In a strange research tangent, I discovered that Sam Loney was Sir William Johnson’s shoemaker. (Sir William Johnson was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs and the man responsible for promising the “Loyalist Mohawks” land in Upper Canada.) Sam Loney was married to a Métis woman who practiced as a midwife. I wonder if she delivered any of Robert’s children.

I found lots of barbed wire fence back in the bush on the Gray’s Creek Conservation Area. There would not have been wire fences separating Lots of land during Robert’s time, but trees might have been planted between neighbours as windbreaks and property lines. I used a twig from the golf course and barbed wire from the conservation area as shoelace tassels to signify the Eurocentric view of land imposed on the Nutfield Tract: surveyed lots, settled land, fences, boundaries, and the eventual conversion to private property.

I know Robert was the local Indian Agent. I wonder if he was ever invited to dinner by any of the Chiefs.