The Simcoes Make a Map (3): Of Fathers and Fish Weirs
- kmabel6
- 5 days ago
- 12 min read
The Simcoe mapping project was not simply a game of marking places on a blank paper. It was also the process of creating mental and metaphorical maps that have lasted over two centuries, shaping how we see the places in which we live. We seldom pause to consider that part of identity-making. In this post, I will think about what Simcoe’s place names contribute to our sense of place and community.
When Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe marked out counties and townships in Upper Canada, he was creating a structure where none had existed (or been required) before. A new system of land ownership required surveys and agreed-upon township boundaries. Township administration required the organization of counties. The new Assembly required constituency boundaries for its elections. Naming all of these gave Simcoe the opportunity that we observed in the previous two blog posts on the subject.
But there were other places in Upper Canada that already had names: lakes and rivers, notable landforms and landscapes, important travel routes. The maps that Simcoe consulted were mostly marked with French names, tracings of a now-lost empire. Before that, there were Indigenous names, some of which were still known and used by the people whose ancestors had chosen them.
Fortunately, before the Simcoes arrived, crown surveyor Augustus Jones recorded some of the existing names in his field diaries, such as Wequateton (Burlington Bay), Co bee he noak (Humber River), Saugechiwigewank (Trent River), Ges shin ne que sing (Grand River), and Es a cune sippi (Thames River). Jones translated these as (respectively) “have their canoes and go back”, “strong waters, rapids”, “washes/drives away the timber”, and “horn river.” These were names that represented notable features of the land or the uses to which it was put. Other place names had been given by the Neutral and member-nations of the Huron (Wendat) confederacy, former neighbours of the Mississauga who had been scattered when the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) defeated them in the wars of the 1640s. Today, they are being rediscovered and acknowledged.
Simcoe, of course, felt no need to recognize either the Indigenous or French names. For example, he proclaimed the River Thames would replace the Mississauga’s Deshkan Ziibi, which in turn had replaced the Neutral’s Askunessippi (in today’s spellings); both meant the Antler or Antlered River. The French had called it La Tranche (Divided), loosely translating the Indigenous names.
Perhaps the most interesting example, warranting a little deeper consideration, is the case of Lake Simcoe, the largest body of water entirely within the boundaries of British Upper Canada. Simcoe hoped it would become the beating heart of a new economy. Many people believe that the lake is named for Simcoe himself, but he made it clear more than once in his official correspondence that he had named it “in respect to my father’s memory.”[1] He idolized his father whom he had known mostly through his mother’s eyes. Naming a beautiful and important body of water for an officer of the Royal Navy clearly seemed appropriate to the son. Then he named the two main arms of the lake for two of his father’s naval colleagues, men who loomed large in the son’s imagination: Richard Kempenfelt and James Cook. And to underscore the family connections and continuities, he named what is now Grape Island for his son, Francis, although that last choice quickly disappeared from the map.
John Graves Simcoe was quite aware that the lake already had names. Although he used a variety of spellings, he noted the Huron/Wendat name of Oenteronk, the (possibly) Mississauga name of Shan y ong, and the French Lac aux Claies. The three names refer to what we could call fish weirs today: woven, fence-like structures used to trap fish for spearing or storing for later use. Indeed, what are now called the Mnjikaning Fish Weirs at the narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching are a National Historic Site and the locale is still considered a sacred space by the Anishinaabe. Weirs have been built here for thousands of years. For the First Nations, the name represented both the economic and spiritual importance of the waters. The French name was merely a translation.[2]
The Mohawk also had a name for the lake which was known to the French in the late seventeenth century: Tkaronto. Geographer Rick Laprairie has investigated the frequent claim that herein lies the origin of the name Toronto. He sorted through generations of “skullduggery”, fraud, and “fabricated” history to conclude that regardless of the veracity of some of these claims, there is no doubt that the name Toronto was known to the French from at least 1678 and “Impressively … survived through successive occupations by different cultures, military campaigns, and shifting imperial oversights.”[3]
Herein, too, lies a curious piece of history. The Mohawk word allegedly translates as “trees standing in water” (a variation on the fish weir theme) so it at least tells the same story about the place. Ironically, however, the Mohawk did not live here in the seventeenth century – it seems likely that they simply informed the French of the name and it made its way onto the French maps: a translation of a translation. Without the documentary alternatives to the cartographic evidence, the names given by the people who actually lived there might have been lost.
Indeed, the cartographic record offers us a second puzzle. A 1755 map by Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville labels the lake “Oentaronk”, one of the names that Simcoe learned some forty years later. “Lac Taronto” does, indeed, appear on d’Anville’s map, but is attached to a body of water that appears to be today’s Rice Lake. Clearly more investigation is warranted!
