[78-L] How your city got its name, wuz Re: Albert Ketelbey question ^

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> Steven C. Barr wrote:
>>>
>> No...the truth is even stranger! Apparently, after the Canadian Post 
>> Office
>> had, for
>> reasons unknown, rejected "Skae's Corners" as a name for a post office,
>> Moody
>> Farewell asked his native friends what THEY called the place! At the 
>> time,
>> they
>> were standing about where to-day's King Street crossed Oshawa Creek...so 
>> the
>> "Indians" replied "oshawa," which can be translated as "where we have to
>> get out (of our canoes) and walk!"
>>
>> So...the HQ of GM Canada wound up in a village whose name translates as
>> "Where we get out and walk!!"
>> One never knows...?!
>> ...stevenc
>
> He misheard..they were really saying "Aw, s**t, walk."  The mental image 
> of
> natives having to get out of their canoes and portage them across King 
> Street
> somehow is a little jarring..
>
Well, this occured in the early 1840's! At that point, "King Street" didn't 
exist
as such...it was then part of a marginally-built "Kingston Road" laid out by
Col. Danforth! What "building" was done on roads in those days consisted of
(1) cutting down any large trees in the "roadway," and (2) filling in any 
LARGE
holes therein! If they came to a creek or "river," they cleared out a "ford" 
so
travellers could get across same...even if this made the road rather 
crooked?!

Oddly enough, "Simcoe Street" also already existed (in the same marginal 
state!);
it was laid out and "cleared" in 1822 as a "colonization road," intended to
encourage settlers to establish farms well north of Lake Ontario.

The earlier natives laid out their own trail, so they could get their pelts 
to the
French traders in to-day's Oshawa. Of course Lake Scugog only existed
then as a large area of low ground; it was turned into a lake when a dam
was built at its southern end to provide water power for a mill there!

The road MAY have been called "the Nonquon road"...that name, which
is probably "Indian" in origin, is/was used for segments of the north-south
road which parallels (and probably predates) Simcoe Street!

Steven C. Barr