The Trail of the Swinging Lanterns

Excerpt: When Sir John Franklin arctic navigator with canoe crews of Indians and voyageurs eastbound after exploring the Great Lakes pitched wigwams in the summer of 1839 at the confluence of stream and lake where the nucleus of present Cobourg Canada was taking root little did these adventurous and actual forerunners of easy steam locomotion think that from a point where they camped a railroad would thirteen years later bisect the unbroken forest. Yet it is so and the whirligig of time has likewise seen recorded the obituary of that railway—has witnessed the effacement of the name of those early laid metal ribbons from the time tables of a young country which still hungers and lobbies for more and more tracks and trams.