The late Owen Sound historian Melba Morris Croft’s 20th book focused on the historic north west side of the city. Once significant for its Ojibway mission known as Nawash, the area later changed its name to Brookeholm or Brooke as it was better known. The story told in Memories of Brooke, voluminous history, takes us back to a time when both Native and European people shared the Sydenham River Valley.
According to Croft, in 1856 Sydenham, as Owen Sound was then known, was filled with a deep-rooted fear of a Native uprising. Pushed out of their traditional lands by the arrival of hundreds and then thousands of onrushing settlers, the Ojibway who had maintained a village at Nawash, were being forced to move north onto the Bruce Peninsula, settling at Cape Croker.
In 1857, Richard Carney, Commissioner for the Indian Department issued a proclamation warning one and all from “taking possession of any of the Indian Houses, or committing any trespass on said reserve. Persons squatting and making improvements thereon will derive no benefit there from at the time of sale.”
In 1857, at a sale of public lands, the former mission at Nawash became part of the new community of Brooke. With the Ojibway banished to the Peninsula or moved to other Ontario reserves, hundreds of acres of prime land were purchased, some by men who were to become well-known in Owen Sound. William Seldon bought 100 acres. So did the Dowkes family, the McNaughts and others. At first, the remaining Ojibway shared a church and a government school with the newly arrived. But within a year, the last Ojibway had left Brooke to its evolving future.
Originally aired July 11th 2016
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