All the names for Lake Simcoe in use before the British era reflected an important economic activity associated with the place, telling us something about who these people were and how they lived. Simcoe himself investigated the possibilities of a commercial fishery on the lake but quickly dismissed the idea as not viable. Perhaps less obvious in the name is the sense of the sacred that First Nations associate with the place. One needs to understand the cultural code in order to appreciate the deeper meaning.
Certainly, the names that Simcoe chose for the lake had a deeper meaning, too, but it was a very personal and limited code that (not surprisingly) failed to become part of a wider community identity, at least in the sense that Simcoe intended. Few people in Canada today know much about Captain John Simcoe, RN, and even less about Admiral Richard Kempenfelt. Of course, Captain James Cook is better known -- but certainly not for any connection to the Simcoe family or its legends.
Nevertheless, while re-labelling the map led to a loss of local history, it contributed in turn to the development of an entirely different sense of community. These new names are not simply as random or irrelevant as they seem. We need to unpack the code.
First, it helps to know who exactly the three men were whom Simcoe joined geographically in the 1790s. Why did he consider them so important? Their stories give us insight into the mind of the man who had such an enormous impact on Canadian history (for better and for worse!). And in a subtle way, they also tell us something about ourselves.
John Graves Simcoe was the product of a family of modest means and social place; his grandfather was an Anglican clergyman who laboured for years as a junior curate in the northern counties of Durham and Northumberland before gaining a little support and advancement to a position as vicar.
The Rev. Simcoe’s eldest son, John (born in 1710), declined the clerical life for a more adventurous one with the Royal Navy. His early career seems to have been lost to the record but in 1739, he was commissioned as a 3rd lieutenant and served bravely but without much notice in the West Indies during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). In 1746/7, he frequented the marriage market at Bath where he met one Catherine (also Katherine) Stamford; they married at Bath Abbey before he returned to war. At the beginning of the peace, he was put on half pay but continued to take an interest in naval and national affairs, writing extensively about his ideas for a British empire and producing a handbook for the education of young naval officers. In these works, he revealed himself as a man of profound religious faith, literary and scientific pretensions, and uncommon energy and self-confidence.
He returned to active service in the Seven Years War and died of pneumonia aboard his ship (the Pembroke) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in May of 1759, just before the great expedition against Quebec. At the time of his death, his son and namesake John was just seven years old. Little John likely had few clear memories of the man. Instead, he grew up with his mother’s stories and memories. He came to idolize his father.
The memorial to Capt. Simcoe in St. Andrew's church, Cotterstock.
The text reflects the widow's ideas about the man, which she passed on to her son.
It reads: "To the memory of John Simcoe Esq. late commander of His Majesty's Ship Pembroke who died in ye Royal Service upon that important expedition against Quebeck in North America in the year 1759, aged 45 [sic] years. He spent the greatest part of his life in the service of his King and Country ever preferring the good of both to all private views. He was an accomplished officer esteemed for his great abilities in naval and military affairs, of unquestioned bravery and wearied diligence. He was an indulgent husband and tender parent and sincere friend, generous and benevolent to all. So that his loss to the public as well as to his family cannot be too much regretted, this monument is erected in honour of his memory by his disconsolate widow Katherine Simcoe 1760."
James Cook (1728-1779) was also a northerner of modest family. He served at sea initially in a fleet of coal-transports in the North Sea, then joined the Royal Navy for service in the Seven Years War. In October 1757, he was appointed Master aboard Captain Simcoe’s ship, the Pembroke, sailing with him on a cruise off the coasts of France and northern Spain. In February 1758, the Pembroke sailed to North America as part of Admiral Boscawen’s fleet to challenge the French colonial presence there.
The day after the surrender of the fortress at Louisbourg that July, Cook went ashore where he met military surveyor Samuel Holland. Fascinated by the process of Holland’s work, Cook invited Holland to meet Captain Simcoe and the two naval officers learned the rudiments of Holland’s trade aboard Simcoe’s ship. Cook and Holland then produced a chart of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the mouth of its namesake river that corrected numerous errors Captain Simcoe had discovered in the existing maps. And note that John Graves Simcoe named the river that drained into Cook’s bay at the southern end of Lake Simcoe to honour Samuel Holland’s part in the story.
Among other things, Cook surveyed one of the primary hazards to shipping in the St. Lawrence. And it was this work that enabled the British fleet to conduct Wolfe and his soldiers upriver to their momentous place in history. Captain Simcoe did not live to see it. But clearly, his son believed that Simcoe was the instrument by which Cook not only helped to gain a foothold for empire in Quebec but also was able to launch his career as a genius of navigation and the hero of Pacific exploration and mapping.
