Stag Island, the forgotten resort

Stag Island was named for the deer once associated with it. By the late nineteenth century, passenger steamers had made river excursions a popular form of recreation, and the island's position between the Canadian and American shores made it a natural stop.

Around 1890, Nelson Mills of Marysville began developing Stag Island as a resort. Historical records describe cottages, a hotel, a dining hall, a dance pavilion and other recreational facilities. Visitors arrived by steamer to spend summer days boating, fishing, bathing and socializing on the river.

Before family car trips became ordinary, excursion boats such as the Tashmoo and Greyhound carried passengers along the St. Clair River. In 1900, a steam yacht operated by the David family also carried visitors between Corunna and Stag Island.

The David brothers added a tintype photography business for passengers and offered small excursions up Talfourd Creek. The Moore Museum records one especially memorable local tale: passengers were promised a look at rare albino turtles, until someone scraped white paint from one of the turtles.

As automobiles became the preferred way to travel, river excursions declined. Without the same stream of steamer passengers, the resort era gradually ended. Stag Island remained a summer community, but its grand public-resort identity became part of local history.

The island's history reaches far beyond its hotel and steamers. When Treaty 29 ceded the Huron Tract to the Crown in 1827, the Chippewa of the St. Clair River kept the islands in the river, Stag Island among them. It later changed hands in a trade the Sarnia Historical Society has told in full: the island, exchanged even up for a 400-acre sugar bush near present-day Petrolia. Including that history makes the island's story more complete, and avoids beginning its past only when the resort was built.