North Seguin and Dufferin Bridge, two of a dozen faded communities along the Nipissing Colonization Road, are arguably two of Parry Sound District’s most ghosted communities. Founded in the mid-1870s by immigrants from England and Ireland, within half a century the neighboring communities – so close to one another as no one really could define when one ended and the other began – were already failing as farmers threw in the towel and moved on. The work was too hard, the reward too paltry. The land had defeated them.
Remnants of North Seguin and Dufferin Bridge are rare and fleeting as the elements began eating away at farms and businesses almost as soon as they were abandoned. The most notable reminder of these tiny but resilient communities is the Dufferin Methodist Cemetery.
Shaded by towering pines, the cemetery is full of markers that speak to those who settled here and the hardships they endured. Among the heartbreaking timeworn headstones is that belonging to the James and Janie Morden family, who lost six of seven children to a 1902 diphtheria outbreak (the surviving child, Lucinda, lived to 102 years of age). Trying to imagine the grief this couple endured in the open-wound days after laying their young ones to rest is almost unimaginable. A salve was placed over the wounds a few years later when James and Janie welcomed another child.
The Vigrass family is well-represented among the headstones as well, fitting as they were among the original settlers of North Seguin and among the last to leave. In between, they were pillars of the community. Albert Vigrass farmed, took over the combined store and post office from his father-in-law, Samuel Plumtree, in 1899, and operated a sawmill and logging camp that employed local men. In 1929, the Depression hit Canada like a sledgehammer. Vigrass was financially devastated when creditors were unable to pay their accounts and business partnerships dried up. With a heavy heart, he was forced to close the mill, a decision he lamented until the day he died eight years later in 1937.
Vigrass’ wife, Rebecca (or Lena), continued the store and post office for a few years longer. When she closed shop in 1940 there was little left of the twin communities beyond a handful of scattered farms desperately clinging to life.
And the cemetery, of course.
The Dufferin Methodist Cemetery once had a frame church, its construction overseen by the veritable Mr. North Seguin, Albert Vigrass. The church is long gone. All the remains are stones outlining where is sat and a heritage sign speaking of its existence. The sign suggests the church mysteriously disappeared one night, torn down plank by plank without anyone the wiser. That story is as untrue as it is unlikely – the church was dismantled with permission and its lumber used in the construction of a home. It’s a great tale though!
For more information on North Seguin see my book Founded on Stone: Tales of Early Parry Sound District.
