RAQ (Rarely Asked Questions) about Prescott, Ontario, Canada
Prescott, an historical town of almost 5,000 people, is nestled alongside the mighty
St. Lawrence River smack dab between Cornwall and Kingston. The nearest "city"
is Brockville. Being right on the US border, it also shares a close relationship with
Ogdensburg, (the 'Burg) New York. The two are connected by the
Prescott-Ogdensburg
International bridge.
Why would I want to go there?
- It's a nice place to retire to.
- There are several historical sites.
- It's quiet (most of the time).
- It's easy to get away from (and to get to).
- The people are friendly and the town is usually pretty tidy.
- The schools are top-notch.
- There's a great computer store (Prescott
Computing, what else?), a Tim Horton's AND a Burger King. (Not all in the same place,
of course. If they were, Dave would never get any work done.)
- You can use the world-class marina there.
- The idyllic river is an internationally-acclaimed Mecca for
SCUBA divers. There are
several wrecks (the old sunken ship kind, not the kind wandering the
streets) within swimming distance.
What more could you ask for?
Tell me about the sites and sights
| Fort
Wellington is the "Fort" in "Fort Town", one of Prescott's many
nicknames. It was never actually used in wartime but it sure makes a nice bookend for the
town. This is quite a nice and complete site about the Fort by Parks Canada. |
| The Battle
of the Windmill, The Forwarder's Museum and The Blue Church. The windmill has been a
lighthouse for about a hundred years now. The Forwarder's Museum displays artifacts
from
Prescott's historical forwarding trade (taking cargo off of one boat and putting it on
another), and the Blue Church was once painted green. |
| Even though it's not exactly on-topic, the Thousand
Islands (only 20 km away) have a nice site. I have to remind them to change the
spelling of the name of Boldt Castle. |
| I normally wouldn't do this, but there are a couple
of very interesting Web sites about Ogdensburg that have some photos
of Prescott (from the "other" side). See www.ogdensburg.org
and Ted Como's Photo
History. This is a worthwhile site on its own. |
How do I get there?
| Here
is a MapQuest map of our favourite diminutive metropolis. |
| By car: Prescott is on the Highway 401 that runs from Montreal on the
East and Windsor-Toronto in the West. The new 4-lane highway 416 from Ottawa is
finished. From the United States, New York Interstate 81 gets you close to the
Thousand Islands Bridge. Cross
the river at Gananoque and
head east on the 401. |
| By bus: there are buses. Voyageur runs daily routes east and west. The
bus from Ottawa makes the trip on Fridays and Sundays. Check Voyageur's site for details. |
| By train: VIA rail makes one stop in each direction every day. (Well,
almost every day.) Trains stop at 20:14 (8:14pm) going west and 21:21 (9:21pm) going east.
For more details, try VIA Canada's
site. |
| By air: Forget it. The closest commercial airport is
Ogdensburg. US travelers would have more options flying in to Syracuse. The Ottawa airport is closer to
Prescott than Pearson International is from most of Toronto. |
| By boat: American visitors often buzz over (literally) from the 'Burg.
Don't forget to report to customs, guys. |
Show me a map
| Here's a small map of the general region, showing
Prescott's relationship to Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. |
| Here's another one, showing the southern part of Leeds and
Grenville Counties and Northern New York. |
| I stole this one from Prescott Tourism but they
shouldn't mind. I'm disappointed they don't point out the location of the Tim Horton's.
