 In 1852, lumberman Henry W. Sage and Grant built a sawmill at Bell Ewart, south of Barrie.Its location allowed it to collect lumber floated to it from Lake Simcoe or Lake Couchiching, and then ship the resulting timber south to Toronto on the Northern Railway of Canada's mainline, a short distance to the west.This began a period of intense operations that saw most of the useful lumber in the Lake Simcoe area rapidly stripped over a period of about a decade.