Magwood Park

Magwood park is an 8.7 hectare urban park that is located on the east bank of the Humber River in Toronto, just south of Dundas Street. The park is forested and cut across by a ravine, running in an east-west direction, that is designated as a provincially significant wetland. A trail runs along the ravine and connects to the Humber heritage trail.

The entire park is covered in deciduous forests. Sugar maple stands form the dominant canopy cover on dry land above the ravine, and grow interspersed with other hardwood species, including black maple, Norway maple, white ash, red oak, and basswood, while common understory tree and shrub species include witch hazel, chokecherry, gooseberries, bladdernut, red elder, and slippery elm. The forest floor is rich in wildflowers, including Jack-in-the-pulpit, wild geranium, Virginia waterleaf, False Solomon’s seal, Canada mayflower, mayapple, early meadow rue, bloodroot, red trillium, and zigzag goldenrod. Poison ivy is also common on the forest floor.

The ravine bottom supports lowland deciduous forest types, which have white ash, black ash, black walnut, and Norway maple as the canopy forming tree species. Shrubs and understory trees include alternate-leaved dogwood, honeysuckles, and chokecherry, while jewelweed, Virginia creeper, enchanter’s nightshade and skunk cabbage grow on the moist forest floor.

Magwood Park is located at the intersection of the Iroquois Lake trail and the Toronto Carrying Place trail, which are pre-contact Indigenous terrestrial trails and trade paths. The Iroquois Lake trail follows the ancient shoreline of glacial lake Iroquois, which existed at the end of the last glacial period, about 10,000 years ago. Findings of paleolithic campsites along the trail suggest that the Iroquois Lake route had been used since a time archaeologists call the Paleoindian period, which lasted from 10,000 to 8000 BCE. The Toronto Carrying Place is a more recent route that connected the north shore of Lake Ontario to the Holland River and Lake Simcoe and was actively used throughout the Woodland Period (500 BCE to 1500 CE), and since Europeans and other newcomers began to colonize and settle there.

The northeast corner of Magwood Park is the location of an Indigenous effigy mound, which is called the Thunderbird Mound. Archaeologists believe that the mound was constructed by several Indigenous cultural groups, including those archaeologists refer to as Adena and Hopewell cultures, between 1500 BCE and 500 CE, with successive generations adding new layers to the mound. However, Haudenosaunee oral tradition shared by the Taiaiako'n Historical Preservation Society, which is an Indigenous led organization working to protect Indigenous mounds in Toronto, dates the construction of the mound to 6000 to 8000 years ago. The people who built the Thunderbird Mound are part of a larger network of mound-building traditions, interconnected through trade, that spanned eastern North America, from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River valley. Mounds served multiple purposes, including as places for burying relatives, sites of medicine ceremonies, and astronomical markers that aided in navigation. Red clay originating from Kenora Lake in northwestern Ontario, which was carried south through trade, has been found in the mound.

Although the Thunderbird Mound is registered with the province of Ontario as an archaeological site, it is not marked, does not receive protection, and has been damaged by erosion induced by bikers and hikers that recreate on the mound. The Taiaiako’n Preservation Society has engaged in stewardship and restoration of the Thunderbird Mound, including closing pedestrian and cyclist access to the mound and planting vegetation, including culturally important and sacred trees and medicinal plants, on the mound slopes.

During the Late Woodland (~500 CE to 1500 CE) and early period of European contact, the Humber River valley was used as hunting grounds by the Huron-Wendat Nation (also spelled Huronne/Wyandotte in French, and Wyandot in English). During the 17^th Century Beaver Wars, which were fought between the Huron Wendat and their Iroquoian, Algonquian, and French allies, and the Haudenosaunee confederacy and their Dutch allies, the Haudenosaunee moved north into the Humber River valley, resulting in the political dispersal of the Huron-Wendat. In 1660s, the Seneca nation, a member nation of the Haudenosaunee confederacy, established a village on Baby Point, which is a 30 meter high promontory looking over the Humber River that is located 500 meters south of Magwood Park. The village, called Teiaiagon, was occupied by Seneca and Mohawk peoples, as well as members of the Wyandot, Erie, Attawandaron, and other Iroquian nations that were adopted into the Seneca Nation. At its height, Teiaiagon had a palisade and several dozen longhouses that could accommodate 5000 people. These longhouses were lined with 6-12 hearths along the center, and were shared by several families, which are organized by matrilineal descent.

Teiaiagon was abandoned in 1687, and there are several varying accounts for why this happened. One version is that Teiaiagon was destroyed by French fur traders, who wished to retaliate against the Seneca Nation for their political and economic alliance with the English and the Dutch, who were their colonial rivals. Alternatively, the destruction of Teiaiagon was part of a larger joint French and Wendat campaign against the Seneca Nation led by the Marquis de Denonville, who was a governor general of New France during the Beaver wars. Finally, Teiaiagon may have been left due to declining soil fertility for agriculture; village “rotation” every few decades to ensure soil fertility and abundance of game and fish was the norm for the Haudenosaunee and other Iroquoian peoples. The Great Peace of Montreal, or La Paix des Braves, was a peace treaty and agreement between New France and 39 Indigenous Nations that ended the Beaver Wars in 1701. At that point, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy left the north shore of Lake Ontario, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations moved into the Humber River valley to build villages, hunt and engage in the fur trade. In 1716, a trading post called Le Magasin Royal was built there by the French Douville brothers, which served local fur traders.

The end of the American War of Independence/Revolutionary in 1783 saw the influx of 10,000 American loyalists to the British Crown into Upper Canada. At the time, Ontario was considered Indian Land, and newly arrived loyalists did not have any legitimate claim to land. In order to accommodate the refugees, in 1787, the area of modern-day Toronto was purchased by the British from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation as part of the Toronto Purchase.

The Indigenous History of Tkaronto: https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/Toronto

Johnson, Lorraine. 2007. The Natural Treasures of Carolinian Canada: Discovering the Rich Natural Diversity of Ontario’s Southwestern Heartland. Carolinian Canada Coalition.

Magwood Park – Taiaiako'n Historical Preservation society (wordpress.com)