It's on Edward Street, north of the overpass, across from the IGA. |
| See the Prescott Gallery for more detailed current
and historical maps. |
Is there any more information on the Internet?
| There's an official Town of
Prescott site with some basic information, pictures and some details on the Prescott Public Library. |
| The Prescott
Journal is now on line with local news
stories, classifieds and links to local information. |
| Take a look at the 360� views of Prescott at http://www.c360view.com. |
| Prescott Tourism has a
nice web site with lots of details. |
| Neptune
has done a lot of research on the local SCUBA sites. The site has tons of details on Prescott's dive attractions. |
| Hey, the high school has a home
page. |
| Prescott Historic
Seaway Iroquois Cardinal
Morrisburg Ogdensburg Soldiers. This is was a minimalist site with a couple of links and a
few paragraphs of text. In need of a spell-check, too. Keep checking it out, it has
potential. |
| The biggest event (besides the ice storm) in the past ten years or so, was the recent
40th anniversary of the local high school (South Grenville District High School, or
SGDHS). I was there. It was an enlightening experience to see my classmates
after 25 years. The people that coordinated the reunion, Canadian Reunions, have
had a web site. |
| Brockville's Recorder and Times usually has loads
of news and classifieds about the Prescott area. |
| Another Eastern Ontario site has a "mini-profile" of the South Grenville area. |
| There's a nice campground,
too. |
What about businesses on the Internet and e-commerce?
Give me a break. This is a small town struggling to keep an even keel in tough economic
times. This is not the ideal time for innovation. Albeit, some cyber-businesses have
sprouted:
| Sandra Lawn, former mayor of Prescott, not only has a park named after
her, she has her own domain name: www.sandralawn.ca.
Awesome! |
| Doyle's,
that bastion of fashion, is alive and well into it's third generation. Other then moving
to the Internet (I guess the dotCom crash hit here, too. There is no
evidence that they are pursuing their e-commerce plans), the store has been in the same location since 1911. Say hi to Tom and his
dad Joe. (They're right there, standing in front of the store.) |
| Jan Iacurci is one of
the most prolific real-estate agents in town. |
| Kriska Transportation is a large, relatively new
trucking company, centered in Prescott. |
| Novaflow Systems, Inc., is a process engineering
company which specializes in designing, manufacturing and installing systems used to
automatically dispense liquids for the ink, chemical, dye and paint industries. There
is was a
funky game on their Humour at Work Page. I guess they took it off when the
employees were spending more time with the game than the production
line. |
| Welcome To Blue Heron Productions. Patti
McCurdy had a Web Page design business. |
| Deep Water Designs Creative Graphics had a
Web page. |
| Plans and Preliminary Designs have
had a site on house plans, etc. The site has complete information for building your own house. |
| The Rosamond House Bed and Breakfast
used to be just the big house next to Kelly's Bay (and they used to have a
Web site). |
| There's one motel
I have found so far. Another house for
sale. |
For more links, see the ODP category Regional/Canada/Ontario/Towns/Prescott/
I'm the volunteer editor there. I have also added over a dozen nearby towns including
Cardinal, Spencerville, Maitland, Russell, Iroquois, Winchester, Morrisburg, North Augusta
and Athens.
Strange but true:
There is a town called Prescott
in Wisconsin, USA. It has a Prescott Journal, an IGA and a Prescott Public Library.
Call the Twilight Zone. If it wasn't for the Internet, we would never know these
things. Bruce has been
at the Prescott, Arizona IGA. Ask him about it.
Historical notes:
August 15, 2001
(two years!!!). WebJump ceases operation, forces relocation of Prescott
Ontario's Other Page to http://www.geocities.com/prescottont.
It will be years before anyone finds it.
August 13, 1999. Today, Friday the 13th
is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alfred Hitchcock. I added some pretty funny anagrams of 'Prescott Ontario' (that's rearranging the letters in
a word to make other words). I also added a banner to the main page - it helps get
exposure.
April 16, 1999. The
site has been thoroughly spell-checked. I added some nicknames and
started the Prescottisms page.
April 2, 1999. After
a long break, I have made a few additions. Check out the Lee McKnight
pages: A few photos of Lee and his soon-to-be legendary list of Prescott
Nicknames.
August 21, 1998. View some historical
pictures on the new Prescott Gallery Page. Martin Bordt (my
bro) asked for some info on Prescott's first radio station CFLC.
News Flash! July 31, 1998. I got word
from the Prescott
Journal that they have their web site up and running.
It's a start with lots of local news.
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