10 Deforestation, Farming, and Milling

Upper Canada’s settler colony developed within an ethic that didn’t question the rampant exploitation of resources or the need to “tame the land.”¹ Both the land and Indigenous peoples were considered wild and in need of civilizing.

In fewer than one hundred years, dense forests of pine, beech, hard and soft maple, white and red oak, black and white birch, basswood, ironwood, hickory, cedar, elm, ash, cherry, tamarack, and other trees were transformed into farmland by “an army of axe-wielding settlers and woodsmen.”² The environmental impacts of farming and logging had enormous consequences for Indigenous peoples.

Alexander Macdonell’s 1793 journal of Simcoe’s expedition to Penetanguishene provides a glimpse of the pre-colonial landscape along the Humber:

In the early part of the day, went over a pine ridge; but from ten till six in the evening, when we encamped, went through excellent land for grain or grass, the trees uncommonly large and tall, especially the pine. Crossed two small creeks which emptied themselves into the Humber, on one of which (Drunken Creek) we dined, and encamped on the second. The land through which we passed is chiefly wooded with maple, bass, beech, pine and cedar.³

Peter Jones, in History of the Ojebway Indians (1861), commented that Mississaugas rarely cut down living trees:

In addition to this belief in the immortality of their own souls, they suppose that all animals, fowls, fish, trees, stones, &c., are endowed with immortal spirits, and that they possess supernatural power to punish any who may dare to despise or make any unnecessary waste of them . . . In their heathen state they very seldom cut down green or living trees, from the idea that it puts them to pain; and some of the pow-wows [Traditional Healers / Shamans] have pretended to hear the wailing of the forest trees when suffering under the operation of the hatchet or axe.⁴

To establish farms, new settlers had to cut down and remove the roots of trees, clear brush and burn debris, drain wetlands, drive off or kill wildlife, and build houses, barns, and fences from timber. Once farmhouses were built, they needed to be heated with wood, and as more immigrants arrived, the demand for wood increased exponentially. As William Cronon calculated for New England (which has a similar climate): “A typical . . . household probably consumed as much as thirty or forty cords of firewood per year . . . [which] meant cutting more than an acre of forest each year. In 1800, the region burned perhaps eighteen times more wood for fuel than it cut for lumber.”⁵

As accessible forests disappeared, tree poaching became a problem, including on Indigenous lands, where settlers used a variety of subterfuges to gain access. For example, in 1837, John Jones, Peter Jones’ brother and one of the Credit Mississauga Chiefs, was imprisoned for debts. He had been cutting timber on the Credit Reserve, as was his right, unaware that a white man had gained an irregular lease to some of it through a Mississauga youth not empowered to sign away land rights. The supposed tenant charged Jones with trespass, and the court ruled in the white man’s favour and imposed a fine, which Jones could not pay.⁶ (The judgment was eventually overturned.)

They came over here and they were cutting all the trees down. They never got permission to come over and do it. And Joseph Snache sent a whole bunch of warriors over and kicked them off.

—Andrew Big Canoe, Chippewas of Georgina Island⁷

By the early twentieth century, many areas, including the Oak Ridges Moraine, had lost over 90 per cent of the original tree cover. According to historical geographer David Wood, “On the moraine north and west of Toronto,” woodland in Albion Township “went from 40.2 to 7.8 per cent, Caledon Township from 36.8 to 8.1 per cent, and King Township from 33.6 to 6.5 per cent . . . [between] 1860 and 1910.”⁸ Cleared land dried more quickly and washed into streams in greater amounts.

As the forests were chopped down, “birds and insects, the panoply of ground-dwelling animals, the species in the ground, and aquatic life—all were affected.”⁹ Farmers imported seeds from Europe for fields and gardens, some of these imported plants were invasive and altered ecological relationships between local flora and fauna.

Farming also greatly affected groundwater. As Wood notes: “Quite apart from the desirability of good water for humans and their animals, all the wildlife depended on water. Whole natural communities were built around available water, whether on the surface or in the ground, but the aim of agriculture was to drain off ‘excess’ water so that the land could be used for growing crops.”¹⁰ By the twentieth century, the counties of southern Ontario had drained between 20 per cent and 80 per cent of their wetlands.

So entire ecosystems wiped out, basically. These places that we’ve been going to for thousands of years look very different now, not just to us, but also animals, who don’t go there anymore because it’s different. It’s so quick. It happens so quickly. 

—Ben Cousineau, Chippewas of Rama¹¹

Wildlife Reduction and Restrictions on Indigenous Hunting

The importation of farm animals such as sheep, pigs, and cattle; planting forage crops; and selective grazing that favoured some native plants over others also altered ecological relationships.

According to Wood, settlers typically viewed wildlife as either useless or dangerous pests, as sources of fur or food, or as legitimate targets for recreational shooting. Bears, wolves, and foxes were killed because they preyed on domestic animals and passenger pigeons and deer because they ate crops. Beaver, fox, mink, marten, otter, and muskrat were hunted for fur. Deer, ducks, wild turkeys, and passenger pigeons could be hunted for food or sport. Even squirrels or raccoons were shot for sport.

