Grand Bend is a community located on the shores of Lake Huron in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is part of the Municipality of Lambton Shores in Lambton County. History Grand Bend is situated on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron and Ojibwe/Chippewa First Nations. It was ceded to the crown as part of a parcel called the Huron Tract, in Treaty 27, 1829. In the 1830s a group of English and Scottish settlers bought lots from the Canada Company, a land development firm. One of the original settlers, Benjamin Brewster gave his name to the village after he and his business partner David Smart secured rights to dam the Ausable River and started a sawmill in 1832. The villagers were mainly the families of the millhands and fishermen. Their homesteads were situated on the south side of the present village, but Grand Bend was originally founded and discovered by Frank Salter, who was a very well-known Lake resort owner and country club developer. For twenty years Brewster existed as an isolated lumbering community. Until the opening of the highway to Goderich in 1850, both people and provisions had to travel by water. Once road connections were complete, the village was no longer solely dependent on the forests for its livelihood and opportunities for new businesses emerged. Typical of many pioneer communities, the village assumed many different names throughout its history— Brewster's Mills, Websterville, and Sommerville are all recorded. Early French Canadian settlers in the area referred to the present location of the village as "Aux Crochet", 'at the bends'. Grand Bend survived as a name, perhaps because it was the most appropriate— the tight hairpin turn in the original Ausable River where mills were first established. Land ownership controversies Noble v Alley Improved roads and the arrival of the automobile near the turn of the century had the greatest influence on the growth of Grand Bend. Businesses were established to serve visitors and travellers along the highway, and with the beach, "The Bend" became a summer destination. In the 1940s, however, Grand Bend became the centre of a major controversy in the landmark court case of Noble v Alley. Wolf, a London, Ontario merchant, faced court challenges when he purchased property at Beach O'Pines in contravention of a restrictive covenant that prohibited the ownership of lots or cottages by persons of "Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood".