Heather E. N. Wilson

The County of Lennox and Addington is located in the midst of beautiful Eastern Ontario, its borders stretching from the shores of Lake Ontario to Canadian Shield land north of Denbigh. The southern portion of the County is only 30 minutes from larger urban centres of Belleville and Kingston. Only 2 hours from Toronto and Ottawa and only 3 hours to Montreal, L&A has a large rural base with many small communities giving the County a rich local flavour. The County covers a sprawling area of 2,777 square kilometres, stretching from Lake Ontario northward over 130 kilometres to Renfrew County. Our municipalities include the Township of Addington Highlands, the Town of Greater Napanee, Loyalist Township and the Township of Stone Mills. The northern half of the County forms part of the Canadian Shield and as such is rugged, rocky, covered with a maze of lakes and forests, mostly unsuited for agriculture and quite attractive as a recreational area. The southern half of the County is essentially rural, with the exception of urban Napanee and the suburban community of Amherstview within Loyalist Township. The rural area is dotted with a number of villages and hamlets which function as commercial and tourism centres for the surrounding area. Settled at first by United Empire Loyalists and later by American and European pioneers, the County is alive with reminders of a rich past: the family names of the earliest pioneers endure, and hundreds of grand Victorian homes and farmsteads still stand as symbols of an era of hard work and bustling growth, their survival and vitality a testament to the vision of the founders. The County’s strategic location, in close proximity to one-third of North America’s population, its attractive mix of farmland, its open spaces, forests, lakes and its stable, thriving communities provide a friendly environment for significant economic growth in the 21st Century.