Virtually all forms of wildlife were greatly reduced, and some species, such as the passenger pigeon, once so numerous as to darken the sky, were rendered extinct in less than a century. Wild turkeys also became extinct locally. In 1822, wild animals were reported to be scarce in regions near York. In the early 1840s, a writer could say that “the living, breathing denizens of the forest are various; but their numbers are fast diminishing before the destructive progress of civilization.”¹² As Wood comments, “The custom of hunting for food or pleasure seemed to be considered a right in nineteenth-century Ontario. In 1837 the Reverend Featherstone Osier complained about hunters in the Newmarket area: ‘The people . . . are very careless about all connected with religion. On the Sabbath . . . more guns [are] heard firing than on any other day of the week.’”¹³

Hunting went on (as in most parts of the New World) as if there were no limits to the resources. Indigenous hunters were forced to compete with settlers for increasingly scarce game that they relied on for food. Although treaties with the Mississaugas and Chippewas specified that they could hunt and fish on ceded lands, settlers fenced their farms and warned Indigenous hunters and gatherers they’d be shot if they ventured on farmers’ lands. In 1805, at a Council at the Credit, Chief Quinepenon told colonial authorities of this betrayal: “The inhabitants drive us away instead of helping us, and we want to know why we are served in that manner—Colonel Butler told us the farmers would help us, but instead of doing so when we camp on the shore, they drive us off & shoot our Dogs & never give us any assistance as was promised to our old Chiefs . . . The Farmers call us Dogs & threaten to shoot us in the same manner when we go on their Land.”¹⁴ This devastation is still remembered by First Nations.

All along there, Fox Island, Snake Island, all along there, their fishing grounds and their hunting grounds and Holland Landing and the swamp. There was lots of fish. Lots of game. Deer . . . Our people would pick what they need and that would be it . . . There used to be lots of deer, here, across the lake from us on the south shore of Lake Simcoe. There’s no deer there now. The farmers and the people that call themselves sportsmen shot them all.

—Andrew Big Canoe, Chippewas of Georgina Island¹⁵

Milling and Its Impact

In 1791, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe proposed that the government provide materials for watermill construction, which he considered “universally necessary” and “a great inducement to the settlement of lands.”¹⁶

Mills were key to the expansion of settler agriculture and settlement. Sawmills cut lumber into boards and beams for houses and barns while gristmills ground wheat into flour for bread. There were 201 sawmills in the Home District in 1840 and 275 in 1848. By 1860, there were upwards of twenty mills in Vaughan Township alone.¹⁷ Prospective farmers and artisans sought locations near mill sites, and distilleries were often built near gristmills so that poorer-quality grains or grains such as rye could be distilled into alcohol, which was used (and abused) by settlers and loggers. Later, carding and textile mills were introduced to prepare and weave wool into clothing and other items. 

Mills were essential to settlers but also a precarious venture. Dependent on local water conditions, mill owners could be ruined by low flows in summer or damaging floods in spring and fall. Many local mills succumbed to indebtedness or changing environmental conditions in their first years of operation.¹⁸ Government support was often critical to their establishment.

As watermills proliferated, sawmills transformed large swathes of forests into lumber for local infrastructure, imperial warships, and export to Britain. Other mills began to process grains, textiles, paper, and minerals, for local consumption and global circulation. Tree cover disappeared, settler agriculture expanded, and once abundant fish populations dwindled, threatening the sustenance of Indigenous peoples, particularly the Mississaugas, who relied on fish for food.

And wherever they put a mill, the Indians lost the fish. Because as soon as they put the mill in, it changed the water level, and it took away the fisheries, so there wasn’t food to eat. Because the Mississaugas are fishers. Even our Doodems are fish. There are Doodems that are fish.

—Carolyn King, Mississaugas of the Credit¹⁹

Deforestation and Milling on the Humber

In 1793, Simcoe decided to move the government shipyard from its exposed position in Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) to the banks of the Humber River. Completed in October 1793 near the present-day Old Mill Inn, the King’s Mill processed lumber for Royal Navy gunboats constructed at the Humber shipyard. Many more mills would follow along with mill-based communities such as Weston and Lambton Mills. The Black Creek tributary provided water and power for the settlers near today’s Village at Black Creek.²⁰

Early mills needed to be situated near river systems because they needed waterpower or steam power to operate. Dams also made it easier to catch fish. Before European contact, the rivers on the north shore of Lake Ontario were notable for their abundant fisheries, particularly salmon. Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee harvested salmon intensively yet sustainably. The Humber was a noted spawning ground in the eighteenth century, and fish could be killed at night by torchlight and spear alone. A canoe of two people could amass eight to ten barrels of fish in a single night.²¹

A few years following the construction of the King’s Mill in July 1796, Augustus Jones noted there had been “a great quantity of salmon as well as other fish destroyed by the wheels of [a] sawmill.”²² He suggested that racks could be used to protect fish and keep them away from the fast-moving wheels.

