West Montrose is an unincorporated rural community in Woolwich Township in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. As of the 2016 census, the population of the community
was 257.
The settlement of West Montrose is designated as a Cultural Heritage Landscape by the Township of Woolwich because of its history of pioneer settlement, its traditional bridges and the Old Order Mennonite culture.
Located in West Montrose are single family homes, a church, a small store, a bed-and-breakfast and the West Montrose Covered Bridge, a local tourist attraction.
History
thumb|left|United Church and Cemetery, established 1907
West Montrose was made up of Lots Seventy, Seventy-one, and Seventy-four of the Germany Company survey in Woolwich Township. Land was purchased from the German Company sometime after 1807 by Daniel Erb, David Eby and Christian Stauffer in 1807. However it was not settled until about 1850.
A few Scots arrived at that time, including Andrew L. Anderson from Montrose, Scotland who bought land in the 1850s; presumably he named the village Montrose after his home town. The word West was added in about 1865 to differentiate the community from Montrose in Welland County.
By the early 1850s, other Mennonites from Pennsylvania began arriving to this part of Waterloo County, settling in nearby St. Jacobs and also on farms surrounding West Montrose. They were the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch. The word "Dutch" does not refer to the Netherlands but is a misnomer for Deitsch or Deutsch (German). Isaac Swope settled here in 1858 and built a log cabin. Many others owned land here but did not actually settle; they sold it later to other settlers. Jacob Benner, opened a woolen mill in 1858 and a sawmill in 1861.
There was no railway connection until 1907. By then, the population had dropped from a peak of 200 in 1890 to a mere 50.
In 2011, residents of West Montrose were involved in a project to prevent Capital Paving from starting a gravel pit within 180 metres from the covered bridge at core of the community. The company had announced in 2008 that it planned to dig up an estimated 2.6 million tonnes of sand and gravel that sits "underneath a cornfield in the Mennonite area". The volunteers of the Bridge Keepers group succeeded thanks in part to reliance on a study by the University of Waterloo's heritage resources centre about the cultural heritage of the landscape. When Woolwich Township amended its official plan, designating the lands around West Montrose as a Cultural Heritage Landscape, A celebration was held in September 2013; it was attended by the Chair of Waterloo Region, Ken Seiling, whose comments indicated praise for the role played by the community in preventing the gravel pit. On maps and rural addresses, the West Montrose area also extends quite far from the core, into an area that some might consider to be Winterbourne, Ontario. The Grand River flows through West Montrose.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, West Montrose had a population of 245 living in 80 of its 81 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 257. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
The settlement and the surrounding countryside are noted by The Region of Waterloo Official Plan as home to a large Mennonite community.
Attractions
The West Montrose Covered Bridge over the Grand River was constructed in 1880-1881 by John and Benjamin Bear. The only covered bridge remaining in Ontario, This is one of under 200 covered bridges still surviving in Canada.
Notable people
- W. T. Tutte (1917-2002), British codebreaker and mathematician.
See also
- List of unincorporated communities in Ontario