There was a second connection between John Graves Simcoe and Captain James Cook. In 1762, Cook was part of a British expedition to retake the port of St. John’s, Newfoundland, from the French. Here again, Cook provided valuable service in producing maps. These caught the eye of Newfoundland’s commodore-governor, one Thomas Graves who just happened to be a cousin of Admiral Samuel Graves who played such a large role in the lives of Elizabeth and John Simcoe.
The other man whom Lt. Gov. Simcoe chose to memorialize with his father was Richard Kempenfelt (1718-1782). Kempenfelt was the second son of a Swedish-born army officer. At the tender age of 10, he became a midshipman in the Royal Navy; he made lieutenant two years after John Simcoe. Little is known of his early career, but it seems likely that Kempenfelt and Simcoe met as young officers in the West Indies.
Both were religious men with scientific interests. Kempenfelt was remembered for his “penetrating intellect” and his campaigns for naval reform in matters of discipline, and for technical improvements in such things as signalling.[4] Under a pseudonym, he published a collection of Original Hymns and Poems (Exeter, 1777), some of which are still included in modern hymnaries. During a break in his naval service between wars, he devoted himself to the Methodist cause in the West Country.
Although there is no clear evidence, it is very possible that Kempenfelt and Catherine Simcoe knew one another while John Graves was a boy. They all lived in Exeter in the 1770s and there are hints in the surviving correspondence of an unnamed man who made himself very useful to the widow in her final years while her son was across the Atlantic fighting in the American Revolutionary War.
Promoted rear admiral in 1779, Kempenfelt was perhaps best known for his death more than for any of his campaigns in life. As part of the Channel Fleet, he was in command of the Royal George when it was sent to Spithead for repairs. There, in late August 1782, a series of miscalculations led to the sinking of the ship. Some 900 men, women, and children drowned, Admiral Kempenfelt among them. He was apparently working at his desk in his cabin at the fateful moment. There was much national mourning. A medal was struck. Celebrated poet William Cowper published a lament in Latin that was re-issued in an English version after the poet’s death (a few years after the Simcoes returned from Upper Canada). The Latin version might have been known to Simcoe; he certainly was affected by both the loss and the sense of personal connection to a national tragedy. Cowper immortalized the story in large part because of the irony of such a death in wartime, observing among other things:
Brave Kempenfelt is gone,
His last sea-fight is fought,
His work of glory done.
It was not in the battle,
No tempest gave the shock …
His sword was in its sheath,
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.[5]
Ten years after the tragedy, when Lieutenant Governor Simcoe was making decisions about immortalizing his family, it was perhaps not the tragedy or the irony that he had in mind, but a shared connection with national service – and national celebrity.
What then are we to make of the Simcoe mapping project today?
Obviously, at one level, we have witnessed the stamp of empire on someone else’s homeland. Another people’s presence and history has been erased.
On another level, we have witnessed the Simcoes’ efforts at community building. The first British vice-regal authority in Upper Canada appreciated the value of symbol and the necessity of creating a shared space in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Political institutions and a new kind of economy were only part of his wide-ranging plan. As modern social science theory would put it, communities are constructed over time through shared experiences, repeated stories, the performance of rituals, and the emergence of collective memory. Symbolic and imagined identities matter as much as physical or lived experience. Simcoe would not have used those words, but he clearly understood what was needed to build a new society that would stand as a cohesive bulwark against republicanism.
And in another sense, a map inscribed with personal names makes a very different impression on the observer than one with place names that describe landforms or allude to human use of place. Even if we don’t know who these people are/were, we absorb the idea that individuals matter and our present was created through the actions of individuals in the past. Furthermore, the names create boundaries between us and them: Simcoe’s maps have British-sounding names, therefore we associate with them and not the “other”, whether others of Indigenous or European ancestry.
If we choose to investigate who these names represent, we learn about other boundaries, too: boundaries between what “matters” and what does not, or boundaries between “our” heritage and others’. Labels on a map are symbolic representations at the core of group identity. Little wonder that when the identity of the group is challenged as circumstances change, the names of places and streets and towns are contested, too. New names on maps erase the old – until yet more change dictates that the pattern repeat.
[1] Simcoe to the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, Navy Hall, 1 September 1794, in E.A. Cruikshank (ed), The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1925), vol. 3, p. 58.
[2] Most of the names on the 16th and 17th century French maps are, in fact, translations or renderings of the Indigenous names. Why the French adopted the Indigenous names and the British largely rejected them is the subject for another kind of analysis.
[3] Rick Laprairie, “Toronto’s Cartographic Birth Certificate,” Ontario History CX/2 (Autumn, 2018), pp. 155 and 175.
[4] Richard C. Blake’s entry on Kempenfelt in Donald M. Lewis (ed.), Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, 1730-1860 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), vol. 2, p. 638.
[5] The complete poem (“On the loss of the Royal George”) is available on www.poetryfoundation.org
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