2,363 miles
May 18 – Nairn
Centre is now officially named “Nairn and Hyman”. It is a township in the Sudbury District of
Ontario, a sprawling administrative district outside of the City of Sudbury,
possibly comparable to a county. About
477 people live in Nairn & Hyman. I
can’t find out anything about the existence of Hyman before its inclusion with
Nairn, and for some reason the double-named township contains the communities
of Nairn Centre and Prospect Hill, so I wonder whether Hyman had become
Prospect Hill at some point.
A road out of town is called Ferry Street. It ends at the
river, and another road on the other side leads away from the river, but no
ferry is currently in operation.
It’s probably used now as a boat ramp.
It’s probably used now as a boat ramp.
 |
| Ferry St. at the river's edge |
 |
| abandoned school |
Although the local school appears to be abandoned, the township is caring for its young people by providing this outdoor covered sports pavilion.
 |
| covered sports pavilion |
The town(s)
seem to have been settled by Scots & Welshmen involved in logging, and put
on the map by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Logging and mining were the main economic activities throughout the
communities’ history. Around 1900, Nairn
Centre had a log-built one-room schoolhouse, 3 churches (unknown denominations),
3 hotels, a store, a post office, and a train station. It was a distribution point for goods flowing
both north and south. Beef cattle,
vegetables, strawberries, and blueberries were among the products being shipped
to southern markets.
In 1925, Levi
Pomfrey built an Orange Hall for his friends in the secret society called the
Orange Order. It was the Unionist
society formed in 1795 in the north of Ireland to uphold Protestant religion
and Protestant control in Ireland.
This
building was used as a community center for its members: a place for dances
& dinners, graduation parties & wedding receptions. Children were inoculated by a health nurse at
this hall. And every year on July 12th,
the Orangemen of Nairn would have a meeting and then parade around town in
support of Protestants in Ireland.
 |
| abandoned garage, by twurdemann |
Still, I
haven’t found any information about Hyman at any point in this story. By 1896, it was mentioned & subsumed into
Nairn Centre. I did find a person named
Ellis Walton Hyman, a German-American tanner who became a Canadian entrepreneur,
politician, and philanthropist in the development of London, Ontario. He was the treasurer of the London, Huron and
Bruce Railway for two years, which route passed through this area. In other tiny Canadian towns, we’ve seen
names derived from just as tenuous a connection, so this is a possibility in
this context. The little town that never
was, named for a man who never went there.
Nairn
history: http://www.nairncentre.ca/Nairn%20Centre%201896%20-%201996%20The%20First%20100%20Years.pdf
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