Balaclava is a dispersed rural community in the township municipality of Bonnechere Valley, Renfrew County, in Eastern Ontario, Canada.

[1][3][4][5][6] It is on the former Ontario Highway 513 (present day Scotch Bush Road) just off Ontario Highway 132 north of the community of Dacre, and at the outlet of Constant Creek, a tributary of the Madawaska River, from Constant Lake, approximately 30 minutes drive time from the town of Renfrew.

Shortly after its founding a dam and sawmill were built and by the 1860s the small hamlet had acquired a blacksmith shop and hotel to go with its permanent residents.

The water-powered sawmill was rebuilt in 1939 after a fire destroyed the mill that had previously occupied the space and continued to [7] operate until 1959.

The place Balaclava was named in 1859 to commemorate a key victory of the British Commonwealth during the Crimean War.

Regardless, two men, named Duncan Ferguson and Donald Cameron, opened the sawmill in Balaclava, joining some of the nearly one-thousand saw mills in Upper Canada at that time.

[14] As a result of the sawmill, and the timber industry in the Ottawa Valley in the 1800s, Balaclava became a rather busy settlement and bustling pioneer town.

[16] The growing town of Balaclava attracted other businessmen, such as William Hunter who built a grist mill two kilometers downstream of the dam.

Hunter built his gristmill where the gradient of Constant Creek flattens into an area of poorly drained glacial outwash.

[17] Hunter further complained that the pollution caused damage to his mill pond and that he could not properly run his gristmill, as a result.

The addition of the number of saws and other pieces of equipment enabled an obvious increase in pollution, which the court argued, surpassed Richards' rights.

[15] In 1913, an appeal was made in the Ontario Supreme Court, Appellate Division, in an attempt to overturn the verdict.

The nuisance", he remarked " becomes more and more objectionable and injurious as the surrounding country becomes more settled and the lands affected more highly cultivated and more valuable."

Regarding Richard's claim that the Crown grant from 1855 permitted his polluting of the stream, the court commented justice could not be retroactive.

What remains is "a few houses, an abandoned general store and blacksmith shop, an old dam over which the main road passes and a marvelously intact 19th century sawmill".

Over the years MR. Dick severed and sold off lots of property; of which you will find many modern cottages and home built along constant lake.