MY STORIES ARE MOSTLY about travel and history somewhere
far or near to home, but apparently rarely home. Rarely home,
because, through travel, reading and experiences, I've tried
to make all Canada my home or, as my children are inclined to say,
"like" home. Hopeless I know, but for me it is a worthy quest. So home,
as in a house where I live in a city, is also part of the notion of home
as "in" Canada. In short, history is also where you live. In Canada, the
grass need not be greener elsewhere. The last thing I'd ever wish to do
when telling stories about Labrador or the Yukon is to give the impression
that one must chase after the forever elsewhere to explore place,
history and excitement. Knowing the local stories about where we live
can help us live more meaningful lives there. This might even translate
into better "manners" for us at home.
I've lived in Ottawa, Edmonton and mostly Dundas, Ontario, at the
"Head of the Lake" (Lake Ontario) between Hamilton and Burlington.
Connections to First Nations peoples, to heritage travel (explorers
and settlers), to canoes and snowshoes do not jump out at you in Dundas.
Geography does! Dundas lies at the end of a significant marsh
within a glacial valley bordered by ancient escarpment rock. Part of
the amalgamated greater City of Hamilton that "should" be boasting
of its 15 cascading waterfalls, Dundas is a true valley town. As local
Hamilton poet, John Terpstra says, "it's all land meeting water. "2 That's
true of one view, out on the glacial sandbar between the lake and the
marsh (Cootes Paradise). At the top of the valley it is more a maze of
trails and streams and glacial fill. Underneath the glacial fill apparently
a river canyon exists, much larger than the Niagara Gorge.
Connected to this wealth of dynamic geography is a relatively forgotten
history that will surprise you. I'd suggest that my favourite
kind of history, travel heritage stories, are more obvious in Edmonton
and Ottawa, two cities both connected to the transcontinental
fur trade route. But, I've done my best historical detective work
and on-the-land snooping in some very unlikely places at the "Head
of the Lake." The history that most excites me in my home town
region might not be obvious. The trails and landmarks are faint but
still alive.
In Falling into Place, John Terpstra describes his book thus, "This
book is what happens when one person becomes completely enamoured
of the landscape in the city where he lives." If enamoured is the right
word for me, it is so because of one thing - the Head of the Lake portage
between Lake Ontario and the Grand River. I'll start this story with the
big picture and then allow myself to get lost in some on-the-land details.
The 17th century French encounter with the Huron and Iroquois
surrounding Lake Ontario involves the "beaver war" in which the
southern Five (later Six) Nations Iroquois destroyed Huronia between
present-day Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, and lay claim over a large
area of Georgian Bay and the north shore of Lake Ontario. This
encounter involves military, missionary and settlement interests and
"marks the first great event in the modern written history of Ontario."
It was exciting to learn of my own hometown's role in this saga.
The well-populated Hamilton and Niagara Peninsula was a Neutral
Peoples' Confederacy. This Iroquoian group was also taken over by their
aggressive southern cousins in the 1600s. At that time, the Five Nations
Iroquois set up a string of strategic new hunting and trading villages in
the recently vacated terrain. Tinawatawa was the most westerly of these
villages, and was strategically located somewhere generally in the vicinity
of the canoe portage at the Head of the Lake (Fond du lac) between
present-day Burlington Bay and the Grand River at Brantford.
Following the intense conflict of the 1640-50s, French explorers and
missionaries resumed their travels in the area generally. Specifically, the
explorer Rene Robert Cavalier Sieur de LaSalle and the Sulpician missionary
Rene de Brehant de Galinee and the Canadian-born adventurer
Louis Jolliet all converged at Tinawatawa in September 1669.
LaSalle and Galinee, with partner Francois Dollier de Casson, travelled
together from New France, approaching Tinawatawa from Lake
Ontario. Jolliet arrived from the west having travelled to Lake Superior
and back on orders to ascertain the reports of a surface copper
mine "
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