Englehart (

Canada 2016 Census The 2016 Canadian census was an enumeration of Canadian residents, which counted a population of 35,151,728, a change from its 2011 population of 33,476,688. The census, conducted by Statistics Canada, was Canada's seventh quinquennial census ...

population 1,479) is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than city, cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares ...

in the

Canadian province Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British Nort ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

, located on the Blanche River in the

Timiskaming District Timiskaming is a district and Census divisions of Canada, census division in Northeastern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario. The district was created in 1912 from parts of Algoma District, Algoma, Nipissing District, Nipissing, and Sudb ...

. Kap-Kig-Iwan Provincial Park is located near the town of Englehart.

History

The Town of Englehart was created by the building of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario (T & NO) Railway and named after Chairman

Jacob Lewis Englehart Jacob Lewis Englehart (November 2, 1847 – April 1, 1921) was a Canadian-American business magnate, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Englehart is best known for his role in the formation of Imperial Oil in 1880 to combat the growing influence ...

. It was incorporated as the Town of Englehart in January 1908, as a half-way divisional point between North Bay, Ontario and what became Cochrane, Ontario, where the T & NO Railway met with the new Transcontinental Railway line (now the CNR) being built west from Quebec City across the north to the Western Provinces, creating the town of Cochrane. In 1905, Jacob Lewis Englehart, from

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

, became a key figure in the development of the railway north of North Bay in Ontario. A successful businessman from

Petrolia, Ontario Petrolia is a town in southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is part of Lambton County and is surrounded by Enniskillen Township. It is billed as "Canada's Victorian Oil Town" and is often credited with starting the oil industry in North America, ...

, nearing the current age of retirement, he was appointed in 1905, by the Premier of Ontario, to the Ontario Commission in charge of building and operating the T & NO, which would, about 1945, become the

Ontario Northland Railway The Ontario Northland Railway is a Canadian railway operated by the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, a provincial Crown agency of the government of Ontario. Originally built to develop the Lake Timiskaming and Lake Nipissing a ...

. He served as Chairman of a new 3-man Commission from 1906 until the fall of 1919, when he retired after the

United Farmers of Ontario The United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) was an Agrarianism, agrarian and Populism, populist provincial political party in Ontario, Canada. It was the Ontario provincial branch of the United Farmers (disambiguation), United Farmers movement of the earl ...

won their first and only four-year term in the Province of Ontario. He died at York, now Toronto, in 1921 and was buried at Petrolia. The new community of Englehart began to take shape with the construction of the line's first major bridge at the Charlton branch of Blanche River (Initially, there was a construction site for a high level trestle known as Blanche River Crossing, which opened in 1906. The Commission decided to develop a planned town on the west side of the river, from 1906-1908, as a half-way divisional point on the railway. The railway was particularly central to the settlement and development of New Ontario (now N.E. Ont.); that is, until the first gravel road,(the Ferguson Highway, now part of Highway 11) was opened in 1927 north from North Bay to

New Liskeard New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

in the Temiskaming District, with future extensions north and west as the initial Trans-Canada Highway route. The T & NO was eventually extended north to Moosonee on James Bay in the depression years of the 1930s. Today, Englehart's importance as a

railway town A railway town, or railroad town, is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site. North America During the construction of the First transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, tempora ...

has diminished, and the biggest employer is an

oriented strand board Oriented strand board (OSB) is a type of engineered wood similar to particle board, formed by adding adhesives and then compressing layers of wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees a ...

(OSB) facility built by Grants Forest Products, which was sold to

Georgia-Pacific Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of tissue, pulp, paper, toilet and paper towel dispensers, packaging, building products and ...

in early 2010 as a result of the recession of 2008.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Englehart had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Media

CJBB-FM broadcasts a

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, o ...

radio format on from Englehart on 103.1 FM.

Transportation

The Englehart railway station was served by the

Northlander The ''Northlander'' was a passenger train operated by the Ontario Northland Railway in Ontario, Canada. The ''Northlander'' operated six days per week year-round in both directions and connected Cochrane with Toronto. The train typically consi ...

until the passenger service was ended in September 2012. Rail passenger service was replaced by increased bus service, also provided by Ontario Northland Railway. Englehart is located on

Ontario Highway 11 King's Highway 11, commonly referred to as Highway 11, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. At , it is the second longest highway in the province, following Highway 17. Highway11 begins at Highway ...

, part of the

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean on ...

system. On March 31, 2007, an

freight train derailed about north of Englehart, spilling an estimated 100 tonnes of sulfuric acid into a creek feeding the Blanche River.

References

External links