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• Indian Flint Bed, The
  Some two miles west of here, on the shoreline of Lake Huron, are outcroppings of chert. Nodules of this material, released by ice and water erosion, provided the Indians with highly prized flint for their arrow points, spearheads and scrapers. Archaeological investigations in the area have disclosed numerous campsites where the nodules were fractured and chipped into desired forms. Carbon dating has indicated that these "workshops" were in existence some 2,700 years ago, and they...

• Lawson Site, The
  About 1500 A.D. a Prehistoric Neutral (Late Ontario Iroquois) Indian village occupied this site. Archaeological excavations suggest that it was an agricultural community covering 4-5 acres and housing approximately 1,000 inhabitants in communal longhouses. Strategically located so that protection was provided by steep slopes leading down to Medway River and Snake Creek, the village was heavily fortified in exposed areas by palisades, earthworks, ditches and lookout platforms stockpiled with rocks. Although the existence of the...

• Neutral Indian Burial Ground
  This nearby burial-ground, one of few representative sites known to have survived relatively intact in Ontario, was used by the Neutral Indians, a confederacy of Iroquoian tribes which occupied the area around western Lake Ontario before 1655. The remains of over 373 individuals were carefully interred here in 31 single graves and 24 multiple graves. Revered by the Neutrals, these remains were typically accompanied by a variety of wares, including carved combs, pipes, pottery, beads...

• Nodwell Indian Village Site, The
  This important Iroquoian village site was discovered about 1900, and named after the family which then owned the property. Subsequent archaeological examinations have uncovered a mid-14th century village, consisting of twelve loghouses, from 42 to 139 feet in length, protected by a double palisade. It was probably occupied for about 10 to 20 years by a group of some 500 people who were predecessors of the Huron and Petun Indians. Although primarily farmers who grew...

• Huron Fish Weirs, The
  In the adjacent Narrows joining Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching are the remains of Indian fish weirs. They were noted by Samuel de Champlain when he passed here on September 1, 1615, with a Huron war party en route to attack the Iroquois south of Lake Ontario. The weirs consisted of large number of stakes driven into the bottom of the Narrows, with openings at which nets were placed to catch fish. These weirs (claies) caused...

• Roebuck Indian Village Site
  Approximately 500 years ago, an Iroquoian agricultural community of about 1,600 persons occupied this site. Archaeological excavations suggest that approximately 40 communal longhouses, averaging nearly 100 feet in length, stood in this village, palisaded with a stout double stockade. The farmers on the site grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and tobacco. A similar village, Hochelaga, on the present site of Montreal, was visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535. After this first contact with Europeans, these...

• Fool's Paradise
  This property sits on the ecologically sensitive, geologically significant Scarborough Bluffs that display sediments left by glaciers over 70,000 years during the last phase of the Pleistocene epoch. Aboriginal peoples may have inhabited this site as early as 8,000 B.C. Scottish immigrant James McCowan settled this land for farming in 1833, calling it "Springbank" because of the springs running from the ancient shoreline of Lake Iroquois (predecessor of Lake Ontario) to the north. In 1939...

• Aqua-Plano Indians of the Upper Great Lakes, The
  In 1950, archaeological investigations in this area uncovered a site which had been used as a workshop camp by a group of the earliest known people in this part of the Upper Great Lakes basin. Called Aqua-Plano Indians because they migrated from the western plains to fossil beaches of glacial and post-glacial lakes in this region, they appeared about 9,000 years ago following the retreat of the glaciers and the northward movement of plants and...

• Nipigon Canoe Route, The
  Indigenous peoples who hunted and traded here thousands of years ago developed a water route by which they could travel from Lake Superior to James Bay via Lake Nipigon and the Albany River. Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that people living in the Lake Nipigon region were part of an intricate system of trade that extended to the Atlantic coast. In the 1600s, native people began to share their knowledge of canoe travel on North American...

• Jean-Baptiste Lainé Site
  In the 16th century, prior to the arrival of Europeans, a village was founded on this site by the Huron-Wendat, a Nation of agriculturalists and fisher-hunter-gatherers. In response to increased conflict in the region, many smaller villages merged to form a three-hectare settlement of 1,700 people, with more than 50 longhouses arranged around a central plaza, surrounded by a palisade, a ditch and an embankment as protection. The economic and political functions of the Huron-Wendat...

• Anishinaabeg at Lake of Bays, The
  A water-based people, the Anishinaabeg - the original people of this region - were a hunter-gatherer society that often travelled here to the narrows at Trading Bay (Lake of Bays). The area that is now Dorset was a special, spiritual place abundant in natural resources. For thousands of years the Anishinaabeg set up small camps here harvesting maple syrup and birch bark, fishing and trading in the spring and summer, and hunting and trapping during...

• David Boyle 1842-1911
  Born in Scotland, Boyle came to Canada in 1856 and settled in this area. As a local school teacher, he began an extensive collection of native artifacts and became an archaeological authority. Boyle moved to Toronto in 1883 and three years later was appointed the first Curator of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, then housed in the Canadian Institute Building. Dedicated to the study and retention of artifacts within Ontario, he initiated an active program of...

• Scarborough Bluffs, The
  The layers of sand and clay exposed in these bluffs display a remarkable geological record of the last stages of the Great Ice Age. Unique in North America, they have attracted worldwide scientific interest. The first 46 metres (150 feet) of sediments contain fossil plants and animals that were deposited in a large river delta during the first advance of the Wisconsinan glacier some 70,000 years ago. They are covered by 61 metres (200 feet)...

• Serpent Mounds, The
  The principal mound of this group is the only known example in Canada of a mound of serpentine shape. The earliest archaeological excavation on the site was carried out by David Boyle in 1896. Artifacts and skeletal remains were discovered, but the first comprehensive investigation was not started until 1955. The mounds, somewhat similar to those of the Ohio Valley, appear to have been built while the region was occupied by Indians of the Point...

• Loss of the "Jane Miller"
  The "Jane Miller," a wooden-hulled freight and passenger vessel, was built in 1879 at Little Current. A screw-propelled, 210-ton ship 78 feet in length, she was owned by her skipper, Andrew Port of Wiarton. On November 25, 1881, at Owen Sound and Meaford, she loaded a heavy deck cargo destined for Michael Bay, Manitoulin Island. Not obtaining enough wood at Big Bay dock (North Keppel) to reach his destination, Captain Port attempted to reach Spencer's...

• William Arthur Parks 1868-1936
  The first Director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Paleontology, Parks was born in Hamilton and educated at the University of Toronto, from which he received a Doctorate in 1900. Initially known as an expert on "stromatoporoids", a unique group of invertebrate fossils, he later turned his attention to the study of vertebrate paleontology. The expeditions Parks organized to the Canadian and American West between 1918 and 1935 provided most of the material for the...

• William J. Wintemberg 1876-1941
  An outstanding Canadian archaeologist, Wintemberg was born in New Dundee and, as a youth, developed an avid interest in this region's folklore and prehistory. After 1901, he pursued various trades in Toronto but, encouraged by David Boyle of the Provincial Archaeological Museum there, he devoted himself increasingly to archaeological field-work and study. Following his appointment in 1912 to the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa, Wintemberg undertook excavations in eastern Canada, notably in Ontario, Newfoundland, and...