoirs controlling water levels. There were concerns about the St. Lawrence which was on a shared boarder with the United States.   Had the project moved forward, this would have transformed the Mattawa River from a canoe route into a shipping highway for large transport vessels. The plan was eventually abandoned, and Calvin remained a quiet rural community.

The population has been remarkably stable through the last 140 years. In 2021 the enumerated population of Calvin (Municipality), was 557, but by 1887, ninety-six lots had been registered and with an average of four people per lot, that would indicate a population of close to four hundred.  By 1910, 217 of Calvin’s 100-acre lots had been registered.  If anything, the population may have decreased since that time.  

During World War One, the town of Eau Claire had grown to include a cheese factory (which later became a post office), a school, a church and a store.   The area which would one day be called Ruby’s Corners was known as Mulligan’s Corners because of Mulligan’s store.   It was a thriving community centre.  

At the same time, in northern Calvin, Louise de Kiriline, who later became a renowned ornithologist, built a log cabin on the shore of Pimisi Bay were she enjoyed the peace and tranquility of life in her cabin.   It was here that she met Len Lawrence, who was likely working out of the Bennet Camp in Eau Claire Station set up to build Highway 17.  She catalogued birds extensively, sharing her research worldwide. Her original cabin still stands on the bay’s shore.

The arrival of Highway 17 once again allowed people to travel through Calvin from Ottawa and Mattawa to North Bay.    It also allowed children to be bused to schools in Mattawa and people could go shopping, or go to church in Mattawa or North Bay.    In the last 75 years, most of the churches, all of the schools and most of the stores have closed.   

Calvin has always been a place that required self dependence; residents learned how to provide for themselves.   Hydro electricity was only introduced into the township in the mid 1950’s; the first volunteer fire department was founded in 1977; and telephones into the 1980’s were still mostly party-lines with four households sharing the same phone line.   If you wanted to live in Calvin, you had to learn how to do many things yourself, but the freedom and independence was worth it.     

The municipality of Calvin remains a hidden gem of indescribable beauty, cherished by its resourceful residents.