The regiment of Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles was raised in 1811-12 largely from among the Highland settlers of this region, many of whom had served previously in Europe with the...
As a youth in England, Archibald Belaney was fascinated with wildlife and tales of North American Indians. At seventeen he came to Canada and soon began living among the Ojibwa on Bear Island. He...
The Grand Trunk Railway was incorporated in 1853 to run from Sarnia to Portland, Maine. Although it took in existing lines, new ones had to be built, including the Toronto to Sarnia section which...
This imposing house is a fine example of the Second Empire style which was popular in Canada in the 1870s and 1880s. Local architect Thomas Hanley skillfully blended the characteristic...
French-speaking settlers from the Detroit-Sandwich area and Lower Canada (Quebec) were the first to locate in Tilbury West Township after it was surveyed in 1824. They established farms along Lake...
In 1911 the National Transcontinental Railway, then under construction, reached the present site of Kapuskasing. Three years later during the first World War the Canadian government established...
In this vicinity, the site of a shipyard used during both the late French and early British periods, a village plot was laid out in 1824 for Jehiel and Ziba Phillips. Adjacent to it...
The First Baptist Church of Dawn - established by former slaves and free African Americans in the 1840s - held its meetings in private homes, then in a log chapel at the British American...
Constructed in 1812 and 1813 under direction of Lieutenant Colonels Thomas Pearson and George R.J. Macdonell, as the main post for the defence of the communication between Kingston and Montreal,...
Adam Fergusson (1782-1862) first visited Canada in 1831 to investigate emigration for the Highland Society of Scotland. In 1833, in partnership with a fellow Scot, James Webster (1808-69),...
A vital cultural force in Eastern Ontario, the Franco-Ontarian community in Cornwall was established during the late 1870s when large-scale industrial expansion led to an influx of workers and...
In 1862 the Muskoka Road, a colonization route built to open this region for settlement, was completed to the first falls on the north branch of the Muskoka River. A settlement, including...
The Upper Canada Gazette or American Oracle, first newspaper in what is now Ontario, was published in the town of Niagara. Its first issue, edited by Louis Roy, appeared April 18, 1793. On this...
In 1832, some three years after company surveyors had erected shanties near this site, the Canada Company, a large private land settlement agency, initiated the development of " Little Thames"...
In 1831 two Scottish-born brothers, Lieut.-Col. Robert Campbell and Major David Campbell, were granted 890 ha of land in Seymour Township, which had been surveyed in 1819. Robert who had...
About 1857 James and William Gibson erected a sawmill at the mouth of the Seguin River. William Beatty, with his sons James and William, acquired the mill in 1863, and the following year...
In 1792-94 a village grew up near Fort Chippawa on Chippawa Creek at the end of the new portage road from Queenston. In 1793 the creek was renamed the Welland River, but the village, where a...
In June 1784 disbanded Loyalist soldiers and their families settled at New Johnstown, the site of present-day Cornwall. Initially called Pointe Maligne, the area had been visited by native traders...
In 1833, shortly after the settlement of this region began, Thomas Need settled here at "Bobcaygeon", the narrows between Sturgeon and Pigeon Lakes. When the government began the construction in...
The settlement of this area was begun during the building of the Rideau Canal in 1826-32 when a major construction camp was located here at the Isthmus. In 1833 Benjamin Tett, owner of a...