Historic plaque located in the community of Bell(e) Ewart in Innisfil. The plaque bears the logo of the Town of Innisfil, as well as an image of a street in Bell(e) Ewart. The full inscription reads: "Bell Ewart was originally so named by James Ewart, a very early business man and merchant, using his wife's maiden name and his own. However, with the coming of the ice industry, the name was changed in 1891 to Belle Ewart in order to sound more quaint on Toronto delivery wagons. The Post Office came in 1855. The first school was built around here about 1860 as a satellite of the Lefroy School. There were three early churches: Roman Catholic, Baptist, and Methodist and two cemeteries. A summer synagogue was established in 1944. The village later became the centre of the forestry and ice industries in the area." It should be noted that James Ewart's wife was actually named Mary Margaret Crooks [daughter of James Crooks and Jane Cummings of Dundas, Ontario] with no Bell ancestry, so it more likely that the origin of the name comes from the merging of his parents' last names, John Ewart (1767-1821) and Janet Bell (1771-1848). Moreover, the final sentence should be corrected to "The village was previously a centre of the forestry and ice industries in the area" as the lumber industry was most active from the 1850s to 1880s, and the ice industry was active in the late 1800s before dwindling to a smaller cottage industry in the early 1900s. Information and corrections provided by Bill Warnica.
