History HistoryAround 1856, the name Bethany was chosen to compliment other villages with biblical names in proximity such as; Zion to the south, Ebenezer to the east, Mount Horeb, Hebron and Bethel to the north and west.
Bethany and the surrounding area was settled mainly by United Empire Loyalists and Irish Protestants. The village was a station on the Midland Railway that ran from Port Hope on Lake Ontario to the newly contructed village of Midland on Georgian Bay. By 1889, Bethany had a hotel, mercantile and dry goods store, grocery store, drug store, butcher shop, furniture store, shoe store, tailor shop, 2 blacksmiths, and a sawmill and planing factory. In 1911 the village was devastated by a fire that consumed a large part of the main street. Today, Bethany is a historic rural village with it's closest neighbouring large communities being Lindsay and Peterborough.