I believe the statements below are true. You are highly advised to consult with a lawyer to either confirm or dispute the statements. This was written to help assist the problem that exists along the shoreline of Tiny Township regarding beach ownership and use and was not meant to create harm to anyone. I would appreciate your feedback or comments if you have anything that could help add to this blog to help clarify the issues.

The ownership trail is not complicated but along the way it has seemed to become misunderstood. The true ownership should be fully understood by realtors, and lawyers representing buyers and sellers so as to not misrepresent public and private shorelines and face potential lawsuits. 

The landscaping characteristics along the shoreline in Tiny Township is a mixture ofsandy beach, rocks, large boulders, and small stones. Georgian Bay is part of Lake Huron and the Great lake system. Tiny Township is bounded by 52 kms of shoreline along Georgian Bay.  It is the “beach” landscaping that has taken on a life of its own worthy of a Hollywood move. Very little attention is given to the rocky shoreline but it does possess the same underlying issues.

In the mid to late 1800s the Federal Government issued Crown patents to the early settlers dividing the Township into large tracts of land that were sold and originally farmed. Some of these parcels of land extended to the water’s edge of Georgian Bay and the rest were inland properties.

The Waters’ edge is an important term here. The patents that were granted were not to the high water mark or to any other description other than to the Water’s edge. This means that as the water levels increase, and most recently decrease significantly, the water’s edge is defined as to where the edge of the water is. In other words; the property lines is dynamic moving with the water levels.

By the early 1900s the settlers who purchased their crown patents of land, or those they may have sold or become business partners with, began to develop plans of subdivision by dividing up their property into smaller single family building lots for sale to those that wished to build new cottages.

Most of these original new plans of subdivision occurred along the shoreline creating waterfront properties and back lots along a main road that we have come to know as Tiny Beaches Road South and North.

For the most parts these lots were 50 to 100 ft wide.  The developers of these new subdivision were required to follow Township by-laws, Federal and Provincial  Ministry requirements.

There was confusion by Government Ministries at this time that has trickled down to present day and has found its way to the courtrooms in Ontario.  This confusion involved  an incorrect assumption by the Ministry of Forestry and Lands that the Great Lakes were on a Tidal system and as such prevented developers to create property lines beyond the “high water mark” , a term that applied to Bodies of water with Tides.

The Great Lakes do not have Tides.

The property developers disputed this claim but nonetheless they were told that if they wanted to create their subdivisions they had to adapt to this new interpretation of the definition of their property line.  They were not permitted to create a property boundary line beyond the high water mark.   As a result of this mistake, the lands between the surveyed mark of either a specific defined measurement or the  high water mark and the waters edge reverted back to the Crown again. Interesting note here: The Crown..not the Township. If the Township wanted to use the lands they were required to lease it back from the Crown.

A short time later this mistake was realized by all government authorities and the lands reverted back to the developers. 

Some of these developers , or the heirs over time,  kept the beach in front of their newly created boundaries for themselves, some donated them back to the Township creating public beaches, some of the developers created community beaches whereby only those in their plan of subdivisions could use the beach.  This is how it is. The waterfront ownership in Tiny has many different descriptions