Muskoka
Muskoka is a landscape in the Canadian province of Ontario that was occupied by the logging industry and settlers from the 1860s after the Anishinabe tribes living there signed a land cession treaty in 1850. Therefore, the area was divided into townships, one of which is called Muskoka. There is Gravenhurst , the third largest town after the capital Bracebridge and Huntsville . Around three quarters of Muskoka's residents live in these three places. In 2006 this was a total of 57,563 inhabitants on an area of around 3890 km². The former District of Muskoka had an area of 4105 km².
Muskoka's political organization has been the Muskoka District Municipality since 1971. The agriculturally barely usable region, which has long since barely been significant in terms of forestry, now lives heavily from tourism.
The name is a corruption of the name Mesqua Ukee, one of the chiefs who signed the Robinson Treaty in 1850, which brought 250,000 acres of land to the British colony of Upper Canada in the region . According to him, in addition, the are Lake Muskoka and Muskoka River named.
history
From the 1840s the government of Upper Canada increasingly encouraged the expansion of the infrastructure and the economic use of the north of the province. For this purpose, Muskoka was to be measured alongside other regions and developed through road construction.
With the Anishinabe (Ojibway) living there , the government signed treaties in 1850 to open the land to the expected settlers and timber companies. In the so-called Robinson Treaty , which B. Robinson signed for the colonial government, 36 chiefs at Lake Huron and Lake Superior agreed to vacate their land against the granting of permanent hunting and fishing rights and against Indian reserves .
Although the prospects for the planned agricultural development were considered unfavorable, Muskoka and the Macaulay townships were measured from 1857. The timber industry used its government contacts and pushed for settlement in order to justify expensive road construction. The main goal, however, was the extensive forest, especially the huge pine trees. In the next year, the first road from Washago was built at the northern end of Lake Couchiching , and thus within reach of Lake Simcoe , to the Muskoka Falls . From this rough path, three more trails branched off, Parry Sound Road, which ran west from Bracebridge , Peterson Road, which ran east, and Nipissing Road, which ran from Roseau in Parry Sound to Lake Nipissing . The first settlers were recruited, but only a few wanted to move to the region, which was so unsuitable for agricultural use.
The waterways became even more important than the thin network of paths for the development of the lake-rich area. To this end, the Muskoka Lakes Navigation Company was founded in 1866 by AP Cockburn. It was the first steamboat company in Muskoka. The first ship was the Wenonah . By 1958, 19 different ships took over the transport of passengers, goods and mail. The Muskoka Steamship & Historical Society , originally founded by the Ontario Road Builders Association , has been taking care of the ships since 1973 . Initially, the company raised funds for the restoration of the RMS Segwun , a ship that was built in 1887. It was initially named Nipissing II and had replaced the Nipissing I , built in 1871 but burned down in 1886 . It drove until 1914, was rebuilt in 1925, was finally named Segwun (in the language of the Ojibwa spring ), and drove again until 1958. From 1961 it was used as a museum. In 1992 the historical society built the Segwun Heritage Center in Gravenhurst, other ships were able to operate again and the Muskoka Boat & Heritage Center was established between 2000 and 2006 . Since 2007 the company has published a historical magazine, The Real Muskoka Story .
The Port Carling Historical Society , founded in 1961, developed similar activities with a view to the early settlers, who are referred to there as pioneers . It was only with the Free Grant and Homestead Act of 1868 that there was an increased influx of settlers. The law required settlers to deforest and plow at least 15 acres of land, of which 2 acres per year should be deforested for the first five years of settlement. They also had to build a house that was at least 16 by 20 feet and actually live in the country. Each settler should receive 100 acres, families even 200. The law applied not only to Muskoka, but also to the neighboring Parry Sound District in the north, which also extended to Georgian Bay . All such requests had to be submitted to Charles W. Lount, the Crown Land Agent in Bracebridge .
