Every day on his way to and from Owen Sound, the Explorer passes through Mudtown. Once a row of houses that stood opposite the many factories on Owen Sound’s eastside harbour, it is a legendary place whose name has now been adopted by the Mudtown Pottery.
In the September 3rd, 1921 issue of the Owen Sound Sun-Times, historian and reporter Sawyer Cummings reminisced about Owen Sound in the early 1870s. His memories took him to the town’s east side that was then and now known as Mudtown. It was a time when most people arrived in the port town by water, disembarking at Boyd’s Wharf, a dock about 300 feet long extending out in the bay from the east shore.
Built of stones from the neighbouring escarpment, it ended in a wooden dock large enough to accommodate the steamers of the day, ships like the Chicora, Cumberland, and Algoma.
To reach Boyd’s Wharf, it was necessary to head out Bay Street, today’s Third Avenue East that was open to Canning Street or 13th Street today. More like a muddy path, it was hardly even a street. But it led through a collection of shacks where there was no friendly light at the windows, only a few ghostly flames from pans of tallow kept hot on a stove top with the ends of rags lit and stuck in them.
Cummings claimed, that was fifty cents a gallon so it was not a shock to stumble over a drunk on the way to Boyd’s Wharf for a night docking. North of Boyd’s Wharf was Mudtown proper. Here, in the 1870s, the road ended and a rough path
Originally aired March 31st, 2016
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