Settlers
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Original cabin, built in 1917 and now used as a bunkie, in 1957 (W. Blair Mansell)
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Little is known about the original land grant to this property. According the 1877 Sinclair Township Plan, Joseph William Sharpe was granted a location ticket for these lots, along the south shore of Rebecca; however, there is no record of him ever developing them. The lots also included property across Rebecca between the Narrows side of the peninsula (where the bridge is today), the Rebecca peninsula itself, along the causeway, and toward the Hutcheson Bay narrows.
The original cabin was built in 1917 to be used as a hunting and fishing camp and is still used as a bunkie. An original ice house is now used as a shed, and the original boathouse has recently been rebuilt. A second boathouse was built in the late 1950s by Edgar Brook (Brookie), but it is unknown who built these original structures.
Circle M Ranch Retreat
In the late 1920s Charlie Mavety, a theatre owner with sole distribution rights for Hollywood motion pictures in Ontario, purchased the property, which he called “Circle M Ranch Retreat.” He was an avid western fan, and guests to his ranch near Kleinburg included Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hop-a-long Cassidy. In fact, the Rebecca Lake property was host to Roy Rogers. With no road to the property, Mavety kept horses in Huntsville for the ride to the lake. His use of the property was solely as a hunting and fishing camp.
Mavety had the main log structure built for him in 1936 by Eli Birtch, a tenant farmer at Sunset Farm. Lore has it that Mavety paid Birtch $75 plus materials to build the lodge. By the late 1940s Mavety felt the lake was getting too crowded and decided to sell.
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| Charles Mavety (second from left), Hugh Feasby (centre), and Roy Rogers (right) at Circle M Ranch, Kleinburg, Ontario. Roy Rogers was one of the guests who visited the Ranch Retreat on Rebecca Lake (Paul Feasby) | Oscar Hanson (Mavety’s friend and Hugh Feasby’s partner) and Stu Fleming at Circle M Ranch Retreat in the late 1940s (Paul Feasby) |
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Hugh Feasby
At that time R. Hugh Feasby, a businessman from St. Catharines who had been coming to Limberlost since 1930, was looking for property. In 1951 Hugh, together with his good friend Stu Fleming, a lawyer from St. Catharines, and Mavety’s friend Oscar Hanson, bought the property from Mavety, reputedly for $7,500 – not bad for what was then over 200 acres and approximately 3,000 feet of Rebecca shoreline. When hydro electricity reached the lake in the early 1950s, what is now Sunset Farm Trail became the road access. Hanson quickly lost interest and sold to Feasby and Fleming by the mid-1950s.
After Fleming died in 1968, his widow sold her share to Hugh Feasby. To pay for the “buy out,” Hugh had to sell some of the property, and he put both the “north shore” and the “south shore” out to offer. Dave Burgess was interested in the north shore to gain access to his Bella Lake property and so bought that piece.
Hugh died in 1973, leaving the property to his son, who has since sold the southwestern portion of Lot 6 Concession 7, with the sale approved on the basis that it be zoned passive recreational, with no development.
Sources:
Feasby, Paul, Family Records.
Mansell Family Records.