Colonial Musings

Waubaushene, the town that I live in, has been a townsite since the mid nineteenth century.  Before that it was the home of the Wendat people until the 1600’s when they were virtually wiped out in the French/English conflicts.  After that, the Anishinaabeg moved into the area until they were pushed out by European settlers.  Long before that, this area was mostly under a large inland sea which is why there is so much limestone around.

The name of this area has changed with the changing inhabitants and no one seems sure where the name Waubaushene comes from.  Some say it means “place of rocky marshes”, which would describe the water at the edge of the town very well.  Some people have shortened it to just Waub.

The early settlers were involved in the lumber industry and old pictures of the townsite show no trees at all.  The area was covered in White Pine once upon a time, but the early settlers deforested it.  Beginning in  1922, the Simcoe County Forest project planted 33,000 acres of what had become "wasteland" with Red Pines.  Subsequent residents of the Waubaushene townsite planted other varieties of trees and now there are huge Silver Maples, Red Oaks, Basswoods, White Pines, Scots Pines, Sugar Maples, Eastern White Cedars and many others.

Waubaushene Public Elementary School now closed

Times change and first the Separate Elementary School and then the Public Elementary School have closed.  The town’s kids are now bused to the next town to go to school.  The Elementary School property was sold to the Simcoe School Board for one dollar by the town a long time ago, so that the local children could walk to school.  But apparently, we have less money now then we once had and the school board decided to sell the building and the property.

A group of local women wanted to change the building into a community hub including the local library.  They got some support, but the local council lacked the imagination to envision this new idea.  And so, the school board sold the property to a local car salesman, Paul Sadlon, who is also involved in property.  All summer, a dumpster sat outside of the school whose sign still sadly reads "Have a Good Summer" and the residents wondered what this man had in mind. In late August a farm wagon with a painted sign was parked in front of the school that read “You are in Paul Sadlon Country.” 

School with farm wagon on right

Close up of the wagon at the school with the ironic "No Trespassing" sign

And here we thought we lived in Waubaushene, not Paul Sadlon Country!  It made me think of how North and South America are named after Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator and explorer who was part of exploring the “New World”.  The early explorers thought they had found India and called the residents Indians.

Well, Waubaushene is on the shore of Georgian Bay and sometimes boaters end up in Waubaushene thinking they have arrived in Honey Harbour, a holiday town to the northwest.  If the old ways of naming a place still apply, then will we end up being called “Honeys” or “ Huns” for short?  Maybe Waubaushene will be called Sadlonica or Paulville.  

Perhaps it is coincidental, but at the same time as the wagon appeared, construction started in our little town of five hundred for concurrent Tim Hortons and a Liquor Control Board where the town meets the highway.  This will likely put the Country Style Donuts and Subway sandwich outlets across the road at the gas station out of business.  Despite the fact that you can drive to one of three LCBO’s in ten minutes, we now are getting our own.  I suppose we need more coffee and alcohol in Paul Sadlon Country.  

There is a story I have heard that back when lumber was the only business in town, there was a hotel in Waubaushene where the men drank after working hard in the bush.  The story goes, that the women of the town burned the hotel down because the men were drinking all their wages.  The hotel was rebuilt and the drinking continued until it mysteriously burned down again.  Since then, the only place to drink has been the Legion.

But now we are in a new country and we are  getting a taste of what colonial thinking feels like from the colonized perspective.  It feels invasive to have a stranger with money arrive in town, buy up the school, put up a no trespassing sign and then call it his “country”.

Well, the story continues and now the farm wagon is still there but the boards with the words and picture are gone.  Did people complain about the name?  Has Paul Sadlon sold the property?  If so, why is the wagon still there. It is hard to understand the ways of the colonizer.

Wagon with signs now removed.

This past weekend, on a rainy Saturday, my partner and I decided to go to Huntsville for a Buskerfest.  My partner has always wanted to go to a Buskerfest.  The event was historically a Macaroni and Cheese festival in honour of the pasta factory in town but this year they have added buskers.  Arriving in downtown Huntsville, we could see vendors' tents set up on the main street.  Visitors could buy tickets to sample the seven competitors' mac and cheese while they watched street performers who were very entertaining despite the cool cloudy weather. 

At one point it began to rain and we ducked into the Town Hall which advertised an art show.  We had just got inside the foyer, when we were invited by a very pleasant woman to go on a tour of the city hall.  She only had two participants so far, so we agreed, having nothing better to do.  This woman took us first into the old section of the city hall, down in the basement.  The bricks that were laid in 1926 are now crumbling and the town has to decide what to do about this.  She touched one of the bricks and part of it came off as a cloud of dust.  I had to think to myself, "the foundation is crumbling."  It seemed like a powerful metaphor for the foundation of colonialism which also seems to be crumbling now.

We continued on the tour and saw the old outdoor steps which are no longer deemed accessible, the old theater, the new theater, council chambers and the accessibility elevator which has been added in later years. The tour ended in the rear foyer, where our guide pointed out the historical plaques.  According to these information plaques, George Hunt arrived in the area as a settler in 1869 getting the “free land” that was offered to settlers.  He went on to build a small agricultural centre whose growth was aided by the engineering of a water route to the area and by 1886, the railroad had arrived and the town was incorporated as Huntsville.  The Muskoka Colonization Road reached Huntsville the following year and the town was on its way.

Our tour guide told this history very proudly.  After all, it was the story of the town that she knew and loved.  But for my partner and I, the history felt chilling.  The words “free land” slipped so easily off of this woman’s tongue but for us, it was stolen land.  In 1923, the Williams Treaty was signed for that land and the land where we now live in Waubaushene.  The land was taken but never paid for.  Just in the last few years, the government has finally been forced to honour that treaty, after being in the courts for years.  The crumbled foundation of a treaty not honoured by the Crown was removed and a new deal was reached that will allow the First Nations involved to strengthen the people in their communities well into the future.

The more that we learn about the history of this land, not just the story that the settlers and their families told but from the perspective of the families of those who were pushed off the land and cheated, the harder it is to feel comfortable with the status quo.  The foundations of colonization are crumbling for us. 

The town of Huntsville, where ironically, my partner’s father was born, is trying to figure out what to do about the crumbling foundation.  Should they shore it up, renovate, rebuild or relocate?  It made me think about our common story, our history.  What do we do with that?  Do we keep on telling the story of “free land” and keep shoring that up?  Or do we let it crumble and make space for the rest of the story?  It is up to us as we write the old stories in a new way.