Bobcaygeon (song)

"Bobcaygeon" is a song by Canadian alternative rock group The Tragically Hip. It was released in February 1999 as a single from their sixth album, Phantom Power. The song is named after Bobcaygeon, Ontario, a town in the Kawartha Lakes region about 160 km (100 mi) northeast of Toronto. Its lyrics also obliquely reference the Christie Pits riot of 1933, which arose from tensions between Toronto's working-class Jewish community and anti-semitic Swastika clubs following a baseball game ("their voices rang with that Aryan twang"). The song won the Juno Award for Single of the Year in 2000.

Justin Rutledge recorded a cover of the song on his 2014 EP Spring Is a Girl.

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Bobcaygeon

Bobcaygeon is a community on the Trent-Severn Waterway in the City of Kawartha Lakes, east-central Ontario, Canada.

Bobcaygeon was incorporated as village in 1876, and became known as the "Hub of the Kawarthas". Its recorded name bob-ca-je-wan-unk comes either from the Mississauga Ojibway word baabaagwaajiwanaang "at the very shallow currents", giishkaabikojiwanaang "at the cliffed cascades" or obaabikojiwanaang "at currented rocky narrows", or from the French beau bocage "beautiful hedged farmland". The first lock in the Trent-Severn Waterway was built in Bobcaygeon in 1833.

History

By the early 1830s, the government of Upper Canada had completed its survey of the Township of Verulam and the area began to attract settlers. Thomas Need, who arrived in 1832 is recognized as one of the earliest settlers of the Township of Verulam and is the founder of Bobcaygeon. With his purchase of 3000 acres (12 km²) of land, Need built a sawmill, gristmill, and the first store.

In 1833, the provincial government began construction of a lock and canal at the narrows between Sturgeon and Pigeon Lakes. Soon a community began to develop around the lock and the Thomas Need's sawmill and gristmill. In the 1850s, the economic development of Bobcaygeon was stimulated by Mossom Boyd's lumbering business.