Brock Township reaches from the east shore of Lake Simcoe to farmland well inland, with Beaverton, Cannington and Sunderland as its three main communities. Its houses range from nineteenth-century farmhouses and brick homes on village streets to cottages near the lake and brand-new subdivisions. We renovate all of them, and because the township is a long way from our base, each job is planned so every trip carries as much of the work as it can.
Beaverton, Cannington, Sunderland and the concessions between them
Beaverton was settled in the 1820s where the Beaver River meets Lake Simcoe and was incorporated as a village in 1884; its Old Stone Church, built between 1840 and 1853, is a National Historic Site. Cannington started out as McCaskill's Mills farther up the same river, took its present name in 1849 and now holds the municipal offices. Sunderland, once called Jones Corners, was renamed around 1871, when the Toronto and Nipissing Railway was built through it. Along the northern edge, the Trent-Severn Waterway section through old Thorah Township opened in 1907, and its last lock before the lake is at Gamebridge. In 1974 the townships of Brock and Thorah were joined with the two villages and the police village of Sunderland to create the municipality that exists today.
That history still shows in the houses. Older village streets mix brick and frame homes from the railway years with houses added in nearly every decade since. Newer homes are part of the picture too: Sunderland's population rose by about a fifth between the 2016 and 2021 censuses, and approved subdivisions on the edge of Beaverton are adding more. So one Brock project may mean levelling a floor that has settled for a hundred years, and the next may be finishing the basement of a house that is barely three years old.
Permits through the municipal office on Cameron Street
Building permits for the whole township are handled by the Building Department at 1 Cameron Street East in Cannington, and applications are submitted and tracked online through Cloudpermit. The Township's list of work that needs a permit is longer than many owners expect: finishing a basement, mounting solar panels on a roof and changing the heating system are all on it, as is every addition to a house.
We do not draw permit plans. When a project calls for drawings, a designer or engineer prepares them, and we help put the application together, answer the examiner's questions and book each inspection the permit lists. The Township warns that work covered up before it has been inspected may have to be opened again, so on our sites insulation and drywall wait until the inspector has signed off.
The Beaver River marshes and the Lake Simcoe watershed
The Region of Durham operates the water and sewer systems that serve the built-up parts of the township. Beyond them, on farm lots and in hamlets such as Wilfrid or Blackwater, a house usually draws water from its own well and sends waste to a septic bed. The Township gives out free well-water test kits at the municipal office, and we suggest using one before a kitchen or bathroom is planned, since the result can tell your plumber whether to fit treatment equipment while cabinets and walls are still open.
Water also decides who else reviews a project. The Beaver River rises on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Scugog and runs north through a broad, marshy valley, much of it mapped as a provincially significant wetland between Uxbridge and Cannington, then bends northwest at Cannington to reach Lake Simcoe at Beaverton. Its watershed, like the lake's entire basin apart from Orillia and the upper Talbot River, falls under the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, while some parts of the township drain the other way and belong to Kawartha Conservation. On a lot beside the river, next to a wetland or along the lakeshore north and south of Beaverton, the Township expects the authority's clearance as part of the permit application, and we raise that possibility at the first visit rather than after the drawings are done.
Getting to the east shore of the lake
The Township describes itself as roughly an hour and a half northeast of Toronto. From Richmond Hill, our crew usually takes Highway 48 through Georgina, crossing into Durham Region south of Port Bolster; the highway ends at Highway 12 just southeast of Beaverton, which Highway 12 has bypassed since 1966. Sunderland is reached by Highways 7 and 12, which share one road north from Brooklin until they split there. Because each trip is a long one, we bundle orders into full loads, line up the electrician, plumber and other licensed trades on consecutive days where we can, and check that a delivery truck can turn on a farm lane or a narrow beach road before the cabinets or the deck lumber are ordered.
