1 Toronto’s Indigenous Name

On August 24, 1793, a party of Anishinaabek from the Lake Simcoe area attended the naming ceremony for a military outpost that would later become the City of Toronto. John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (“Canada West” from 1841–67; present-day “southern Ontario”), ordered a royal salute fired in honour of the Duke of York’s victory over the French in Flanders and named the post York. Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe, the wife of the lieutenant-governor, wrote that the Anishinaabek appeared to be “much pleased” with the firing of the cannons; one of them took Simcoe’s young son Francis in his arms “and was much pleased to find the child not afraid, but delighted with the sound.”¹

The exciting but peaceful detonation of the cannon and the sense of celebration and friendliness between two peoples are poignant. There’s also an evident cultural difference in an Anishinaabe Ogimaa (Head Chief) holding and paying sympathetic attention to the child of another man, the child of a foreign leader at that, something an upper-class British man, let alone a high-ranking official such as Simcoe, would likely never do. At the moment of Toronto’s conception, then, the histories and cultures of Indigenous and settler peoples were already in dialogue, and new relationships were being created in all their complexity. What the Anishinaabek didn’t know was that Simcoe considered the place’s existing name, “Toronto,” “outlandish.”² In renaming it York, Simcoe was incorporating and subsuming this Indigenous place into imperial Britain.

The name “Toronto” reflects the ancient connection between the Lake Ontario waterfront and Lake Simcoe. The word appears to have referred to the five-thousand-year-old fish weirs and gathering place at the Narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching (now Atherley Narrows). The most widely accepted theory of the original meaning of “Toronto” is that it comes from the Mohawk word “Tkaranto” (Where there are trees in the water), a reference to hundreds of wooden stakes placed by Indigenous peoples at the Narrows and later called Mnjikaning (Fish fence) by the Anishinaabek.³

So the Fish Fence has been around for five thousand years. Pieces of it. You read their research, the various archaeologists that dove and saw. They would wonder why something was only two thousand years old beside something that was four thousand years old. Because they only replaced what was missing. You didn’t tear down the whole thing and put a nice new one in.

—Elder Mark Douglas, Chippewas of Rama⁴

The Toronto Carrying-Place Trail along the Humber River was a major Indigenous portage route from western Lake Ontario to this ancient fishing ground, gathering place, and site of regional councils. The French labelled Lake Simcoe “Lac Taronto” and the Humber River Portage route “Le Passage de Toronto.” Subsequently, the name came to be applied to the bay at the river’s outlet in Lake Ontario and then to the coastline near it. The Lake Simcoe Anishinaabek who attended Simcoe’s ceremony almost certainly travelled along the Carrying-Place Trail to reach the lakeshore.

Anywhere where you wanted to go in what’s now Ontario, you had to go through those lakes. You had to go through that slot at the Narrows. If you want to go east, west, south, whatever, you had to go through the Narrows. You had to go through Mnjikaning, where the barriers are. So it was a strategic choke point.

—Kory Snache, Chippewas of Rama⁵

The Humber Trail was one of two main local portages to Lake Simcoe (the other was along the Rouge River) and a key connector to a web of Indigenous canoe routes that spanned the continent. The river was too shallow to be navigable along much of its course, but the 45-kilometre portage along its banks provided a useful shortcut to the upper Great Lakes. The portage bypassed the far lengthier water route through Lake Erie and the St. Clair River to Lake Huron and linked diverse peoples through long-distance travel for trade, regional councils, and warfare.

They used to travel back and forth on all those rivers . . . If they went visiting anybody, they’d take the rivers.

—Andrew Big Canoe,
Chippewas of Georgina Island⁶

For example, Anishinaabek travelled roughly 800 kilometres from the Sault Ste. Marie area via the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail along the Humber to attend the 1764 Council at Niagara, hosted by the British. The Anishinaabek’s prisoner, fur trader Alexander Henry, described the journey:

The next day was calm, and we arrived at the entrance of the navigation [Matchedash Bay] which leads to Lake aux Claies [the weirs at the Narrows of Lake Simcoe]. We presently passed two short carrying-places at each of which were several lodges of Indians, containing only women and children, the men being gone to the council at Niagara . . . On the 18th of June, we crossed Lake aux Claies, which appeared to be upwards of twenty miles in length. At its farther end we came to the carrying-place of Toranto. Here the Indians obliged me to carry a burden of more than a hundred pounds weight. The day was very hot, and the woods and marshes abounded with mosquitoes; but, the Indians walked at a quick pace, and I could by no means see myself left behind. The whole country was a thick forest, through which our only road was a foot-path . . . Next morning at ten o’clock, we reached the shore of Lake Ontario. Here we were employed two days in making canoes, out of the bark of the elm-tree, in which we were to transport ourselves to Niagara. For this purpose the Indians first cut down a tree; then stripped off the bark, in one entire sheet, of about eighteen feet in length, the incision being length-wise. The canoe was now complete, as to its top, bottom and sides. Its ends were next closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being introduced, the architecture was finished. In this manner, we made two canoes; of which one carried eight men, the other, nine. On the 21st, we embarked at Toranto, and encamped, in the evening, four miles short of Fort Niagara, which the Indians would not approach til morning.⁷

Note that the Anishinabek and Henry crossed Lake Simcoe on June 18 and arrived at Lake Ontario the next morning at ten o’clock. They had carried heavy packs along the rugged portage route for approximately 29 miles or 47 kilometres.⁸ This portage was so useful that over the centuries Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississauga / Anishinaabek peoples had, at various times, built villages along the Humber and its tributaries. The Mississaugas referred to the portage as Cobekhenonk / Cobechenong / Gabekanaang, which has been translated as “Leave the canoes and go back.”⁹

They had that Carrying-Place, and it was important to them. All the waterways were important to them. But that one was more because it went to Lake Simcoe . . . The Carrying-Places were highways to them.

