Oshawa

We looking at today the city in which I reside, Oshawa, Ontario Canada or more specially the pioneers or the first settlers in the region and how they came about being here. I think it's a sad thing that so many can live in whatever locality spend their whole lives in a place and not be knowledgeable or aware of the history of what had went on before---on the very ground they walk on and tread. The world is an extremely big place---but the world also can be thought of as in a micro sense as well---the world in which people live out their individual lives. Every place I believe has a story to tell especially a city due to it's size and greatness. Oshawa is no different. When one considers it's history even the things one considers as landmarks for direction---or the streets they drive up and down---I'm of the opinion their are stories concerning them that us later generations would appreciate to know. I trust at least the people who live in and around the Oshawa might find these thing of interest so without further ado let's go back to the time before what we'd consider white northern European types to be here...to the time of the Indians.

Imagine that I'm taking you back in time to around 1700 A.D. Apparently the Indians which frequented this area were a tribe known as the Mississaugas. They travelled back and forth from one location to another---from Lake Scugog in the north to Lake Ontario in the south and as a custom they'd do it annually. Picture in your mind a trail...as I say starting from the Lake here that is Lake Ontario to Lake Scuogog. In later years it was developed more into what it is today....a paved road. It's name? Simcoe Street. In 1700 and years prior it was merely a pathway through the woods Indians would use to carry bundles of furs to the place where Oshawa harbour is now located. From here they'd take the furs by boat to the mouth of the Credit River, in what we now call Mississauga a part of the city of Toronto to the west. Around 1750 it became a little bit easier as the French established a log building in this location to serve as a trading post for the Indians. Imagine now another 40 years pass...and the French then desert the trading post. Ten more years pass by and then one day 1790 a party of six people pull up on shore. It was none other then one Captain Benjamin Wilson, his wife and two sons plus two other young men interested in starting a new life in this untamed, frontier.

If you'd ask is that where Wilson Rd got it's name you'd be correct. Seeing the log trading post that'd been deserted by the French a decade prior the Wilson family decided to use it as a temporary shelter until they built a new home. It's been said it was located between what later became known as Farewell March and Oshawa Creek and it was considered such a desirable spot for the reason there was such an abundance of fur bearing animals plus also an abundance of fish so much so that it was said when sitting in a canoe it would lift right out of the water due to the fish pushing up from underneath. No need to use a fish radar gadget like we have today---just reach in your hand and grab out a salmon...A real wild life wonderland it was in those days. In fact everything we think of as Oshawa today, from Thornton road in the west, to Taunton in the north (Taunton being an Indian name for the trail) to the city town line in the east was nothing but a totally dense forest.