Gore’s Landing Dock

Gore’s Landing exists because its wharf became an important link in the local transportation network. Steamboats began to ply Rice Lake in 1832, and by the 1860s they regularly called at the dock, meeting passengers and freight traveling between Cobourg and Peterborough. The dock’s pagoda was originally designed in 1906 by Gerald Hayward, who was raised locally and became an internationally acclaimed water-colourist known for locket-sized portraits in miniature of leading dignitaries in Europe and America. Although famous, he retained a fondness for Rice Lake and built The Willows, later remodeled as the Victoria Inn, as his summer home in 1902. The pagoda suited the village’s scenic beauty and long-established reputation as an artist’s colony and sportsman’s paradise, and it remained one of the most attractive landmarks on the lake. Boating continued to be a major business on Rice Lake, and the dock at the end of Plank Road with its distinctive pagoda served travelers on the Trent-Severn Waterway.

Ontario · Canada