Road to Egan’s Farm, Little Rideau Lake, Ont. M. Lamont n.d. Oil on board 15 3 /8” x 16 ½” framed with damaged kraft paper dust block signed: M. Lamont insert photo of painting here A gummed label affixed to the damaged kraft paper dust block on the back side reads: “Road to Egan’s Farm, Little Rideau Lake, Ont. Margaret W. Lamont” [the manuscript notation is in A. J. Lamont’s printing hand, done with a blue ball point pen] insert photo of label here
Here we have a rural landscape. We can see a dirt road snaking from the lower left corner through the centre of the painting, only to disappear on the rise behind a pair of old deciduous trees.
The painting shows an old patent style rail fence, originally maybe only two or three rails high, running along the left side of the road. The painting suggests a definite slope of the ground, from lower at the bottom left corner to higher at the top right corner. Are those hay fields beyond the fence and road?
It’s difficult to make out shadows from the trees in the painting, so a sense of viewer’s direction of sight can’t be easily discerned. Is this a painting that shows the landscape around noon on a sunny/high wispy cloudy day? It’s certainly a summer day view – the trees’ leaves are well formed and green, not coloured as they would be in the fall.
Other than the notation by Archie Lamont that this painting shows the ‘Road to Egan’s Farm, Little Rideau Lake, Ontario’, we have no proof of where this particular landscape was located.
Little Rideau Lake, in the Rideau Canal system in eastern Ontario, with the town of Westport at it’s south-east most point, is now known as Upper Rideau Lake. Past the locks at the Narrows above the village of Newboro, the lake expands in to Big Rideau Lake. There has never been a village or town known as Little Rideau Lake, nor a Post Office with this name. The Narrows Lock Road (now County Road No. 14) runs south from the Narrows Lock toward County Road 42. County Road 42 runs roughly east – west from Westport to Crosby, through Newboro. Miller Lane connects with the Narrows Lock Road just below the Narrows, and another lane – Egan Lane, connects with Miller’s Lane. Egan Lane runs westward to what used to be known as Little Rideau Lake, with Loon Island opposite.
A man named Alphonsus Vincent Egan owned 110 acres in the West part of Lot 4 Concession I in North Crosby Township from 1917. This property formed a block around Miller Lane on the west side of the Narrows Lock Road south of the Narrows Lock. Alphonsus Vincent Egan, the husband of Phyliss McCann, and the son of Patrick & Ellen [nee Donahue] Egan of Westport, died on 13 February 1946. At that time, the property appears to have been vested in Alphonsus V & Phyliss’s only son Alphonsus Arthur Egan (born about 1918 or 1919). There appears to have been a residence, a small barn, and a couple of other outbuildings at the north-west corner of Miller Lane and Narrows Lock Road. Only the small barn and one smaller outbuilding remained standing by late 2024.
Was this where ‘the road to Egan’s Farm’ was located?
Alphonsus Vincent Egan’s family relations owned farms a couple of miles north of the Narrows Lock on the Rideau Canal system in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Thomas Egan received the Crown Patent for all 200 acres of Lot 16 Concession I in North Crosby Township in 1863. Thomas appears to have been dead by the mid-1860s, and his widow Ellen disbursed the land to son Michael. After Michael died of consumption in 1886 the property passed to his sons Thomas and Eugene. The property passed to Legouri Egan, a son of Michael’s, in 1904, and in 1926 Legouri’s widow Mary sold all interest in Lot 16 to William Joseph Smith.
Ellen Egan, most likely the widow of Thomas Egan of Lot 16, purchased all 200 acres of Lot 15 Concesssion I in 1866. She sold the property to their son Patrick Egan in 1875, and after Patrick died around 1913, his widow Ellen transferred ownership of the property to their son Daniel Edward Egan. After Daniel died around 1934, the property passed to his sister Mary Jane. Mary Jane died unmarried in 1943, and the surviving family members, through the Estate of Alphonsus Vincent Egan, sold the property out of family hands to Lewis Branch in 1947.
So here we see that there were several spots which could be considered to be ‘Egan’s Farm’.
But Alphonsus Vincent Egan was married to Mary Phyliss McCann in 1910. Phyliss had a sister named Ann M. McCann. Ann or Anna McCann bought a parcel 375 feet in length along the eastern shore of “Upper Little Rideau Lake” from Alphonsus Vincent in 1922. This property included a ‘right-of-way’ access to the property through the remaining land that Alphonsus Vincent retained. Anna McCann died at the end of April, 1959, and this parcel reverted to Alphonsus Vincent’s son Arthur Alphonsus Egan a short while later.
Additionally, in 1892, Thomas Donahue had purchased a portion of Lot 5 Concession II being ‘a point of land 7.57 acres lying e[ast] and s[outh] of [the] water of Rideau Lake’.This parcel passed to Preston & Ida McCann in 1920. The parcel in turn went to Samuel T McCann in 1928. Without throwing a lot of resources at the question, it presently appears as if there was no relationship between Anna McCann, Preston & Ida McCann, or Samuel T. McCann, other than a common surname. But it is clear that Preston & Ida, and then Samuel T. owned property along the south lake shore, as did Anna McCann.
Archie and Meg Lamont had developed the habit of renting summer cottages for a week or two each summer, from the early 1940s. They rented initially in the Muskoka area, then moved more to the Haliburton area, after their daughter married and moved to Peterborough. After their daughter moved to Kingston in 1949, Archie & Meg began to rent cottages at various spots north of Kingston – on the Rideau system, on Buck Lake and on Devil Lake.
So, it seems most likely that the painting by Meg Lamont was initiated when Archie and Meg rented a cottage, possibly from one of the McCanns, on Little Rideau Lake. When might this have been? All things considered, it seems plausible that the seeds for this painting were planted in the summer of 1951, 1952 or 1953, and completed at home in Toronto in the winter months. Any and all comments on the above are welcome!
find details about Archie & Meg here
find details about Meg’s other oil paintings here
find details about Archie Lamont’s water-colour paintings here