Sawmills typically dropped sawdust and wood debris through slatted floors directly into the water, clogging and slowing streams and covering gravel where salmon laid eggs. As sawdust accumulated, it created anaerobic conditions that smothered fish fry and other aquatic life. The removal of forest cover next to waterways raised water temperatures, increased erosion and run-off, lowered water volume through evaporation, and reduced the insect life that juvenile salmon depended on for food.²³

Many toxic materials were dumped in the water. Especially during early settlement, farmers burned wood to produce potash and pearlash. Wood ashes were used to manufacture gunpowder, glass, medicine, soap, and textiles, and the area around Lake Ontario supplied British industry. Lime refuse, a by-product of ash production, was often dumped into the water while tanneries, soap factories, and other industries also released toxic chemicals.²⁴

In 1806, Mississauga Chief Quinepenon protested to the government about the pollution of north shore rivers: “Our Waters on this River are so filthy & disturbed by washing with Sope & other dirt that the fish refuse coming into the River as usual for which our families are in great distress for want of food.”²⁵

Deforestation affected water flow on the Humber and its tributaries. The depth of the Humber dropped so much that by 1860 timber could no longer be floated down the river. By 1885, some stream flows had been so reduced that fish no longer returned to spawn.²⁶ This food source for the Anishinaabek (and settlers) eventually disappeared altogether.²⁷ Meanwhile, floods became increasingly severe, wiping out many of the mills that had contributed to this environmental destruction.

Milling on Yonge Street

Milling was also key to the settlements on Yonge Street. In the 1790s, before a mill was established close by, at least one settler on Yonge Street, Nicholas Miller, adopted the Indigenous method of pounding corn. “[He] set up the first gristmill in the area. It was a contraption that the settlers had devised from the Indian method of pounding corn in a hollowed-out tree stump. A heavy weight, such as a block of wood, was hung on a long pole set at right angles across the top of a notched post. The corn, which was placed in the hollow stump, was pounded by the weight either falling at the end of a rope or being swung down on the end of the pole, which acted as a lever or sweep.”²⁸

Early mills were built by settlers on the west branch of the Don River at what became known as York Mills. John Cummer, son of Jacob Cummer and Elizabeth (Fisher) Cummer, owned a farm at Finch and Yonge. A side road ran to the Don River, where he ran a mill for his father from 1819. By 1851, he and his son (also named Jacob) had added a gristmill and woollen factory.

In 1794, William Berczy hired men to build a large house and mill, the beginnings of German Mills, a few miles east of today’s Thornhill. The first mill in Vaughan was built in 1801. Settlers were drawn to Thornhill, named after Benjamin Thorne, who by 1830 was operating a gristmill, sawmill, and tannery. By 1848, it was the largest community on Yonge Street north of Toronto with a population of around 700 people.²⁹

Elisha Beman and Peter Robinson would both operate mills at Newmarket, and Robinson also owned the Red Mill at Holland Landing.

The Mississaugas and Milling on the Credit

In May 1806, land surveyor Samuel Wilmot arrived at the Credit River to mark off the boundaries of the Mississaugas’ reserve, which extended one mile on either side of the Credit, as agreed to in the Head of the Lake Treaty (Treaty 14). While surveying with a crew of Indigenous workers, he was instructed to “note Timber . . . Pine & Oak for the Royal Navy south of [Dundas] Street.”³⁰ The navy sought white pine timber for naval masts. When the British lost access to Baltic timber after the Napoleonic Wars, construction of sawmills and timber extraction accelerated. By mid-century, sixty or more mills had been constructed on the Credit River, and woodland cover fell to 67 per cent. It would fall to 9.5 per cent by 1911.³¹

Milling had numerous negative environmental impacts on Indigenous peoples, but some developed mills of their own, and Indigenous men were employed on logging crews. When the Mississaugas established the Credit Mission Village in 1826, they needed lumber to build European-style homes and facilities. Peter Jones went “with a party to Mr. Racey’s mills [at Erindale on the Credit] to raft down boards for our school and meeting house.”³² In 1829, he recorded that the Mississaugas had agreed in Council to erect their own sawmill, which was operational the next year.

The Mississaugas of the Credit ended up operating two sawmills. Lumber was shipped by a schooner co-owned by the Mississaugas and Captain James McLean to lumber yards around Lake Ontario, including Niagara and on the Humber. (McLean was a Scottish immigrant married to a Mississauga woman.) As Wood notes, “In 1844, Port Credit was exporting a considerable amount of forest products—indeed, almost as much lumber as Toronto.” Toronto exported over 1.5 million board feet of lumber at the time.³³

As elsewhere, the impact of milling on salmon was catastrophic. Along the Credit, salmon populations were dwindling by 1846 and nearly disappeared in the next decade.³⁴ The last indigenous Lake Ontario salmon was recorded in 1898.³⁵