Volume 117, Number 2, Fall 2025

EN:

There are engravings on a large rock in Awenda Provincial Park near southern Ontario’s Georgian Bay that suggest they date to the Penetanguishene Purchase of 1795. Thus, someone viewing the inscriptions might think they are significant in the history of Anishinabe-Crown relations. They are not. The engravings are deceitful modern fakes of no value for understanding Crown-Indigenous relations in the late 1700s. Sadly, people have accepted them as genuine. This has corrupted understanding of the region’s history and led Indigenous protesters to occupy the site under the false impression that the location is historically important because of the engravings. This article exposes the fraud, assesses its impact, considers issues of failing to evaluate our physical heritage accurately, and notes how falling victim to deceptions undermines efforts to achieve truth and reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the broader Canadian population.

EN:

The unmarked Potter’s Field at the Ingersoll Rural Cemetery was the burial place of nearly 400 people between 1864 and 1976. Many people interred in this section were societally disenfranchised based on their race or their economic circumstances. By utilizing micro-histories, this article presents new and diverse interpretations of the lived experiences of poverty in nineteenth-century Ontario, focusing on death in particular. Narratives relating to the unhoused, victims of infanticide, the formerly enslaved, transient labourers during the Great Depression, and those impacted by the discriminatory Chinese Head Tax are all considered. This article illustrates the ways that previously marginalized histories can be brought into national conversations when considering the nuance and specificity associated with death, burial, and memorialization.

EN:

This article offers the first published account of the origins of the Flag of Ontario. Proclaimed in May 1965, the Ontario provincial flag (like that of Manitoba) was a consequence of the preceding national flag debate. Sometimes dismissed as an act of rebellion against the new Canadian flag, the new provincial flag was largely welcomed by a receptive Ontario public. The loss of the Canadian Red Ensign, a long-respected and familiar symbol for much of English Canada, was deeply felt by many. Much of Ontario was ambivalent about changing the national flag and the adoption of a provincial Red Ensign was held by some to be an act of compromise, easing the acceptance of the new Flag of Canada after a divisive national debate. This article also brings to light several less well-known, ultimately unsuccessful flag proposals for Ontario that arose in the early 1960s.

EN:

This article considers how a semi-skilled Scottish stonecutter could rise to become one of Upper Canada’s most accomplished businessmen over the course of a few decades in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although largely unremarked, the man who modestly styled himself “John Brown, Contractor” contributed significantly to the development of his adopted country’s industrial and commercial infrastructure until his unexpected death in 1876. Based in the Niagara region, he became the country’s pre-eminent contractor cum civil engineer: he established the first hydraulic cement mill in British North America in Thorold in 1841, and his professional acumen was instrumental in ensuring the success of major public works, from the Second and Third Welland Canals to the Imperial Tower lighthouses. The manager “loved by his men” and the “fair boss” who advocated for labour rights was overseeing an estimated 500 men on a myriad of contracts throughout Ontario when he died. Brown was also a shrewd real estate speculator whose extensive land and quarry holdings helped to shape Niagara’s economic landscape.

EN:

As a case study set within the Sault Ste. Marie-Baawating region, this paper seeks to address the development and implementation of residency requirements to maintain treaty rights in British Canada. Following the conclusion of the War of 1812, British Canada began imposing both unofficial and official decisions relating to receiving gifts, annuities, land rights, and various forms of government assistance. Beginning by limiting gifts to British resident Indians between 1840–1858, the practice evolved into a legislated section of the Indian Act from 1876 to 1951 that removed individuals from Band lists for residing in a foreign country for five consecutive years. Garden River First Nation, a Band within the Baawating region, lost members prior to 1876 based on U.S. residency and acceptance of American annuities, lands, or government assistance. From 1876 to 1951 the Band and its membership continued to be negatively affected by the residency rule. Regardless, the Band continued to contest removals and seek reinstatement of members through calls to treaty rights and understandings of the five-year rule—residency on the reserve or their non-consecutive residence in the U.S. As such, this article explores an understudied aspect of enfranchisement policies within the Indian Act, from their development to formal implementation, Anishinaabeg contestation of these policies, and briefly addresses the ongoing contemporaneous existence of these policies.