Chandos Lake History

The first settler to Chandos Lake was Cornelius Maher.  He arrived in 1862 and owned several thousand feet of shoreline along the north shore of West Bay.

In the mid 1920's many young men residing in Chandos Township at the time were attracted to western Canada as they saw little hope of prosperity at home.  Many of the young men saw no value in the Chandos properties that they owned and left the area without even bothering to sell their land.
Once the properties were put up for Tax Sale an entrepreneurial Toronto Coal Dealer purchased several hundred acres of land.  He subsequently went on to divide and sell them at a handsome profit primarily to Americans seeking summer properties at Chandos Lake.

Some of the earliest summer hotels were established in West Bay as well.  Over the course of the 1920's waterfront properties were sold to other Americans such as Dan and Theresa Galbraith of Rochester NY.  Dan and Theresa purchased Ramona Lodge from Arthur Hall in the spring of 1925.  The following year Dan began to sell off some of his waterfront lots.  The first was sold to Rochester merchant Herbert Johnston and his wife Gertrude in 1926.  This property was subsequently purchased by Roy Parsons of Peterborough in 1934.  In 1927 and 1928 two other Rochester residents David Morrison and Dr. Rosco Wilcox purchased properties.  Then in 1933 two Peterborough residents, Norman Paterson and Allan MacNab purchased property from Galbraith and built cottages beside each other along the same shore.