A toll gate near Toronto circa 1850. The gate-keeper often lived in the cottage to make sure everyone stopped and paid, day or night.
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Hands up if you have been on a shunpiker? Hands up if you had great fun on that road trip? Without question, it’s always the same number of hands for both questions. Shunpikers are fun.

Some of you may not be familiar with the term. It’s from the 1800’s when many roads in Ontario were toll roads, also known as turnpikes. In Oxford County there were 13 such roads. You had to pay to travel on them. The toll gate-keepers made sure of that. The payment was used for maintenance and future construction.

The early settlers were thrifty people. Rather than pay a fee they took the back roads that were free. People who avoided or shunned the turnpikes became known as shunpikers.

Those early shunpikers quickly discovered that some of the very best scenery is found on the back roads. Better still, some of the very best stories are found on the roads less travelled.

Over the years shunpiker road trips gained in popularity. People developed their own. Our grandparents called this the Sunday afternoon drive. Some were more formal, like those printed each year in the London Free Press newspaper.

In the hopes of having great fun and learning a bit of local lore, the Tavistock & District Historical Society developed two shunpikers, two road trips, unique to our area. Route # 1 is Tavistock to Hickson and points in between. Route # 2 is Tavistock to Shakespeare and points in between.

Every spot on the shunpikers is drawn from material on our website at tavistockhistory.ca As you travel the route you’ll learn a little something at each stop. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn more by checking out related stories and photos and postcards. We’ve included a few references with each stop but there are many more if you choose to go searching on your own. We hope you will. We also hope that as you are searching you’ll find other unrelated stories to read and photos to see and things to learn.

Our shunpikers can be driving tours or, if you live outside the area, you can take the tour from the comfort of your home on a device of your choosing.

If you are getting in your car and hitting the open road you can download and use a paper copy of the routing and descriptions of the stops or you may wish to use your smartphone. In either case designate someone as the navigator and narrator so the driver can keep eyes on the road.

As you proceed you may find that you know information about a particular spot that we don’t know. Great! Tell us. As well, you may find that your information differs from ours. It’s entirely possible. We didn’t have fake news years ago but we certainly had differing accounts of the same event. If you have a different take, tell us. We are always up for learning more about our local history.