For over two centuries, Haskin’s Point has been the scene of the ‘summer action’ at Seeley’s Bay. All Rideau Canal boat traffic passes within metres of its shoreline. Located at the end of a peninsula forming the south shore of Seeley’s Bay, Haskin’s Point is an outcropping of Canadian Shield rock known as the Frontenac Arch. The ‘Point’, as it is known to locals who favour it as a swimming spot, marks the entrance to Little Cranberry Lake to the south of Seeley’s Bay with Broad’s Bay to the southeast. Local legend insists that from the mid-1820s through canal construction, a trading post (in the form of a tepee) was available here for itinerant paddlers. The legend also holds that the trading post was operated by ‘Granny (Ann) Seeley’, one of the first settlers living at the Seeley’s Bay site.
Named after Samuel Haskin who purchased the lot in 1840, Haskin’s Point provided a landing wharf and refueling stop for the steamboat traffic plying the Rideau throughout the nineteenth century. Several other businesses, including a general store and potashery operated during the mid-century. Huge piles of fuel wood on the shoreline encouraged the establishment of businesses and settlement in the mid-1840s. After the flooding of the canal route through Little Cranberry Lake, the village site became accessible to steamboats as the flooded tree stumps and dense tangle of cranberry marsh were gradually cleared. Until the 1860s Haskin’s Point was an important forwarding centre receiving products such as potash, wheat, pork, butter, cheese and potatoes for transportation to markets up and down the canal.
Visitors standing on the Point today enjoy a view of the entrance to Little Cranberry Lake to the south and one of the finest panoramas of the history of cottage architecture offered along the canal route. From the 1880’s until 1986, a two-car, hand-operated ferry crossed the canal from the Point to Hewitt Island. Across from the Point on the island can be seen one of the canal’s oldest fishing cottages, an original stone building constructed in 1911 and still in use today by the fifth generation of the Hewitt family.
Looking in both directions from the Point, one sees cottage architecture from the early 20th century to today’s retirement cottage homes. Along the peninsula leading to the Point from the village itself are several cottage resorts, established mostly for American fishermen in the 1940’s to 1960’s, and still providing active resort life for today’s tourist.
