Muskoka and Haliburton 1615-1875: A Collection of Documents

Almost no original documents illustrative of the history of the Muskoka-Haliburton area have been published, comparatively little has been written about it, and much that has been written was based on hearsay. This volume will provide historians with some of the basic documents and references necessary for an accurate history of the district, and at the same time give those who know the country today glimpses of the past in a way that only original documents can. It will provide the first known mention of many a lake, river, or falls, and describe the land before the lumberman and settler destroyed the original forest.

The volume begins in the seventeenth century with the arrival of the Europeans known to have seen the Georgian Bay shore, and with the Jesuit fathers who ministered to the Algonquin Indians hunting in the area. It concludes over two hundred years later with the establishment of community life, the coming of the railways, the lumber industry, and the beginning of the tourist trade. Government records reveal the life of the Ojibwa Indians who trapped and fished in the district from the middle of the eighteenth century until long after the coming of the white settlers. Reports of the Royal Engineers tell of the exploration of the waterways of Muskoka and Haliburton in a search route from Georgian Bay to the Ottawa River. Diaries and field notes of the surveyors and road builders contain the first systematic description of this rugged country which the government had determined to open for settlement. The building of the colonization roads, the enthusiasm of the first settlers, the bounty of the early crops, were followed by growing doubts as to the wisdom of clearing the lands of the Laurentian Shield for settlement.