Clarington

Clarington was incorporated in 1974 as the Town of Newcastle, formed by merging the Town of Bowmanville, the Village of Newcastle, and Clarke and Darlington Townships; it was renamed Clarington in 1993, a portmanteau of Clarke and Darlington. Bowmanville itself, the municipality's largest community and administrative seat, grew from milling activity on Bowmanville Creek — a sawmill built around 1805 by John Burk gave the settlement its early name, Darlington Mills, before merchant Charles Bowman lent the community its lasting name.

Camp 30

One of Bowmanville's most historically significant sites is Camp 30, built in the 1920s as a boys' reform school and repurposed during the Second World War as a Canadian-run prisoner-of-war camp holding German officers, including U-boat commander Otto Kretschmer. Camp 30 is considered the last largely intact POW camp in Canada and was formally designated a National Historic Site of Canada in September 2013.

Darlington Nuclear and Clarington today

Clarington's modern identity is tied heavily to the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, on Lake Ontario's shore in Bowmanville. Comprising four CANDU reactors with a combined output of roughly 3,512 MWe, Darlington supplies approximately 20 percent of Ontario's electricity. The municipality's 2021 census population was 101,427, spread across Bowmanville, Courtice, Newcastle, Orono and numerous rural hamlets, part of the wider Durham Region.

Sources

• Parks Canada — Camp 30 National Historic Site of Canada
• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Clarington
• Ontario Power Generation — Darlington Nuclear Station