Killaloe occurs as town located in Renfrew County, {[Ontario]], Canada. Geographically it is located in Eastern Ontario. The shores of Golden Lake are located 3k (2 miles) to the east, which is well known for quality angling and year round recreation. The present day town is located about 4km (2.5 miles) north of the former townsite of "Old Killaloe", located on the Opeongo Colozination Road a.k.a the Opeongo Line.

History of the Area

This line is perhaps the best known of around twenty colonization roads in Ontario that were built and settled in period from 1850-1880 in a sizeable area, more or less bounded by Ottawa to the east, Georgian Bay to the west, north of present-day Highway 7 (above the northeast shore of Lake Ontario) to the south and Lake Nippising/French River to the north.

Before European settlement, the eastern side of this region belonged to the Algonquin aboriginal people. The Algonquin have reserves in the area and continue an ongoing land claim which covers the entire region and adjacent lands in the Pontiac and Temiskimang regions in neighbouring Quebec.

The road, or more a wagon trail in that day, was constructed in 1854 in a government (then the province of Canada, part of which was Canada West) and lumber company partnership scheme, with two main goals in mind. First, to provide the labour pool necessary to harvest the high value timber and second to populate the Madawaska and Upper Ottawa Valley with new settlers. A mix of native born people, mostly French Canadians and recently arrived European immigrants, the majority of whom were Irish Catholics, but also others including Poles and Germans took to the hills.

With the enticing promise of free land, the settlers came to clear thickly forested backcountry for the road, with its plentiful stands of white pine. Logs were boomed down rivers destined for the mills in Ottawa and then on to the rapidly expanding American and European markets hungry for timber. Workers brought their families to set up homesteads, settling on farms or in small rural villages along and near the trail. A good number of these labourers had worked for lumber barons in then very rowdy Bytown (renamed Ottawa a few years later).

The road was intended to eventually to continue through what is today Alqonquin Provincial Park westward to Georgian Bay. Later in the 1890's, a railroad was built along the same route. But due to the impenetrable craggy, thickly forested terrain of the Canadian Shield and a series of bridges that were destroyed by fire the road nor the railroad were never linked to Georgian Bay as intended. Some of the workers resorted to farming on land with very poor, rocky soils and a short growing season. Many farms soon failed and the area began to experience a gradual decline in population which has levelled off in the past couple of decades.

Economy

Today, tourism and recreation, power generation, arts and crafts are the regions main sources of employment and revenue. The summer population here is boosted by plenty of freshwater and excellent fishing, most seasonal properties with cottages belong to residents of the Ottawa area. Snowmobiling, snowshoeing and skiing (both backcountry and downhill) are the prime winter activities. The lumber industry still exists here, but not to the extent it did before much of the old growth forests were felled. There are still ongoing sawmill and logging operations.