Acknowledgements

Given the wide-ranging nature of this study and the extensive collaboration that made it possible, acknowledging my debt to others is especially important. Where Histories Meet was not written in isolation but with the help of a team of scholars and Indigenous Knowledge Keepers. Its publication would simply not have come about without the advocacy, support, encouragement, and energy of Jennifer Bonnell, head of the public history program at York University and the originator and academic lead of the Changing the Narrative project. It also depended upon the openness and support of Allison White, curator, and Wendy Rowney, senior manager, Community Outreach and Education, of The Village at Black Creek, and the willingness of their employer, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to address this challenge. I often leaned on co-investigator Alan Corbiere, also of York’s Department of History. His deep knowledge of Anishinaabe history, culture, and language and Indigenous research protocols guided me; his sense of humour kept me afloat.

I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Marcel Fortin, former head of the Map and Data Library (now associate chief librarian, data services, digital scholarship, and information technologies) at the University of Toronto, and his research assistant, Cheney Gao, who created twenty-one beautiful maps that appear in this book. I also want to acknowledge and thank the following research assistants for their timely and invaluable help: Eon Seon (Ludia) Bae for formatting the relationship charts and securing image permissions; Helena Cairns and Rosaria Moretti-Lawrie for work on image permissions; Johannes Chan for compiling the bibliography, formatting the endnotes, and researching milling in the Toronto area; and Olivia White and Morag Hegg for their review of selected published primary and secondary sources. I also want to thank my partner, Mark Fawcett, and Jennifer Bonnell for their timely help in acquiring high resolution images.

I have been extremely fortunate to have been guided by the First Nations research committee of the Changing the Narrative project. I am grateful to Ben Cousineau (Chippewas of Rama), Lauri Hoeg (Chippewas of Georgina Island), Marcie Sandy and Tayler Hill (Six Nations of the Grand River), Matthew Stevens (Mississaugas of Scugog Island), and Darin Wybenga (Mississaugas of the Credit) for their research suggestions, helpful comments on drafts of the research report, and willingness to work with me to find appropriate wording where there were differences of historical interpretation. I also thank Keith Jamieson of Six Nations for his help with Six Nations genealogy, Robin Vanstone of Six Nations for her initial participation, and Mary-Anne Hoggarth for representing Mississaugas of Scugog Island more recently.

I have been guided more generally by the words of the Elders and Knowledge Keepers whom Alan Corbiere and I interviewed: Albert Big Canoe, the late Andrew Big Canoe, Leona Charles, Rhonda Coppaway, Ben Cousineau, Mark Douglas, Lauri Hoeg, Susan Hoeg, Carolyn King, Kelly LaRocca, Sherry Lawson, Pat LeSaux, Phil Monture, the late Emerson Benson Nanigishkung, Garry Sault, Margaret Sault, Kory Snache, Vicki Snache, Matthew Stevens, and Darin Wybenga. I have learned so much from their generous sharing of their experience, knowledge, and wisdom.

As this work is a survey of the history of a broad geographic area and period, I relied on the scholarship of many historians. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Donald B. Smith for his groundbreaking work on the Mississaugas of the Credit and express my profound gratitude for his support of my initial forays into historical scholarship many years ago. I am also indebted to Chandra Murdoch, whose 2023 dissertation on the Grand General Indian Council filled in important gaps in the scholarship on Indigenous political organizing in the second half of the nineteenth century. I am grateful to Fred Blair, Ray Borland, Laurie Leclair, and David Town for generously sharing their knowledge and sources.

I would like to acknowledge Jesse Thistle and Martha Steigman for the short film kiskisiwin|remembering, which powerfully articulates why the settler-colonial narrative of Toronto history, as represented at Black Creek Pioneer Village, needed to change, and I thank Ruth Howard and Ange Loft, former artistic director and associate artistic director of Jumblies Theatre, for many years of artistic collaboration focused on the Indigenous history of Toronto. Where Histories Meet also draws on my own unpublished 2010 PhD dissertation on the historical memory of the Indigenous and colonial past of Toronto and the research for A Treaty Guide for Torontonians (2021), which I co-authored with Ange Loft, Martha Stiegman, and Jill Carter.

I am grateful to the funders who made this research possible. The Changing the Narrative project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Development Grant, 2020, and Connections Grant, 2023); York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies’ minor grants programs; the University of Toronto Libraries’ Chief Librarian Innovation Award; and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, via a grant from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. This book is a reworked version of the archival research report I prepared for that project.

I want to particularly thank Brian Scrivener, Helen Hajnoczky, Alison Cobra, and Melina Cusano for their patience in helping me birth this book. I give special thanks to copy editor Lesley Erickson: a pleasure to work with you again!

And lastly, a huge thank you to my ever-patient family and friends, who put up with me as I laboured for several years on this project while supposedly retired.