Vankleek Hill is a town in Champlain Township in Eastern Ontario. It has a population of 1,996. The town was named after Simeon Vankleek, a United Empire Loyalist who settled there near the end of the 18th century. The agricultural-based community became a thriving community in the 1890s and still retains many of the buildings and structures of the time. As such it is called the gingerbread (the wood carvings on the eaves of one's roof) capital of Ontario. History Simeon Van Kleeck and his wife Cecilia Jaycox arrived in Nova Scotia from the former British Province of New York in 1783. Simeon, of Dutch descent, was a demobilized officer who had supported the British crown during the American Revolution. His wife Cecilia had witnessed her brother's capture and execution for his British allegiance. As a United Empire Loyalist, Simeon was to receive land in payment for his services, and he applied for his grant several times. The legend is that while he waited for a decision, he sighted high ground on a plane of flat land south of the Ottawa River. Simeon and his son Simeon Jr. settled c.1797 on Concession IV, Lots 7,8, and 9, Hawkesbury Township. Today this is the location of Vankleek Hill. Vankleek Hill prosperity began with the VanKleeck's family inn that served travellers going to and from the Ottawa River port of L’Original to southern ports on the St. Lawrence River. Soon tradesmen and merchants were established at the four corners where today Highway 34 intersects with Main Street (County Road 10). Since 1998 Vankleek Hill is one of four municipalities that make up the Township of Champlain that includes L’Original, and the townships of Longueuil and West Hawkesbury. These four communities were first historically linked through family and social ties, farming and commerce; and today with a new common municipal government. Gingerbread Capital of Ontario Vankleek Hill was named Ontario's Gingerbread Capital in 2003. Gingerbread is the woodwork that adds architectural detail to building exteriors and interiors. The porches, windows, gables, and rooflines of over 250 homes in Vankleek Hill contain Victorian era decorative gingerbread elements. Builders ordered millwork through catalogues. By the 1890s, the new Vankleek Hill Manufacturing Company on Mill Street created and sold decorative shingles, latticework, verge boards, columns, spindles and brackets. The backdrop for the gingerbread is red brick, a hallmark of Vankleek Hill Victorian and Edwardian period buildings.