Rama Timber Transport Company
The Rama Timber Transport Company was a Canadian canal and railway company that was incorporated in 1868 to construct and operate the Black River & Lake St. John Canal & Portage Tramway. The sole purpose of the company was to transport logs from the Black River and its tributaries to the waters of Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe in Rama Township, located in the former County of Ontario.
In 1852, lumberman Henry W. Sage and Grant built a sawmill at Bell Ewart, south of Barrie. Its location allowed it to collect lumber floated to it from Lake Simcoe or Lake Couchiching, and then ship the resulting timber south to Toronto on the Northern Railway of Canada's mainline, a short distance to the west. This began a period of intense operations that saw most of the useful lumber in the Lake Simcoe area rapidly stripped over a period of about a decade.
As the lumber industry cast its eye further afield, Sage purchased timber berths in Oakley Township Muskoka, in October 1866. Sage's plan was to float the timber down the Black River from Oakley, not realizing the Black River does connect with Lake Couchiching, but flows to the Green River, about a mile below the outlet of Lake Couchiching, at Washago. Shipping via the Black River would involve taking the logs back uphill. At first Sage considered moving his mill to a site near the confluence of the two rivers. But that would still leave the problem of reaching the Northern, especially as the company had a contract with the railway to ship out of Bell Ewart for a reduced rate.
At the time, timber from the Black River was instead collected at Lake St. John, s small lake a short distance east of Couchiching. In the spring, the floodwaters would rise so much that water would flow from the Black River into Lake St. John, raising it several feet. In most years, the logs would be gathered on St. John and shipped to mills further south on the Northern Railway of Canada's mainline, which ran right beside the lake. In some years the lake would rise so much that the short neck of land between St. John and Couchiching would overflow, allowing logs to be floated onto Couchiching. Once the spring melt was over, the flow would reverse with St. John emptying back into the Black River.
To provide more stable shipping, and to solve the problem of reaching Bell Ewart, Sage then proposed cutting a canal from the Black River to Lake St. John, bypassing the existing St. John Creek, and using a log railway to cross from St. John to Couchiching. To gain support for his idea of building the canal, Sage wrote to Bradford lumberman Thompson Smith, owner of timber along the Black River and Head River. In a letter to Thompson Smith, Sage wrote: "with the canal built there will be plenty to do, without it I think business will be limited." Officials of the Northern also supported the canal idea since the decline of timber on Lake Simcoe had also led to a decline of revenue for the railway.
An Act to Incorporate the Rama Timber Transport Company, was passed by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, March 4, 1868. Shareholders of the Company, as listed in the charter, included: Henry W. Sage, owner of the Bell Ewart mill; DeWitt Linn, Sage's (brother in law) mill manager; Thompson Smith, of the Bradford mills; Frederick William Cumberland, Managing Director of the Northern Railway; William Lount, an Orillia barrister; along with Humphrey Lloyd Hime; Dalrymple Crawford and S. W. Farell.
The first director's meeting of the Company took place at Orillia, in November 1868. The directors were listed as, F. W. Cumberland; H. W. Sage; Thompson Smith; John Thomson, of Longford Mills and Clarence Moberly, Chief Engineer of the Northern Railway.
The inclusion of Moberly to the board of directors, offers a hint to the lack of details of the construction of the "mile long" canal. A "750 foot long" railway (the "Portage Tramway") was constructed across the neck of land between the north-west corner of Lake St. John and Portage Bay on Lake Couchiching. Logs from the Black River began flowing through the canal in April, 1869.