In June of 1976 when I transitioned from Messrs. Macdonald, Affleck Barrs. &c. in Ottawa to practice law in Almonte the featured image was then the active Land Registry office. It was to become an important symbol of my life. Not only was it pivotal to my real estate law practice (typical of a country lawyer); it just happened to be located at the corner of Brougham and Clyde Streets around the corner from my first residence on the corner of Brougham Street and Martin Street South.  By further coincidence the house I rented belonged to the incumbent minister (Rev. George Bickley) of St. Paul’s Anglican Church immediately across the street from the Land Registry office. St. Paul’s Anglican Church had been constructed in 1863.

A letter having been received from the secretary of Mississippi Lodge, Almonte, asking the members of St. John’s Lodge to assist that lodge in the ceremony of laying the corner stone of St. Paul’s (Anglican) Church in that place, an emergent meeting was called by the W.M. and without opening the lodge it was unanimously decided to accept of their brotherly invitation. Notices were given to all the brethren as early as possible as the notice to the lodge was short.

The brethren met in their lodge room at 8 o’clock a.m., June 15, 1863 and at once proceeded to Almonte accompanied by music. The St. John’s Lodge on arriving in sight of Almonte were met by the brethren of Mississippi Lodge in regalia headed by the Almonte Brass Band. Both lodges proceeded at once to the lodge room of Mississippi Lodge. The ceremonies of laying the corner stone were performed in Masonic style.

As it also happened the first Master of Mississippi Lodge No. 147 in Almonte was Dr. William Mostyn who about the same time had built a grand stone home at the corner of Clyde and Bridge Streets.  His home was distinctive even to the time of my arrival in Almonte as having been owned by an Irish born medical practitioner (most recently Dr. Frank Murphy) – inspiring the unimaginative handle, the “Doctor’s House”. Dr. Murphy (along with Miss K. Patricia Flesher of Flesher Furs, Ottawa) were among my first luncheon guests.

And finally, of added serendipity, the then current Land Registrar was Mr. J. C. Smithson who – with Mr. Harry Walker (Manager of the LCBO) – were the two men who years later sponsored my application for admission to Mississippi Lodge No. 147.

The Land Registry office housed the original handwritten and typed historical records of conveyances, mortgages, etc. in what was described as Lanark North. Lanark South – the only other land registry office in the County of Lanark – was located in Perth, the county seat where the court house and jail were also located side-by-side.

It is important to recognize the significance of a unique land registry in Almonte.  What little I know of other land registry offices in Ontario is that they were predominantly located in central areas of the province. When in Ottawa for example, the only other land registry office I knew of in the area was in Russell, Ontario (an independent township). When I moved to Almonte in 1976 the population was about 4,500. I have been told that Almonte was historically more active than it is now, that it once had 4 hotels. Nor, for example, is it a small compliment that Almonte was on the B&O Railway line which necessitated the building of bridges to accommodate a less direct (and less expensive) overland route to the lumber town of Renfrew, Ontario.

Almonte’s first European-bred settler was David Shepherd, who in 1818 was given 200 acres (0.81 km²) by the Crown to build and operate a mill on the Mississippi River. The site became known as Shepherd’s Falls. That name was never official, however, and Shepherd sold his patent after his mill burned down. The patent’s buyer, Daniel Shipman, rebuilt the mill and the settlement became known as Shipman’s Mills by about 1821.

Most of Shipman’s Mills’ early settlers were Scottish and later Irish. A textile town almost from the start, by 1850 it was the home of seven busy woollen mills. It was one of the leading centres in Canada West for the manufacture of woollen cloth. The construction of a railway line to Brockville stimulated the economic growth of Almonte. During this time of rapid expansion, the town changed its name from Shipman’s Mills to Ramsayville, and then to Waterford.

In 1869, Almonte was a village with a population of 2,000 on the Mississippi River in the Township of Ramsay, County of Lanark. It was a station of the Brockville and Ottawa Railway. By the 1870 the town had thirty stores and forty other businesses. Almonte was incorporated as a village in 1871, and was incorporated as a town in 1880.

Years afterwards Almonte’s land registry office came front and centre. A new land registry office had been built in Almonte to replace the old stone building (which imitated the identical model constructed throughout the Province of Ontario in the 1860s and thereafter). There is still such a structure on Nicholas Street In Ottawa across the street from where Ottawa’s new land registry had been constructed. What sparked attention of the new land registry office in Almonte was the province-wide conversion of historical original records to electronic records. Because Lanark County was – compared to Toronto for example – a small site, it was used as a Beta test site to initiate the new electronic platform. I was part of that transition from old to new.

When – because of the nature of electronic housing – there was no longer a need for duplicate land registry offices in the county, a move was mistakenly set afoot by the incumbent NDP government (no doubt in deference to its influential supporters in the Town of Perth) to close the Almonte office and return the one and only central land registry to the county seat in Perth.  The problem was that the Perth land registry was still inhabiting a war time building; while Almonte had a sparkling new building with all the modern conveniences for the proposed alteration to electronic registration.

When the Almonte bar got wind of the proposal to close Almonte’s new land registry office in favour of the war time Perth office, a media blitz ensued and the government proposal was made a mockery.  I was quoted at that meeting as referring to the government’s proclamation as an “epistle” (which was the most inventive derogation I could imagine without lapsing into the vernacular). The evident truth of what we were saying was incontrovertible and the government wisely reversed its decision. The Almonte bar was able to snap its fingers at its nose-in-the-air compatriots in the Town of Perth. They (or their subordinates) would be obliged to drive to Almonte to conduct their land title searches and reviews of surveys; as well as to convene with other lawyers to close real estate transactions,

Our glory in Almonte was short-lived.

The “new” land registry office built on the outskirts of Almonte is no longer open, as the Province of Ontario discontinued land registration counter services at all 54 Land Registry Offices, including the one in Almonte, effective October 13, 2020. The new facility was built after the province took over the old 1879 registry office, which still exists in downtown Almonte.

Commensurate with the conversion of documents to electronic models was the redefinition of “good and marketable” title. Formerly one (such as you or I) was required to prove clear title for a period of 40 years preceding sale or mortgage of the property. The time limit was 60 years when applied to Crown lands which one’s ancestors may have assumed by prescription (open and unobstructed use). After the legislative change however, the government mandated that, once the ownership of land were “converted” to electronic registration (and, naturally, having met all the prerequisites for the alteration), the current owner then had good and marketable title to the land without the necessity to review what often amounted to painstaking investigation of illegible documents and surveys. Indeed the government made the unique decision to provide that, if two lawyers – representing independent parties (seller and buyer) agree upon the legitimacy of the title, and they so signify in writing (electronically), that’s the end of any possible dispute arising from the so-called “back title”. That was the end of title searching as I knew it.  Instead the requirement defaulted to the need only to examine current documentation.  Then arose the question, what to do with the old written documents and the parchment surveys? Efforts have been made to preserve many of those ancient documents in local museums.  Indeed many of the old documents and surveys I inherited from the office of Raymond A. Jamieson QC have been handed over to our local museum in the Village of Appleton.