The town's name is an Indigenous name which means "town on two rivers".[citation needed] The town's name rhymes with the place name Cataraqui, which appears in the Cataraqui River, the Little Cataraqui Creek, and the Cataraqui Cemetery in nearby Kingston, Ontario. One way to remember its pronunciation is "The right way, the wrong way, and the Gananoque". In eastern Ontario speech, the town name is often abbreviated to Gan.
Colonel Joel Stone, who served with Loyalist militia during the American Revolutionary War, established a settlement on this site in 1789. Land was granted to Col. Stone for use as a mill site.
During the War of 1812, American forces raided the government depot in the town to disrupt the flow of British supplies between Kingston and Montreal. The raiders seized the supplies they found and burned the depot. Within a month of the raid, construction of the Gananoque Blockhouse was started, with completion in 1813. It had an octagonal log parapet containing five guns. The blockhouse was abandoned after the War of 1812 and given to a private landowner.[3]
The blockhouse was quickly repaired in the 1837–38 Patriot War when there were fears American militia forces were planning to attack. The Gananoque Blockhouse stood until 1852.[3]
Demographics
The Gananoque clock tower
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Gananoque had a population of 5,383 living in 2,562 of its 2,767 total private dwellings, a change of 4.3% from its 2016 population of 5,159. With a land area of 7.01 km2 (2.71 sq mi), it had a population density of 767.9/km2 (1,988.9/sq mi) in 2021.[4]
The Thousand Islands – Frontenac ArchBiosphere Reserve, designated in November 2002, is the third in Ontario, the twelfth in Canada, and one of over 400 around the world, and is part of UNESCO’s program on Man and the Biosphere.
Historically, the Gananoque River's watershed had been an important water transportation corridor, extending north to the Rideau River watershed and playing a key role in the town's early history and economic importance. In 1830, water was diverted near Newboro to the Cataraqui River as part of the Rideau Canal, sending this traffic instead to Kingston.
Gananoque Police Service is a small law enforcement agency in the Eastern Ontario community of Gananoque.
The current Chief of Police is Scott Gee. Unlike other Towns and Villages of Ontario which have disbanded their municipal police forces in favour of contracting with the Ontario Provincial Police, the Gananoque Police Service continues to grow.
Frank Belknap Long—Famed horror and science fiction writer. Long spent his summer family vacations in the vicinity with his parents, between the ages of six months and 17 years (1901–1918).
^ abYoung, Richard. Blockhouses in Canada, 1749–1841: a Comparative Report and Catalogue. Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History, Canadian Historic Site, 1980
