Road Trips Cookstown   The Wayback Times wants to hear about your favourite road or train trips for visits to antique stores, markets and antiques shows.   Share the experiences by writing us a letter, sending us an e-mail or use our Guestbook.   The first towns in our profiles are Belleville, Cookstown, Elora, Picton, Port Hope, Port Perry .

Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime     Antiquing Towns   Belleville - Cookstown - Elora - Picton - Port Hope - Port Perry     Cookstown     Belleville       Elora     Picton     Port Hope     Port Perry   When in Cookstown area, visit our advertisers. Barrie Antiques Centre - 272 Innisfill Street Roadshow's/400 Antiques Mall - the 400 Market   Cookstown - an historic village   By John Cosway Of all the Ontario communities the Wayback Times has profiled, Cookstown is the only community not located on water.   But it has certainly sailed its way into the tourist books as an Ontario favorite among buyers of antiques and collectibles.   The village - Hwy. 27 and Hwy. 89 cut through its downtown area - is less than an hour north of Toronto and is dotted with Victorian homes and businesses.   (Barrie, which is a short distance away, can easily be included in your antiquing day trip.)   Cookstown, an active community within Simcoe County, has history.   In the 1830's, the area was known as Perry's Corners, named after a tavern owner, and then Dixon's Corners. In 1947, Thomas Cooke sold some of his lots south of the village and registered the plans as Cooke's Town. Cooke's son, Major Christopher Cooke, became warden of Simcoe County in 1880.   The blossoming community became a police village in 1904 and was incorporated as Cookstown in 1962, with a reeve and four councillors.   Postcard buffs are told Cookstown's first post office opened in 1847. The postmaster was James Harper. The village's fourth postmaster was Henry Coleman, hired in 1873, and the job has remained in the Coleman family more than a century later.   In 1973, that Coleman run earned Cookstown the honour of becoming one of only two Canadian communities with continuous postal service by one family for 100 years.   If you have time for browsing after shopping the numerous antiques and collectibles stores and markets, the village has a walking tour brochure. So park the car and absorb the sights and history.   There are restaurants, tea rooms and specialty stores along the way.   The Anglican Church, built in 1857, is one of three churches in the village. And a house built by Thomas Cooke in 1830, known as Raven's Crag, still stands as a private residence on the west side of Hwy. 27 just south of Hwy. 89.   Cookstown has also been known for its sports teams, including two lacrosse teams, a soccer team, cricket, tennis, baseball etc.   If story-telling comes easy among the locals, it comes naturally. Nina Moore Jamieson, whose father was an early teacher here, wrote stories for the Mail and Empire newspaper in Toronto.   The first school was built in 1877 and another early Cookstown pupil, Emily Ferguson Murphy, went on to become the first woman magistrate in the British Empire in 1916. Murphy was also a writer of novels under the pseudonym of Jane Canuk.   Politicians born in the area include Col. T.R. Ferguson, an MP in 1885, and Hon. James S. Duff, a minister of agriculture in 1909.   Seasonal activities in Cookstown include the Agricultural Fair on the first weekend of September, the annual Wing Ding, on the first weekend of June, and South Simcoe Theatre productions at the Town Hall on Hamilton St.   Lots to do and see and when the shopping and browsing is done and you feel the need to see water, Lake Simcoe is a short drive to the northeast.   Welcome to Cookstown.   For more about Cookstown, visit the official web site: http://www.cookstown.ca/view.php?pid=37829   Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2007 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster