GEO 793

• About 2 km inland from the shore a ridge known as the Iroquois Shoreline can be discerned. The old shoreline runs west-east running roughly parallel to Davenport Road just south of St. Clair Avenue West. Further east, the Scarborough Bluffs also formed part of the shoreline of the ancient lake.
• • Drumlins are elongated, teardrop-shaped hills of well sorted and stratified sand and gravel and glacial till, and typically occur behind well defined morraine formations
  • The elongated end is point in the direction of the ice flow
  • Formed by the streamlined movement of glacial ice sheets across rock debris, or till
  • They can be up to 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) long
• •A sand spit is a small sandy point of land projecting into a body of water from the shore
• Toronto Islands - The islands were originally a 9 kilometres (5.6 mi)-long peninsula or sand spit extending from the mainland. The islands are composed of alluvial deposits from the erosion of the Scarborough Bluffs, carried by a current flowing from east to west
• Toronto has been the site of human habitation for over 10,000 years

  •11,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age

  •Downtown Toronto was under the water of Lake Iroquois

  •Mammoths and mastodons were here!

  •You can see the old shoreline today, along Davenport Road and the Scarborough Bluffs
• • Ontario – Skanadariio -- the “handsome lake” or “sparkling water”
• Tkaronto originally referred to the area around Lake Simcoe, but then came to refer to a larger region that included the site of present-day Toronto
• Toronto means "Trees are in the water"
• •The idea that Toronto means “meeting place” came from Henry Scadding
• •Given their reliance on the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash), some say that the Haudenosaunee originated in Central or South America, where corn is the staple crop, or that they were joined by immigrants from the south
• •The colonists spoke of “owning the land” •Indigenous peoples believe that they are “caretakers of the land”, interconnected with all of creation
• •The fact is, prior to European contact, Toronto has played host to:

  •At least three distinct peoples (the Huron, the Haudenosaunee, and the Mississauga)

  •Two different cultures (Iroquoian and Algonquian)

  •Was the site of many trade gatherings and inter-tribal ceremonies
• •Between roughly 7,000 and 2,000 years ago, rising water levels in Lake Ontario and soil erosion from Scarborough Bluffs created the Toronto Islands, the harbour, and a mainland shoreline similar to the modern one
• •By about 8,000 years ago, the climate had warmed to a point comparable to modern levels, which allowed for a new kind of temperate forest environment to evolve in southern Ontario
• The Toronto passage

  •The Humber River and the Rouge River were used as shortcuts between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay

  •These were vital links in the trade route that ran from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior
• Iroquoian Villages 600 to 1600

  •Corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco were introduced from the south

  •Increasing reliance on farming helped to shape the horticultural Iroquoian societies that developed about 1,100 years ago in the lower Great Lakes

  •Were formed, with multi-family longhouses, palisades, and cultivated fields

  •Typically lasted from 10 to 20 years before their inhabitants relocated to new sites when the longhouses deteriorated, the fields became sterile, and people had to walk longer distances for firewood and other necessities that previously had been found close to home
• •The Huron-Wendat Confederacy was defeated by the Iroquois Confederacy (who came from what is now New York State) in 1648-1650

  •By 1650-1660, the area around Toronto – and as far away as Pennsylvania, the Ohio Valley, and the lower Michigan peninsula – became Haudenosaunee territory

  •The character of the Toronto area shifted again, from being a hinterland for the now-dispersed Hurons of Georgian Bay, as it had been since the end of the 1500s, to a colonized area for the Iroquois from New York
• Ganatsekwyagon, near the mouth of the Rouge River

  Teiaiagon, on the Humber River near the Baby Point neighbourhood
• The Beaver Wars (1640 - 1701), also called the French and Iroquois Wars, were terrifying and brutal wars fought by tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy against the French and the First Nations tribes who were their allies, including the Huron and Algonquins
• •The last French post built in present-day Southern Ontario to help strengthen French control of the Great Lakes

  •Hostilities between the French and British increased in the mid-1750s, and Fort Rouille was destroyed by its garrison in July 1759

  •After the destruction no attempt was made to re-establish a settlement in the vicinity until more than thirty years later, when British Governor Simcoe laid down the foundations of York in 1793
• Spadina Avenue comes from the word “ishpadinaa” in the Anishinabe language: it means “hill or sudden rise in the land”
• •After the French surrendered to the British at Montreal in 1760, Britain negotiated a peaceful relationship with both the Haudenosaunee and the Mississauga
• •Both Mississauga and Haudenosaunee warriors fought alongside their British allies during the American Revolution

  •After the United States became independent, Loyalist refugees fled across the border to British territory, joined by many Haudenosaunee, who, as British allies, were no longer welcome in the United States
• •So the colonists entered into approximately 20 different agreements with various Mississauga groups
• •The British arranged the Toronto Purchase, paying three groups of Mississauga £1700 in cash and goods, which they later claimed gave them the rights to over 1,000 square kilometres of Toronto, including York Region, Vaughan, and King Township
• •A new deed was drawn up dramatically expanding the area claimed by the Crown and a scant 10 shillings was paid for 250,880 acres of land
• •In 2010 the federal government paid $144-million to settle the land claim of the Toronto Purchase

  •That amount was based on what was considered a fair price for the land in 1805 extrapolated to 2010 dollars
• •Seven First Nations outside Toronto have voted to accept a $1.1-billion settlement deal with the federal and provincial governments to resolve a long-standing treaty dispute

  •The Williams Treaties of 1923 are different than others in Ontario because they were signed in the 20th century and pertained to land that Chippewas and Mississaugas had never agreed to relinquish, but was already occupied by settler homes, mines and lumber mills
• First Nations School of Toronto (FNST) teaches the Ontario Curriculum while centering Indigenous knowledge, perspectives and cultures.Our approach to education is based on Indigenous ways of being, knowing, teaching and learning.” (TDSB website)