Indigenous Family Travelling By Canoe, Quebec. Denis Gale, 1860. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
Plan of York, 1817. E.A. Smith, 1817. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
Rivers we walk on
Years ago there used to be a river at this spot, it stemmed from Lake Ontario, went up Cherry St, to Moss Park, and northeast to end just before Carlton & Jarvis. Due to urbanization, it has been buried much like many other rivers in Toronto. As part of the colonization process, many of the area’s natural features were altered or destroyed.
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Toronto’s earliest travel network
Toronto’s rivers were once travel routes and a resource for Indigenous people in the area. Thanks to rivers, hundreds of miles could be traversed via canoe. Water travel was instrumental to trade networks which brought tools, materials, and crops like corn up to the Great Lakes. Rivers helped sustain local animal populations and were a site where Indigenous populations could harvest fish.
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Water is life
The burying of these rivers contributed to pushing Indigenous peoples out of the area and depleting the population of local wildlife. Today the protection of water remains an important issue to Canada’s Indigenous peoples as water sustains us all and provides so much.
