Yellow Plastic Tubing

LEFT BOOT PULL TAB - Wellington Park, Main Street Wellington, Mississauga Fishing Territory

“Stories say that Mississauga people helped Reynold build his house, carrying stones from the lakeshore.”

This is the house of Daniel Reynolds, the first White Settler in this region. Apparently he was a trapper, living off the land well before any Loyalists arrived. Stories say that he was friends with the local Mississauga who helped him build this house and also nursed him back to health though a deep sickness.

Reynolds did not want neighbours, but in 1795 or ’96 the Garrett brothers Issac and Benjamin arrived. They likely came in response to one of the proclamations of Lieutenant Governor Simcoe. Issacc bought four hundred acres of land on the waterfront beside Reynolds paying for it at the rate of twenty-five cents per acre. Lydia Garrett (the grandaughter of Issac) married Lawrence Goodmurphy in the early 1820s.

This is the park in downtown Wellington on Main Street. When I visited Prince Edward County it was surprisingly devoid of Indigenous presence but full of Settler symbols: a European-style ship in the playground, quilt patches everywhere, The Loyalist Highway, and a cider brewery called Settler Cider …

This bright yellow tubing jumped out at me lying in the dirt. The Settler symbols in this region are bright, insistent, even garish. I continue to have a hard time finding the Indigenous people and history in this territory.

I know the Goodmurphy family lost land during the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland. I wonder if knew that the Mississauga people were displaced by the arrival of European settlers.