Some of the most interesting discoveries are accidental, like finding the village of Bath on the North shore of Lake Ontario. It’s between Kingston and the ferry to Glenora in Prince Edward County. The nearest major shopping is in Napanee.

I was on my way from Victoria Lodge in Centreville and heading for Union Lodge in Napanee when I purposely bypassed Highway 401 to invest a few hours in Bath. Instinct told me The Craft had a background in this settlement and a visit to the Bath Library proved me right. In fact, the library had been a lodge building until the 1890's and the history books showed that The Craft had been there longer than Bath.

LAYER CAKE LODGE

What is now the library was designed and built by the village carpenter, Abraham Harris, in 1859 for the Mechanics’ Institute. The locals called it “the layer cake hall”. It’s the town library now, but the historic plaque on the front wall says it was a meeting place for the Masonic Lodge, Presbyterian and Anglican Churches, and the Millhaven Women’s Institute. It then served as a seniors meeting centre and a museum. It was restored in 1981 through citizens and provincial heritage funds. You can read books inside or, in the summer, take them to a picnic table or park bench outside.

Addington Lodge built the first Masonic Temple in Upper Canada. Most lodges met in inns or over stores. That street in Bath was (and still is) named “Lodge Street”. The building burned down but the cornerstone, “Addington Lodge No. 760 - 1824" is a relic in the current lodge, in use as a perfect ashlar. That’s all that’s left of the first temple.

GOOD REPUTATION

The town historians also recall that in the early 1800's education was neither free nor available to the majority. In 1822 Addington Lodge hired a teacher to teach local children reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar. Their advertisement for the position called for “Unimpeachable morals and good general character” The historians also noted that education was on a user-pay basis, except for “the poor and indigent, who were forgiven their fees.”

The Grand Lodge of Canada was formed in 1855. Part of the transition was for granting of a charter to Maple Leaf Lodge No. 119 at Bath in 1859, the year that Bath became a village.

For 31 years the Mason’s and the Presbyterians shared the Layer Cake Hall. While it looked like a church and was used by two different congregations, it had been designed as the home of a fraternal order. (Can someone please tell me what “The Mechanics’s Institute” was, what they did, when they started, and  whether they are still active today?)

Mason's side enterance

That joint tenure went from 1859 until 1890. Church members went in the front door and occupied the main floor. The Masons used the side door, shown here at the left. They mounted a winding staircase that started coincidentally in the true east, rose seven steps, then passed through a door into the inner chamber, which was the second floor. Deeds and business arrangements being rather vague in those days, disagreement broke out between the tenants. The Masons moved out, the Presbyterians moved up, and the Anglican moved in, holding services on the main floor.

NEW HOME WITH A HISTORY

The lodge went from rented digs to rented digs until they found a home with an even longer history than the Layer Cake, a structure on the main highway know to locals as “The E. D. Priest Store.” Built in 1820, it started out as a store with a front porch that had chairs and chatting space and shelter from the rain. The owners lived upstairs.

Old store, new lodge on the main street

It had various incarnations. It served as a school when the second school in town burned down. (The replacement school was made of bricks.) It was a hotel for a while, and it’s easy to imagine a stage pulling up to the front veranda to unload mail and passengers. It was even a factory for a time, manufacturing “Shoshonee Indian Remedy”, a cure-all akin to snake oil and registering 110 proof.

The building is white clapboard and, like Topsy, “it just growed” with additions tacked on to meet various needs.  The upstairs living quarters became the lodge room and the store/factory area became a public hall, with a hardwood dance floor, stage at the front, and a large kitchen for  catering. The first event held in the hall after its conversion was a kitchen shower “for Worshipful Brother Edwin Buck and his wife Ada following their marriage.” What followed were dances, concerts, plays, euchre parties, and road shows and all sorts of community activities that needed a roof or stage.

Outdoor-indoor comforts

 When the building qualified as an Ontario heritage structure in1979, one of the additions was slated for removal. But Maple  Leaf stayed true to tradition and the tacked- on structure was spared. In the days before plumbing, dancers and revelers had to  have some place to------well------to “go”. This wing was an  indoor-outdoor, a fully attached privy with a service port at  the lower right to remove the “honey buckets” The lodge now  has town water and sewage so the privy was decommissioned Outdoor-indoor comforts but left intact.

ACTIVITY CENTRE PAST AND PRESENT

For more than 50 years the hall was the social centre of bath, until the churches erected larger buildings with basements and kitchens. Then much of the action moved to the church halls. But older members still remember installations when members would spend the day before the meeting shoring up the second storey with planking and four-by-four timbers. (The floor was reinforced with steel beams 1978.) It still serves the community at large. Brownies meet there once a week. Ladies of Bath hold an antique sale once a month. And it still attracts showers and dances. Prince Arthur Lodge, formerly from Odessa, now meets in Bath, and Limestone Lodge, an itinerant daylight lodge, meets there when it’s in town.

HALL OF MEMORIES

Albert Simpkins , a Past Master of Maple Leaf Lodge and a Past Grand Steward arrived at the front door of the lodge in a pickup truck. We went in the back door (next to the decommissioned privy) and up the creaking stairs. He was most eager to share stories with us.
“See this, “ he said. “That’s the Fort Henry Bible. from 1824.” Parishioners would clutch these books, measuring four inches  by six inches, on their way to church. They were invariably  covered with black morocco leather and the page edges were gilt. After years and years going to and from chapel, they would start  to show signs of wear. But not this one.

Albert Simpkins, PM and Guide

“Here,” challenged Albert. “Try opening it.” It was as heavy as a rock. In fact, it was a rock. A brother from Fort Henry had worked the stone to a pebble finish of morocco leather. This  was covered with black matt paint and the “pages” were finished in gold . It had the perfect appearance of a personal copy of the Holy Bible. That was in 1824. It is now an artifact of the lodge. Albert also has stories about the lodge’s wooden furniture. The antique chairs and benches were refinished by inmates at the nearby Collin’s Bay prison. And he points with pride to a photo of the five past masters who lived offshore on Amherst Island. “That one,” he says, “was the Captain of the ferry. He was never late for lodge.”

The stone Bible, the furniture, the pictures, all these things are treasures from the past. So is Albert. -end-