The Toronto Islands have long been regarded as a special and sacred place among Mississauga and other First Nations. Named ‘Minesing’ in Anishinaabemowin, meaning ‘island’ or ‘on the island’, the Mississaugas recognized the special character of the islands as a place of healing, medicine, and relaxation. Though there is no evidence that any large villages were established on the islands, they camped and held ceremonies and councils here often.
The Toronto Islands are continually shifting and changing, sculpted by storms and the water currents of Lake Ontario which move sand and other material from the eroding Scarborough Bluffs westward and deposited to create the sandbars that form the islands. One account, originating from Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) oral tradition, tells of how the islands were formed all at once from a violent storm or hurricane that hit the area centuries ago. Kanien’kehá:ka knowledge keeper William Smith shared in 1954 that a great storm toppled trees and swallowed land, culminating in a great upheaval that formed the islands and left a significant mass of felled trees and debris in the bay between the islands and the lakeshore[1]. At the time Europeans first began to visit the area the Toronto Islands were actually a peninsula, connected to the mainland by a thin sand bar. Since then, storms periodically washed away parts of the sand bar connecting the islands to the mainland. British settlers would continually repair these gaps until 1858, when a large storm again severed the connection to the islands, and it was not repaired. Since then, the peninsula has remained an island.
Waterways, islands, peninsulas, and lakeshores have been important places for fishing, camping, and medicine gathering for the Mississaugas. When British settlers entered into treaty negotiations with the Mississaugas for the lands along the North shore of Lake Ontario continued access to the waterways for land-based ways of life was of paramount importance for the Mississaugas. During the negotiations for the Gunshot Treaty in 1788 oral evidence exists that the Mississaugas negotiated for protected access to all the creeks, rivers, lakeshores, peninsulas, and islands[2]. The Mississaugas also maintain that they did not cede or surrender their rights to the Toronto Islands during the problematic Toronto Purchases of 1787 and 1805, and continued to visit and camp on the islands as they always had in the aftermath of these treaty negotiations. Today, the historical status of the islands remains a complex and layered issue, with the Mississaugas continuing to assert their deep, unsevered connection to the territory.
More recently settler residents of the Toronto Islands have been building relationships with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. The islands remain an important place for healing, relaxation, land-based ways of life, and ceremony for many Indigenous people in the Toronto area.
[1] Chandler, Al. “Island Made in a Hurricane.” Globe and Mail, December 19th 1954.
[2] McNab, David T. “‘The Promise That He Gave to My Father Was Very Sweet’: The Gun Shot Treaty of 1792 at the Bay of Quinte.” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, no. 2, 1996, pp. 293–314.