Wilberforce, Ontario

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Wilberforce is a community in the municipality of Highlands East, Haliburton County, Ontario, Canada.

The community of Wilberforce (in the former Township of Monmouth), was established as "Pusey," a station on the Irodale, Bancroft and Ottawa Railway, named for Charles J. Pusey, president of the IB&O.

This little railway had initially been built to carry iron ore from (open pit) mines at Irondale, Ontario. Although the mines had closed, the railway had high hopes of extending to Bancroft and even higher hopes of reaching Ottawa. At Wilberforce where the railway skirted the southern shore of Pusey Lake, the Wilberforce Lumber Company put up a sawmill.

In 1909 the Wilberforce mill was leased to James Lauder and Joseph Spears, of Toronto. The IB&O Railway was taken over by the Canadian Northern Railway in 1912. Messrs. Lauder and Spears along with Lucien B. Howland, (the former General Manager of the IB&O), looking for new business opportunities, acquired a sawmill on the new CNR line north of Parry Sound, Ontario. The three men eventually established the community of Lost Channel in the Parry Sound District, and went bankrupt in the process.