Article

Baldoon

Published Online February 6, 2006

Last Edited March 4, 2015

Sheriff Alexander C. Macdonell, Selkirk's agent, struggled for years at considerable expense to the earl to make a success of the venture, but found the swampy land and the difficulty of sheep farming to be serious obstacles.
Selkirk, Thomas Douglas
The Earl of Selkirk's motives in founding colonies in PEI, Upper Canada and Red River were a complex mixture of humanitarianism and personal ambition (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-1346).

Baldoon

Baldoon, settlement founded 1804 for Highland Scots by the Earl of Selkirk on the swampy north shore of Lake St Clair on the Chenail Écarté [The Snye], Upper Canada (near Wallaceburg, Ont). Selkirk chose the site on his 1803-04 tour of Upper Canada because of its isolation and its apparently strategic location, and named it after a recently sold family estate in Scotland. He projected a large sheep farm there. The first 102 settlers reached Lachine, Qué, on the Oughton, on 19 July 1804, and travelled overland to Baldoon, only to arrive during the annual malaria season. Many soon joined in sickbed members of the advance party led by William Burn (who himself succumbed).

Sheriff Alexander C. Macdonell, Selkirk's agent, struggled for years at considerable expense to the earl to make a success of the venture, but found the swampy land and the difficulty of sheep farming to be serious obstacles. Macdonell's problems, combined with the Upper Canada authorities' lack of enthusiasm for Selkirk's settlement schemes, encouraged Selkirk to transfer his efforts to the Red River Colony. Baldoon staggered on until the War of 1812, when the earl's farm was ravaged by the invading American army of General Isaac Hull. Although this spelled an end to the settlement, some of the original Highlanders remained in the area.