The Canada Company London England in 1824 was organized through the efforts of the novelist John Galt, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Colonization in Upper Canada was the purpose for creating The Canada Company.
In 1826 John Galt came to Canada as secretary and chief local officer of the Canada Company. In 1827 he founded Guelph, where the Canadian headquarters of the company were located. The Canada Company successfully acquired land (one million acres) from the Canadian Government, and it was to be sold in suitable parcels to settlers.
In December, 1826 Sir Peregrine Maitland, lieutenant-governor, issued a proclamation authorizing the Canada Company to commence operations in Upper Canada.
The main bloc of the Canada Company’s lands was a triangular area known as the Huron Tract. Starting at Guelph and ending at the eastern boundary of Lake Huron, in the Township of Goderich. This tract from Wilmot Township was virgin forest and swamp. The rivers could be traversed by canoes and the Indigenous trails were used as well.
Galt’s associates, Charles, Bosanquet, Richard Blanshard, John Easthope, Edward Ellice, Charles David Gordon, John Hullett, Hart Logan, Simon McGillivray, James McKillop, John Musterman, Martin Tucker Smith, William Williams, Thomas Wilson, John Wolley, (note several of the townships were named after the directors) favoured the suggestion settlers should be arriving first. Galt on the other hand advocated for roads first as a necessary access.
Anthony Van Egmond, a native Dutchman who had fought in the Napoleonic wars, moved to Pennsylvania, and then moved to Waterloo County in 1827. He made the acquaintance of John Galt in Guelph. Van Egmond agreed to oversee the Colonization Road contract with payment being accepted in Canada Company land.
The clearing started in winter as it was much more favourable for cutting and clearing the timber. The design was to cut out a road approximately 55 miles, four rods (one Chain) wide. The supervising officer was Pryor, the surveyors, McDonald, and Strickland.
Labourers were hired from settlers located in Woolwich Township, and other parts of Waterloo County. This clearing was completed in 1828. It would take several years to make this a passable highway. The road had to go through many swamps, and it was a rough corduroy road.
A Scottish gentleman, Patrick Shirreff, in 1833 travelled from Guelph to Goderich. He described the roads as “two thirds corduroy or crossway and that occasionally a large tree had been left standing in the middle of the road. Trees could be four feet in diameter. The roots projecting from the stumps in a slanting direction kept the wheels and axles of the wagons moving up and down like the beam of a steam engine.”
From the beginning the Huron Road was built to be a main road. As improvements were made it eventually became a good macadam road.
John Loudon McAdam’s method was simpler yet more effective at protecting roadways: he discovered that massive foundations of rock upon rock were unnecessary and asserted that native soil alone would support the road and traffic upon it, if it was covered by a road crust that would protect the soil underneath from water and wear. The size of stones was central to McAdam's road building theory.
For many years it was a main stagecoach route from Galt to Goderich.
Moving forward 100 years, in 1928, the Huron Road was finished and paved from Wilmot Township to Goderich. This information is taken from W. H. BREITHAUPT: Twenty Third Annual Report Of The Waterloo Historical Society, 1935.
“Since 1928 the Huron Road has been a paved highway all the way from Wilmot to Goderich. The last section, Seaforth to Clinton, was officially opened on the 3rd of September that year on which date there took place the centennial celebration of the Huron Road. The ceremonies began at Fryfogel's east of Shakespeare, and continued at Stratford, Seebach's, Mitchell, Harpurhey, Clinton and Goderich (see Waterloo Historical Society Annual Report for 1928).
A tape was cut at Harpurhey by Ontario deputy minister of highways, Hon. R. M. Smith, thus officially opening the last paved part between Stratford and Goderich. Various memorials along the road, now Number 7 Provincial Highway to Stratford and Number 8 Provincial Highway from there to Goderich, were unveiled.
At Fryfogel's, there is a cairn bearing a tablet with the following inscription: "Erected 1929 to commemorate opening of the Huron Road by the Canada Company, 1828. This marks the place of log building occupied by Sebastian and Mary Fryfogel, first settlers in Perth County, 1829."
Six miles east of Mitchell a cairn, on the northwest corner of a crossroad, surmounted by a log and axe in stone, bears the inscription: "Erected in memory of Andrew and Eva Seebach, the first settlers in Ellice Township, 1828."
In Mitchell, there is a cairn just across the street from where Col. John Hicks built the first tavern in the settlement. The inscription states: "This cairn erected in memory of the first settlers, Colonel John and Elizabeth Hicks, 1837, by the citizens of Mitchell, 1928."
Another cairn east of Clinton, on Van Edmond's farm, bears the inscription: "This cairn erected in 1928 in commemoration of the opening of the Huron Road by the Canada Company in 1828. Near this spot Anthony Van Edmond, who had the contract to build the Huron Road, had his residence and grew the first wheat in the Huron Tract."
At Goderich, a cairn was erected, in Harbor Park, on the bluff just above the harbour. The tablet, supplied by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, with a commemorative inscription, was duly unveiled. It was later transferred to one of two stone pillars which form the eastern gateway to the town.”
