On Sept. 23, when you walk through the gates of partially reconstructed Fort Willow, you’ll hear the sounds of musket fire and the deafening roar of cannons, the echoes of a destructive war 200 years in the past.

It’s all re-enactment, of course, but it doesn’t take much imagination to find yourself transported 200 years into the past, to a time when the young nation of Canada was in peril from foreign invaders, a time when Fort Willow was a key to the country’s survival.  

Before there was even a Barrie, there was Fort Willow, a lone bastion in the midst of dense wilderness well beyond the pale of civilization.

Its purpose was a vital one: to safeguard the militarily vital Nine-Mile Portage and serve as a supply depot for British forces fighting in the War of 1812.

In the summer of 1813, less than a year after the United States invaded Canada to ignite the flames of war, the American Navy seized control of Lake Erie, thereby cutting the British lines of communication to her isolated forces on Lake Huron.

Desperately searching for an alternate means of supplying their forces on Lake Huron, the British seized upon the potential of the Nine-Mile Portage, a former fur-trade route.

Natives and fur traders had long used the Nine Mile Portage as part of a route linking Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay. It travelled overland from Fort York to the Holland River, where one transferred to boats to row across Lake Simcoe to the site where Barrie stands today.

There, the Nine Mile Portage led through the wilderness to Willow Creek, which fed into the Nottawasaga River and eventually into Lake Huron at Wasaga Beach.

At the end of the portage, atop a bluff overlooking Willow Creek, Fort Willow was built. Here, in a location that was described as ‘malarial’ in the summer and ‘inhospitable’ in the winter, British soldiers lived and laboured. It was perhaps the least-enviable posting available to a Redcoat.

Just getting there was an ordeal for many of these soldiers, as an 1865 account by Capt. Andrew Bulger attests:

“We commenced our route in the beginning of February, in severe wintry weather, proceeded 250 miles into a wilderness; erected huts in a grove of pine; assisted in opening a road through the woods for the conveyance of supplies; and, with timber cut down and prepared on the spot, aided in construction of 29 large boats …”

Who were these men who stoically endured such hardships? Most were actually Canadian, members of the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles (sometimes called the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, after a disbanded unit), hardened men well accustomed to privation and wilderness-conditions.

A detachment of five companies from the regiment was sent to Upper Canada in the summer of 1812 to fight as marines on the British ships on the Great Lakes. After the crushing Lake Erie defeat of 1813, the soldiers were without ships on which to serve and therefore reverted to their original role.

In the years that followed, the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles became one of the most bloodied regiments in the war, seeing much action and serving as far wets as Ohio and Mackinac Island.

Fort Willow consisted of several log houses, a barn, and two blockhouses (strong points for defense), surrounded by a stout palisade measuring 180 feet by 250 feet and beyond that was a string of earthworks and trenches. The garrison numbered 250 men at its peak.

The Herculean efforts in building Fort Willow and improving the Nine-Mile Portage were vital to supplying Fort Mackinac, an isolated stronghold on Lake Huron and the key to the west. Without relief, the fort may well have fallen and the outcome of the war far different; at the very least, Canada beyond the shores of Georgian Bay would have been assimilated into the United States.

Despite their valued contribution to the successful war effort, both Fort Willow and the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles were discarded after the fighting had ended, the fort allowed to go to ruin, the regiment disbanded.

Soon, both were almost completely forgotten. Almost, but not quite.

Thanks to the efforts of the Fort Willow Improvement Group and the many passionate re-enactors involved in the Nine Mile Portage Heritage Festival, the posterity of the fort and those who served here are assured.