—Margaret Sault, Mississaugas of the Credit¹⁰

After the French arrived in the late seventeenth century, control of the Toronto Carrying Place ensured access to the rich furs of the Muskoka area and fed into a range of political dynamics, including competition between New France and New England for colonial dominance. That struggle ended with New France’s defeat in 1760. Facing a new possibility of American invasion in 1793, John Simcoe hoped to use the Toronto Carrying Place to keep Upper Canada securely within British North America.

For this reason, several weeks after the founding of York, Simcoe, accompanied by several British officers and Indigenous guides, followed the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail north to the west branch of the Holland River. From there, they canoed to Lake Simcoe and then headed west via the Severn River and several portages to Matchedash Bay and Penetanguishene on Georgian Bay. Simcoe’s aim was to assess this inland route for defence purposes. Given that tensions still simmered between the British and recently independent Americans to the south, he hoped that Penetanguishene’s harbour would be suitable for a naval base.

Alexander Macdonell described numerous interactions with Indigenous peoples along the way: “Soon after making our fires, the Great Sail and his family (Messessagues [Mississaugas]), who were encamped further up the river, came to visit their Great Father, the Governor, to whom they presented a pair of ducks, some beaver’s meat, and a beaver’s tail. His Excellency gave them some rum and tobacco.”¹¹

However, as later recorded by Elizabeth Simcoe, her husband arrived at the camp of the Chief who had held Francis in his arms (here, named Canise) only to discover that the Chief and his eldest son “were lately dead, and their widows and children were lamenting them.”¹² They likely died in the smallpox epidemic that devastated Anishinaabe communities around Lake Simcoe that year—one of the first consequences of European contact.

Simcoe found the Carrying-Place Portage route extremely arduous, especially the large wetlands that had to be traversed at Holland Marsh. On his return journey, he hoped to find an easier route: “The Governor went to see a very respectable Indian named ‘Old Sail,’ who lives on a branch of Holland’s River. He advised him to return by the eastern branch of it to avoid the swamp.”¹³ Back at York, Simcoe concluded that the portage route was unsuitable for British military transport and ordered the construction of a road from York to Holland Landing. The opening of this road, later known as Yonge Street, was a major turning point in the development of the area, marking the end of the Toronto Carrying Place as the principal thoroughfare connecting western Lake Ontario to the Upper Great Lakes.

Historically, these two major transportation routes—the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail and Yonge Street—were the main physical links among Indigenous Nations and between Indigenous Nations and newcomers. Although Yonge Street facilitated widespread on-the-ground British colonization and hegemony, the traffic went both ways. Anishinaabek from Holland Landing, Lake Simcoe, Lake Huron, and the Muskoka area visited Yonge Street or York to speak with colonial officials, negotiate treaties, deliver petitions, trade furs, pick up supplies, trade goods, attend Christian religious meetings, and receive treaty “presents.” (Although called presents, these gifts were not unilateral expressions of beneficence on the part of Europeans but an expected part of a system of reciprocal exchange necessary for treaty making.) They met with Indigenous visitors from Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe communities to the east and west along the lakeshore and beyond. In fact, Yonge Street facilitated the spread of new ideas and social movements among Indigenous peoples.

The significance of these routes to both newcomers and Indigenous peoples suggests that we can better understand Indigenous history and the history of Indigenous-settler relations in the Toronto area through this larger regional lens rather than in the isolated silos of stand-alone accounts of individual First Nations, individual town histories, or the settler history of York or Toronto.

Emerson Benson Nanigishkung, a member of Chippewas of Rama First Nation, was a direct descendant of Canise, the Chief who held Francis Simcoe in his arms at the founding of York and who died in the epidemic of 1793—a powerful reminder of the continuity and persistence of Indigenous peoples in the region, despite more than two hundred years of colonial settlement. He shared his version of the Anishinaabe Great Flood re-creation story, with a local spin.

The land around Holland Landing, it’s all black earth, what we call wazhushk, wazhushk being muskrat. That black soil . . . when you look at it east and west, you’ll see that black soil. What [that] brings to my mind is the Great Flood, where all the animals were on a log with Nanaboozhoo. And all the animals tried to dive down and get some earth because the turtle had given up his back for that. And everyone tried, but the only one who came back with any earth in his tiny paw was Wazhushk, muskrat, and today we call him Wazhushk, Muskrat Earth or the Black Earth. We all have a different name for Earth. Our Earth is Aki, being in the Earth, on the Earth, at the Earth.

— Emerson Benson Nanigishkung,
Chippewas of Rama¹⁴

His words are a reminder that Indigenous lands are richly storied and that the worldviews of Indigenous peoples and the cultural contexts for their historical actions and decisions are only minimally evident in the archival record. These stories are both old and new—some elements are ancient, but each generation interprets the stories and their teachings anew to assist them in meeting new challenges.