Читать книгу Leaside - Jane Pitfield - Страница 7
ОглавлениеFROM PRE-SETTLEMENT TO SETTLEMENT
CERTAIN PHYSICAL and topographical characteristics of what became the Leaside area attracted Aboriginal peoples first and, eventually, in the early 19th century, European settlement. Once the primeval forest was cleared by the early pioneers, the quality of the soil enabled agriculture to flourish and give sustenance to the original settlers, and to the generations which followed.
Some 80 years later, in the late 19th century, the topography of the plateau overlooking the valley of the Don attracted the railway companies which eventually converted the rich agricultural lands into the urban centre called Leaside.
What were the forces in pre-history and pre-settlement times which formed the land?
Thousands of years ago, the Leaside area was affected by a series of ancient Ice Ages. The land, part of the Lake Ontario basin, was covered by a succession of glaciers and large lakes. At least two major glaciations moved across the area in the Pleistocene Epoch. Between the two advances of the glaciers, a period of temperate climate occured, somewhat warmer than today’s climate, as indicated by warm climate fossils from the old Don Valley Brick Works. Cold climate fossils found in the Scarborough Bluffs (deposits of Lake Coleman and Lake Scarborough) indicate the return of the glaciers which covered what today is Toronto.
Pollen grains from these deposits identify the flora which existed. During the period of Lake Coleman, deciduous trees, indicators of a warm period, included oak, elm, ironwood, maple, hickory, beech, basswood and sweet gum. Then, as the larger Lake Scarborough formed, pollen samples of conifers such as spruce, pine, balsam, hemlock, larch which grow in lower temperatures, increased, indicating a cooler climate. On top of these lake deposits were the glacial deposits from which the Leaside area was formed.
Some 48,000 years ago, as temperatures rose, the glaciers which covered most of Canada began to melt. They receded in this area to create Lake Ontario, a body of water much larger than the lake which we now know.
Once again, about 35,000 years ago, the glaciers began building, with glacial waters depositing river sand and mud into a lake, called Lake Thorncliffe by some. The glacier continued to grow until it covered all of what is now Ontario, as well as the northern United States, some 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Geologists tell us another warm period occurred about 13,500 years ago. This temperature increase caused the great body of frozen water to slowly melt back, allowing a land mass, part of what is today’s Ontario (an area defined by present day London, Guelph and Orangeville), to emerge from the ice.
A further 2,000 years passed before the glaciers receded from north of present day Toronto. The melting glaciers created a very large “Lake Ontario” called Lake Iroquois. The northern shore of Lake Iroquois ran along a line several hundred yards north of present day Eglinton Avenue. What is now the City of Toronto would have been under the water of this lake which was some 180 feet above the level of present day Lake Ontario.
Submerged for thousands of years (when not frozen solid) under a succession of lakes, the Leaside lands were shaped by erosion and sedimentary deposits. Silt, sand and boulders were washed into the expanded Lake Iroquois where wave action and gravity smoothed the edges of the lake bottom, ultimately creating a plateau. Leaside, Oakville, Burlington and Hamilton are all part of this so-called “Iroquois Plain.”
As temperatures rose, water levels gradually fell and Lake Iroquois, once dammed by ice at Cornwall, began to flow eastward and drain into the St. Lawrence basin. Gradually, the lake was reduced in size to that of present day Lake Ontario.
As the lake receded, the plateau-like Leaside lands emerged, high and dry. Centuries of spring run-offs carried by the branches of the Don carved the deep valleys which surround the relatively flat Leaside land on three sides.
The flora and fauna native to Leaside migrated to this area less than 11,000 years ago, however, fossils of the earlier temporary warm periods have been unearthed. As well, about 120,000 years ago this area was home to a variety of wildlife: the giant beaver and white tailed deer (fossils found in Don Valley Brick Yards); bison, bear, stag-moose, and mammoth or possibly mastodon (found near present day Shaw Street at Ossington Avenue); and Tundra musk-oxen (found by the Scarborough Bluffs). Fossils of species inhabiting the area since the last Ice Age include an 11,700 year old brown bear; and a 11,300 year old caribousized deer called Torontoceras (found during the Etobicoke Station subway excavation in the 1980s).
Map showing extent of the waters of Lake Iroquois. Mapwork by Ed Freeman.
The earliest humans, Paleo-Indians, arrived in this area from the south about 9,000 years ago.1 “The first known humans in the Toronto area were the Laurentian peoples—stone workers, who lived just east of present day Toronto, from 3,000 to 1,000 B.C.”2 By the time that Native people appeared, the western portion of this area would have been ice-free. Native farming of corn, beans and squash was known to have occurred in the area bounded by Bathurst, Eglinton, Duplex and Strathallen streets circa 1645 A.D. However, reliable evidence points to human habitation at least 200 years earlier in North Toronto. The Huron had a settlement here for about 25 years, now called the Quantat Village, with traditional long houses grouped near an artesian spring, and surrounded by corn fields. This discovery, made during the basement excavation of Franklin Jackes’ Castlefield house in 1887, was identified by Toronto’s first professional archeologist, David Boyle.3
The short duration of the Quantat site was typical and attributed to the fact that the Native population did not practise crop rotation. Corn, very destructive of soil, probably failed after a few decades of continuous planting. The Natives would also have gathered berries and nuts and hunted the local deer, but seemingly they did not hunt wolves which were also plentiful. According to Elizabeth Simcoe’s diary, dated January 14, 1794: “The Indians do not kill wolves, they seldom take trouble that does not answer to them, & the Wolves are not good to eat & their skins are of little value.”4
Étienne Brûle, interpreter for Champlain and an explorer in his own right, is believed to have seen the environs of the Don and the Leaside lands in the early 1600s. At that time, the main Native settlement was at the mouth of the Humber River, a few miles to the west. There, they spent the winter months sheltered by the dense forest that covered the area.
By the 1780s, under the pressures of the American Revolution, survey parties had penetrated far into the endless forests. With the arrival of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe in 1793, the village of York was established and, by 1800, permanently settled on the layers of fertile, often muddy, sediment deposited by ancient Lake Iroquois. Beyond the village limits, well up into the hills, scattered settlements were forming across the countryside.
Large numbers of slaves from the United States, following the famed “Underground Railway,” sought shelter in Ontario, from the 1850s up to 1865 when the American Civil War ended. More than 1,500 of the estimated 40,000 settled in Toronto where they contributed to economic and political life of the area.5 “For a time the population of what is now Leaside was largely augmented by the influx of negroes escaping from the bondage of slavery prevalent in the United States at that period.”6
Forty-one years prior to this, however, the arrival in Canada of a British immigrant and his subsequent purchase of land in York Township, marks the true beginning of the Leaside we know.
