What began with one resident’s quiet research project has grown into a town-wide effort to rescue Niagara-on-the-Lake’s forgotten military boundary stones and return them to public view.
On Friday morning at Simcoe Park, Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa joined the project team to cut the ribbon on four restored boundary stones, praising museum board director Ted Rumble for leading the effort.
Work on the first four stones was completed Aug. 21, and a new bronze plaque now stands in Simcoe Park explaining their history.
The ceremony marked the end of the first restoration phase and the beginning of a multi-year preservation project.
About $15,500 has been spent restoring the ordnance stones since the work began in 2021, said Marah Minor, the town’s communications co-ordinator. Another $13,000 was allocated this year for the next phase.
The town has requested funding in next year’s budget to restore more stones, “and based on the number of stones and restoration work required, the budget will be finalized,” she said.
The next round of work is expected to take place next August or September.
It was Rumble’s persistence — approaching council, rallying volunteers and digging into old maps — that sparked the project, Zalepa said.
“It’s been a tremendous opportunity for the community to come together for heritage preservation,” Rumble told The Lake Report.
The restoration has drawn together businesses, land surveyors, heritage experts, the municipal heritage committee, town staff, council and residents.
“It just shows how important celebrating our history is to people who live in Niagara-on-the-Lake,” said Rumble.
The town will restore four more stones next year, with work continuing annually until all are preserved. “Plans are already underway,” Rumble said.
NOTL was founded as a British military town. In 1823, the British military set 37 limestone markers to mark the boundaries of four military reserves: Simcoe Park, Queen’s Royal Park, the Commons and what is now the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club.
Municipal heritage committee member Alexander Topps said the “very rare” markers are among Canada’s earliest boundary monuments to define military properties.
Fellow committee member David Snelgrove said the stones were large enough to make their purpose clear: a warning not to build on military land.
That’s why, Rumble said, NOTL’s Simcoe Park is still here in Old Town.
“Why was it never developed? Why did nobody build a house here? Because of those stones,” he said.
So far, nineteen stones have been found in town — “the most of any town in the world,” Rumble said. “That’s really something.”
Amanda Demers, the heritage committee’s vice chair, said this project is years in the making.
“We’ve been working with Dr. Rumble since, I think, 2018-2019, to get this project off the ground and going,” she said. “It took a big step back during COVID.”
Rumble and the committee used old maps and on-the-ground searches to track down stones, Demers said. “A lot of research and a lot of walking.”
“It’s just really exciting to see it come to fruition,” she added.
The marker on display at Friday’s ceremony had sunk so deep it was almost invisible. Flush with soil, hidden under mulch.
“All you could see was the top of it,” said Rumble.
Topps said it was easier to handle than others, which are usually much longer and heavier.
Retired land surveyor Richard Larocque said surveyors dug it out, cleaned it and reset it upright, “in the format that they were originally set by the British Army.”
It was done “in such a way that it won’t sink again over the next 200 years,” Rumble said, adding that most had settled deep into the ground over the past two centuries.
Some stones have sunk out of sight, and there’s a chance not all 37 can be recovered, said Demers.
Rumble said local businesses that stepped up to help with the work include the Larocque Group, Tree Amigos Landscaping Inc. and Queenston Quarry Reclamation Company president Frank Racioppo.
“Many people came together to make this happen,” Zalepa added. “We see (that) many times here (in NOTL).”
One time, residents asked Coun. Wendy Cheropita about the stones in Simcoe Park before there were any signs up explaining them. She had no answer — until Rumble gave her the history, she said.
“He was a one-man show at the beginning — talking to every resident that he could, to talk about the importance of it — and doing research,” said Cheropita.
“I love it when something bubbles from the community,” she added. “We’ve got this beautiful collaborative process — people working together, making great things happen.”
Larocque said that NOTL is a town where “we’re constantly tearing things down (and) rebuilding — and sometimes it’s necessary.”
But wherever possible, he said NOTL should preserve what it can.
This sentiment was echoed by Niagara Falls MPP Wayne Gates, who attended the ceremony and called heritage vital to the town’s identity and appeal.
“This is a community that comes together,” Gates told The Lake Report, “that has an incredible history.”
“We have to do everything we can to preserve it.”
