Stirling 2025

Jon Upton
6 days ago
7 min read

Eric Vettoretti and I teamed up for the Stirling antique Market this year, which we do by default unless other family commitments get in the way. Stirling is an often-overlooked event; maybe that’s because it’s further east than most of the other events. I’ve been coming to Stirling for about 25 years now; I found many plates there that helped to finish my quarterly truck and farm runs. In the years when I had to restock my YOM business, Stirling always bore fruit. And now that I’m finished with all of those things, I still go to Stirling because every now and then, it provides an unexpected surprise. Even if there are no surprises to find, there are interesting things to see, the walk is great exercise, and it’s the closest-to-home of all my “out-of-town” collecting trips, at a mere three hours.

This year, there were no pressing engagements that caused us to rush home, and we were able to leave Ottawa by 4 o’clock on Friday. I did the driving, and we took a new route to Belleville, which was a combination of interest points that we’d both contributed. The nice thing about Eastern Ontario is that the Canadian Shield reaches across any route that we take, and there are lots of interesting things to see.

Our first stop was Narrows Lock, which is part of the Rideau Canal system. It’s built on a man-made spit of land—narrow, as the name would suggest— that bisects Big and Upper Rideau Lakes. The difference in elevation is roughly five feet, and a small swing bridge moves out of the way of boat traffic to cross the county road. Everything at the lock station is hand-operated, including the bridge. The station won’t open until later in the spring, but even closed, it’s an interesting place.

After that, we turned west and headed across some farmland before it ended abruptly at the cliff-lined Wolfe Lake. The road hugs the shoreline at the bottom of the cliffs, and it twists into some hairpin curves toward the western end of the lake. Luckily, the shoulders widen into turnouts, so we were able to stop and check the place out.

Further along, Eric navigated us through a couple of ghost towns, and then we stopped in Forest Mills to check out… well, something. It’s a concrete foundation on the side of the road beneath a cliff, with “1949” clearly molded into the side. But what was it? It wasn’t a bridge pier; the road runs parallel to the river and doesn’t cross here. It couldn’t be a building; it was a thick foundation with rebar, but it was no bigger than a small shed. It had some kind of slot or opening on the front. We took pictures and resolved to find out what this structure was.

We arrived in Belleville at dusk, bought some snacks and beer, unexpectedly ran into a former student of mine, and then watched the President’s Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets surrender four goals to the St. Louis Blues, thus forcing a game 7 in their first-round playoff series. That’s NHL hockey for fans in Canada– our teams are all cursed.

We awoke to rain the next morning. The forecast called for steady, but light showers for most of the morning. The crowd at Stirling, however, was raring to go. A steady stream of people was headed toward the fairgrounds, and when we got there, most vendors were happily open in the rain. We decided to try and beat the crowd by doing the rear of the market first and then working our way to the front. This would later prove to be a wise decision. We ran into Terry Ellsworth along the way and chatted for a bit.

We passed by Keith Solmes’ tables, which were covered by tents, as always. We stopped to chat and root through some plates. His repaints were not of particular interest to us, but he consistently brings “new meat” in the form of original plates that we’ve never seen before. He mentioned that he had a bunch more in the camper, but was feeling too run down to drag them all out. “But you fellas can go in and check it out, if you like,” he offered. That was unexpected, and he didn’t have to ask us twice!

We climbed up the steps into the old converted school bus and found various boxes of plates lying on top of each other. Mostly Ontario, most years down into the 1920s, pairs and singles, with a few off-types. Nothing was organized in any particular fashion, so we just got busy doing what we do best: Flipping through plates and showing each other possible items of interest. We didn’t want to overstay our welcome, so we limited our browsing to about ten minutes. Eric came away with some pairs, so it was a good dig. I found a few interesting quarterly trucks, but nothing I wanted to take.

We meandered to the back of the fairgrounds and started our methodical tour of each row. We were going through our fourth vendor, with the light rain still coming down, when I saw some small stacked letters on something very old and yellow. It looked like a 1931 or 33 Ontario plate. I went over and picked it up, thinking that I would see the word “TRAILER,” which I needed for my collection. But that’s not what the plate said.

The word I was reading was “DEALER.” The plate was wet, and covered with a mix of slimy mud, and at least some rust. It was a mystery as to how much colour was left to save underneath, but it was clearly worth a try. It was only the second 1931 dealer plate known to exist. It was rough, but we were stoked to find a plate of this rarity. We bought it, of course. We’d figure out later which of us would be the lucky owner. Good thing we browsed the rear of the field first!

We continued browsing the vendors and found a mix of various types. I picked up a couple of motorcycle plates for my run. One was a 1981 natural sticker, and the other was a really contemporary one with the “SEPT 06” error sticker (should just say “SEP”.) I’m still looking to upgrade a couple of red quarterly June trailer plates (67 through 70), but I haven’t found them yet. Another vendor was selling motorcycle plates, but they have clearly been doctored to have different embossed years.

We eventually made our way to the front of the fairgrounds, where one vendor had a box kit of hydro pole numbers– the aluminum kind with the nail holes that are sometimes used to make replica leather plates. I’m not a fan of those replicas; I didn’t want to buy the kit and become a party to more of them being made.

We finished shopping at about noon and slowly headed for home. We took a different route from the previous evening so we could see more ghost towns and explore the Frontenac colonization road. We passed through a few forgotten villages and then ended up in Parham, where we would turn north to get to the start of the Frontenac Road. But something struck me as familiar in Parham. We ventured a little further through the town until we came to a curious railroad crossing. I knew then I’d been here before: During the height of the lockdown, I took my son Greg on a road trip and we’d passed through here. The train tracks cross the road at a very sharp angle, and the tracks run almost parallel to the road on the north side of the crossing; a train might seem to be coming head-on at night!

We were about to head back to the car when we heard a train horn far off in the distance. I couldn’t tell which direction, because there were lots of hills around to bounce the sound. I braved the blackflies for a couple of minutes, just in case the train was actually coming, but it appeared that maybe it wasn’t. We had started to walk away when the chimes came alive and the light started flashing. In an instant, two grown men became giddy schoolboys. Eric had never seen a train cross this close. I picked my angle and started my camera rolling. The train rounded the curve from the south and came into view. Eric gave a thumbs-up to the engineer, who was cool and waved back. The engines roared past us and blew away all the blackflies. The train was a long one and took a few minutes to pass, but pass it did, and before long, it was quiet again.

Part of our mutual interest in train crossings stems from our interest in the early roads of Ontario’s highway system. In most cases, the rail companies that owned the lines are long extinct, and the tracks were pulled up long ago, leaving a straight hiking trail through the forest. As we drove up the gravel-surfaced Frontenac road, we came across one such former railroad crossing, among the trees and weathered, century-old barns. The tight turns of the road and the narrow width of the railbed challenges the imagination to picture a steam train there, despite having a modern-day diesel cross not fifteen minutes earlier a few miles away.

We saw as much of the Frontenac road as we had time for, and we had to get going home. But there was one chore still to be done: To figure out which of us would be taking the 1931 dealer plate home. There was no way to divide the rest of the spoils; Eric had bought YOM pairs for his business while I had focused on my collection and a couple of traders. We normally flip a coin to decide these things. But in the spirit of the NHL playoffs, Eric suggested we make it a best-of-seven coin toss series! I was game.