Stoneboats Restaurant in Bronte

      Stoneboats has been renamed to Yolanda's Spuntino Casa which roughly translates to Yolanda's House of Appetizers and Snacks. What makes this building interesting is what its walls are made from.
     In the 1840's, boats called stone-hooker boats, or stoneboats, using grappling hooks, lifted rocks and boulders, in particular well rounded and often flat shale from the shores of Lake Ontario from Whitby to Port Credit.
     The stone loads, known as toises, were loaded onto schooners and shipped to Toronto, where they were sorted by size according to usage. Smaller stones would be used for road ballast, flat stones for pavement, and large round stones would end up in building foundations. This is where the material came from to build Stoneboats.
      By the 1850's, more than 30 stone boats were in use, but farmers started to complain that the practice was eroding their farmlands, and in 1857, laws were enacted that boats could not work any closer than 30 metres from the shore.
     This, and the fact that concrete replaced stones in construction, the stone boats stopped scooping up the rocks from the lake bed. Not many of the original buildings exist. Stoneboats or should I say, Yolanda's is one of the few remaining. It was constructed from theses stones by a one-time stone boat captain, hence the name.
     It is located at 49 bronte Road in the picturesque village of Bronte which is now part of Oakville. It is designated a Heritage site and is worth a visit for a meal, a beer or whatever.