Published in The BANAR September 2013
by Wilbrod LeClerc
The Blackburn Hamlet that we know today was first sold by the Crown to lumbermen around 1790. When the lumber disappeared, the land was sold to the first settlers in the early 1800’s. Most of these settlers were English and Irish. Among them, there were a few Scots and as well as two Frenchmen, Louis Perrault who arrived in 1829 and M. Cléroux, who arrived around 1860.
The community was called Green’s Creek, named after Mr. Green who owned the sawmill on the creek. Later, three families of Daggs arrived and that sufficed to change the name to Daggville. When a post office was granted in 1876, the name of Blackburn was chosen to honour Robert Blackburn, a local politician who had been instrumental in getting it. Blackburn Hamlet was officially established as the community name in 1967.
The community was divided into two parts on either side of Mud Creek: to the north, Blackburn Corners, and to the south, Blackburn Station on the Canadian Pacific rail line (now abandoned). This line had opened in 1898 as the Montreal and Ottawa Railway. The station was lost in a fire on Christmas eve in 1953. Telephone service arrived in 1911 and hydro in 1931. Early in the 1900’s, an explosion razed a dynamite factory situated on Innes Road across from the Regional Detention Centre. Generally, the farmers were market gardeners and sold their vegetables at the market in Ottawa where a lot of hay and cordwood for heating homes was also sold. Since 1959, most of these farms have become part of the Greenbelt, property of the National Capital Commission (NCC). Their expropriation created the island surrounded by the Greenbelt which has become Blackburn Hamlet.
In 1870 work started on the St. Mary the Virgin Anglican church on Navan road. The Methodists would meet in the winter in Adam Kemp’s large house and, during the summer, in a large tent in Ziba Scharfe’s wood.
The French-speaking catholics would attend mass either at St-Joseph in Orléans or at the Cyrville church. Some residents had tried to get a local church but the Archbishop did not think that there were enough people to provide for the needs of a parish. Eventually, a parish church was built in Notre Dame des champs on Navan road in 1955.