How Honey Harbour Got Its Name...
Borrowed from: A Taste of Honey Harbour, The Area
and Its People
Editor: Su Murdoch
Folklore accounts of the origins of the name Honey Harbour are abundant.
Centuries ago, these islands in Georgian Bay provided the Huron Indians with a
safe haven from their rivals, the Iroquois. The Hurons are said to have found
wild bees and accumulations of honey, so they termed their haven, the island of
wild bees and honey.
For lumbermen in the nineteenth century, the area is where they found
large quantities of honey as they cut the pine trees.
Perhaps the name originated with one of the settlers up the shore, Frank
J. Smith, whose schooner was blown off course, toward the east side of Present
Island. While the ship was pinned by the weather, some of the crew went ashore
at the harbour on the mainland. There they found an enormous hive of bees in a
rotting tree. Captain Smith later marked a navigational chart with the
location, calling it Honey Harbour.
Or, was it D.A. Jones, the commercial honey producer at Beaton
(Bee-Town) in Simcoe County who is responsible? Jones patented an adaptation of
the Langstroth beehive and was trying to perfect a strain of bees. To this end,
he imported queen bees from Palestine, Borneo, and Cyprus. To keep the costly
queens segregated, he placed them on islands he owned in the lower reaches of
Georgian Bay. The bees did not always cooperate with his plans, depositing the
honey in hollow logs in the bush. People from communities at the foot of the
bay discovered this and began making regular trips by boat to collect honey for
themselves.
Whether the name originated with Huron, lumbermen, the captain of a
schooner, or a honey producer, the first known official reference to a place
called Honey Harbour and its north and south bays, is an 1878 report by public
land surveyor, J.K. McLean. Perhaps, he too discovered the bees and their
honey.
