Saturday Streetscapes: Hanes Road / Hanes Street

By Michael Walmsley

Hanes Road is N of West Road and runs E-W from Hwy 60; Hanes Street runs S off Main Street E between Fairy Ave and Cliff Ave

James Hanes was born in 1816 and in 1861 ended up living in the community of Utterson (about 16 km south of Huntsville). 

Being avid outdoorsmen, the Hanes clan often came to a large bay that was teeming with fish. That bay would eventually become known as Hunters Bay. In order to stake a claim on his favourite fishing hole, James built a crude shanty on the shoreline of the bay. The fishing was so good that, by 1863, James had persuaded his wife that they should forsake their confines in Utterson for the shanty at anglers’ paradise, thereby becoming one of the area’s first permanent resident families. By the way, James’ wife Susannah (nee Garrow) successfully persuaded her husband to expand that meagre shanty into a comfortable log cabin located on the current site of the Infra Pipe Solutions company. Unfortunately, Susannah passed away a mere three years later, but James continued to live in his Huntsville home and forged a long and important connection between the names Hanes and Huntsville.

James was very involved with community activities. He was Huntsville’s first postmaster in 1872 and, in 1886, became a member of Huntsville’s inaugural village council. One of the council’s first items of business was to draw up a set of rules by which residents of the emerging community could be held accountable for their actions. Within a month of beginning their task, the councillors had laws in place regulating such things as chimney and fence erection, the prohibiting of firearms within the village, limiting the growth of weeds, and restraining the wandering of dogs. They also saw fit to put some limits on what were considered “moral contraventions”:  no alcohol for children, no indecent writing on public property, no uttering of profane language, no disorderly conduct, no keeping of any house of ill repute, no gambling, and no wearing of a bathing suit near any public road between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. The newly-incorporated village, after all, was just beginning to claw its way out of the surrounding bush so any and all attempts to bring order and refinement to its citizenry was seen as paramount to the community’s ultimate success.  That “bathing suit” stipulation, no doubt, went a long way to taming the locals!

James lived until February 18, 1900. His 84 years of life are commemorated on the signs of Huntsville’s Hanes Road and Hanes Street.

Michael Walmsley is a retired elementary school principal who resides in Huntsville. He enjoys looking at things with a bit of “outside-the-box” perspective and totally believes in living today with a hand on the past and an eye on the future. He has published articles in Kanawa and Adventure Kayak magazines and has recently published a book entitled The Joy of Kayaking – Including the Kayak Quiz. 

During this past year, as president of the PROBUS Club of Muskoka North, he has written a weekly article to the club’s membership which has included a focus on Huntsville’s streets. These articles have been combined into book form which will be published in the summer of 2021.