By 1871, the population of Muskoka rose to around 6,000 people, and by 1881 to 13,000. The widespread book by Thomas McMurray, Free Grant Lands of Muskoka and Parry Sound , Bracebridge 1871, contributed significantly to this. Numerous settlements emerged, most of which have disappeared. But as early as 1879, the farmers, who were often sitting on poor land, had been hit by the Manitoba Fever , and they moved further west. Many who stayed worked in the logging industry, but between 1900 and 1910 the pines largely disappeared from Muskoka. The number of residents fell by almost half. Tourism, which began around 1896, created a certain replacement. He benefited from the growth of the cities in the south of the province, but also from Americans who came to Canada. Another industry prospered for a long time, namely the textile industry. It goes to Henry J. Bird, who founded a company in Bracebridge Falls in 1872. He had founded a similar company in Glen Allen, Ontario, between 1869 and 1871, but his work was destroyed by a flood and the death of his wife and two children from tuberculosis. In Bracebridge he dared to start a new business, because he found hydropower there, a source of energy that was also used by sawmills and flour mills. The Bird Woolen Mills existed until 1953 and was long one of the most famous textile brands in Canada.
The fact that the first rail link reached Gravenhurst in 1875 also contributed to this. The line was extended northward to Bracebridge and Huntsville in 1885.
Another group joined in the 1880s and moved to Gibson near Bala . It was Iroquois who had left the area by the Lake of Two Mountains near Oka (west of Montreal ). Their ancestors had moved north from what would later become the state of New York at the end of the 17th century , where they had moved near a Jesuit mission station near Montreal. From there they later moved to Sault-au-Récollet on the Montreal Island. When the Sulpicianer received a seigneurie from the French king in 1717 on the "Lake of two Mountains" , the Iroquois and some Algonquians moved there with them. After the British had taken over New France in 1759–63 , it was unclear to whom the Seigneurie should now belong. While the Mohawk Iroquois believed that they owned the property, the Sulpician held a different opinion. In the 1870s, Methodists were able to win numerous Mohawk for their Protestant denomination who supported their claim to land. The Ontario government offered them land. The Oka Indians were given an area of 10,400 hectares in the Gibson township, but a dispute arose over the obligations under the Settlement Act of 1868, which prescribed deforestation . An agreement was only reached in 1918, with the Gibson Indian Reserve only encompassing 6,000 hectares instead of the originally planned 10,400. In 1910 around 25 families with around 130 members lived there. They had built a school building as early as 1883 and hired a young teacher. However, the community remained economically dependent on hunting and fishing, and agriculture, as in all of Ontario, ran into formidable problems after World War I. Only the use of traditional agricultural products, in this case cranberries , brought economic growth to the Gibson reserve or the Wahta-Mohawk.
The 23 townships of Muskoka, which mostly divided the land into square areas, which in turn were divided into sub-units down to family properties, existed until 1970.
On June 25 and 26, 2010, the 36th G8 summit took place in Huntsville 2010 , where the G20 meeting was originally planned, but was moved to Toronto .
Bob Boyer, the editor of the Muskoka Herald from 1933, is considered one of the most important historians of Muskoka .
The most famous person from Muskoka in Canada and China is Dr. Norman Bethune , who was born in Gravenhurst in 1890. Bethune, a member of a Scottish Huguenot family, was a doctor and a leader in the treatment of tuberculosis . He also worked as a surgeon from 1936 to 1937 in the Spanish Civil War and from 1938 to 1939 in China. He died of blood poisoning in the Second Sino-Japanese War on China's side. His birthplace in Gravenhurst has been a National Historic Site since 1973.
literature
- Hugh G. Carmichael: History of Muskoka , 1942.
- LR Fraser: History of Muskoka: a complete history of the pioneer days, navigation, lumbering, farming and kindred industries, together with the growth and development of the tourist trade in this now famous District , 1942 (outdated, but rich in facts).
- Andrew Hind, Maria Da Silva: Ghost Towns of Muskoka , Toronto: Natural Heritage Books 2008.
- Florence Beatrice Murray: Muskoka and Haliburton, 1615-1875 , Toronto: Champlain Society for the Government of Ontario, 1963.
- Harley E. Scott: Tales of the Muskoka Steamboats: a History of Muskoka , Herald-Gazette Press, 1969.
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary , 3rd ed., 2001, p. 871.
- ^ Muskoka Steamship & Historical Society
- ↑ Andrew Hind and Maria Da Silva (see literature) have traced the history of eleven of these ghost towns.
- ↑ Bird Woolen Mills ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See website of the emerging railway museum in Bracebridge ( Memento of the original of February 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ Edward S. Rogers, Donald B. Smith: Aboriginal Ontario: historical perspectives on the First Nations , Toronto a. a. 1994, p. 383.
- ↑ A map of the townships can be found here ( memento of the original dated August 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ Bethune Memorial House National Historic Site of Canada
