The communities of L'Amable, Aylen Lake, Cross Lake, Gunters, Madawaska, McKenzie Lake, Murchison, Opeongo, Wallace and Whitney are in South Algonquin. It also includes the geographic townships of Airy, Dickens, Lyell, Murchison, and Sabine, with the exception of a triangle, the northwest corner, of Airy Township that is part of Algonquin Provincial Park.
History
The area was settled primarily as the site for the sawmill of the St. Anthony Lumber Company, of Minnesota, and is named for the general manager of that firm, Edwin Canfield Whitney. Whitney, who was born near Morrisburg, Ontario, had moved to the Midwestern United States shortly after the Civil War. Working in the lumber trade, he became manager of the St. Anthony Lumber Company in Minneapolis. By 1892 work had commenced on the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway, by Ottawa lumberman John Rudolphus Booth. Booth's sawmill at the Chaudière Falls in Ottawa, was considered to be one of the largest in North America, second only to a mill in Minneapolis. At the end of 1892, Booth arranged a takeover of the adjacent Perley and Pattee mill, from the estate of his former colleague William Goodhue Perley. Timber berths on the upper Madawaska River, in the townships of Airy and Nightingale, belonging to the Perley & Pattee Lumber Company, were sold in 1894, to the St. Anthony Lumber Company, of Minneapolis. As the OA&PS Railway was being constructed to access this area, Whitney persuaded the management of the St. Anthony firm to purchase the timber berths. About a year after the Whitney sawmill was built, Fowler and Hill sold the Minneapolis mill and associated timber limits to Frederick Weyerhaeuser of St. Paul. Whitney who had large timber holdings near Brainerd, Minnesota, sold these to Weyerhaeuser as well, making enough profit that he was able to purchase his partners' interests in the Whitney concern and continue its operation on his own. The Canadian National Railway Renfrew Subdivision was abandoned between Whitney and Renfrew in 1983.
In the fall of 1964 the cast and crew of the CBC Television show The Forest Rangers came to Whitney to film three episodes. They needed the use of a rapids in a large river with easy access. The Madawaska River's rapids here suited their demands perfectly. Higher water levels were necessary, and that was the case, since later in the year the water levels are raised. They searched as well for expert canoeists in the area who could run these rapids to get the necessary footage required for the final scenes.
