The Pioneers Who Left Their Footprints On The Sands Of Burlington Beach . . .

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The Burlington Gazette
October 23, 1957

Editor's Note: a series of historical papers, presented by the late Mr. W. D. Flatt to the Hamilton Historical Society, have been loaned to The Gazette for publication by Mrs. V. H. Emery, of North-shore Boulevard.

Perhaps the earliest personage conspicuous in Canadian History whom we may with certainty picture to ourselves as pacing the sands of Burlington Beach and very possibly scaling one or other of the neighboring eminences, is La Salle, Robert Rene, Oavelier de la Salle, the ever-memorable discoverer of the Ohio River and first explorer of the Mississippi to its outlet in the Gulf of Mexico.
We have documents to show, that La Salle, without any doubt, visited this spot in 1669, two hundred and fourteen years ago, in search of guides to the great western rivers of which he was constantly being told, and which he felt convinced would open a way to the seas which wash the shores of China and Japan.
Chronicles of Canada
In company with La Salle on this occasion were two Sulpitian missionaries from Montreal, Dollier de Cagson and Galinee, both of them men who have a record in the chronicles of Canada. It happened that while La Salle's party were detained here parleying with the natives whom they encountered, that another party of Frenchmen arrived at an Indian camp not very far off. They had come up by the trail of the Grand River from Lake Erie and were returning from the Lake Superior country. At the head of this party was Louis Joliet, a distinguished French explorer and fur trader, afterwards the author of several important maps of the Great Lakes and tine Mississippi.

It is believed that this Joliet anticipated La Salle slightly in time, in the discovery of the Mississippi on the part of the French. (The Spaniards were already acquainted with it). Instead of returning to the Seneca country with their guides for the Ohio, as was at first intended to be done, the Sulpitian missionaries were now persuaded by Joliet to proceed from the place is where they were, down the valley of the Grand River to Lake Erie, and thence to journey on by the Detroit to Lake Huron and undertake a missionary tour among the Potawattimi Indians. This led to La Salle's determination to go no further westward just now.
He had in fact been prostrated while here by a serious attack of fever, brought on by his too great love of "the chase". He and his ecclesiastical friends parted company in a kindly spirit on the 30th of September, 1669. When La Salle was here the place was spoken of as Ganastoqueh, and later in another Iroquois dialect, as Des-aas-a-deh-o, which is probably the same expression, and is interpreted to mean "Where the sand forms a Bar".
"The Bay"
Later still we have some such term as Onastoquetch applied to the spot, which in Mississaga or Chippeway, simply meant "The Bay". We are in the habit of calling these somewhat uncouth Indian expressions proper names. In reality, they were nothing more than the canoe men's common sense, unsentimental descriptions, by means of which they distinguished one point or spot from another as they coasted along a shore. As to the modern English name, Burlington Bay, it was affixed to this sheet of water by proclamation on the 16th of June, 1792. It had previously been known, so Mr. Surveyor-General David William Smyth's "First Gazetteer of Upper Canada" informs us, as Geneva Lake, so called, he says on account of its great beauty. "Burlington Bay", the same authority states, "is perhaps as beautiful and romantic a situation as any in interior America; particularly if we include with it a marshy lake which falls into it and a noble promontory that divides them".

The sands of the Beach have been trod by Major Robert -Rogers, the renowned commander of Rogers' Rangers, in the French war of 1759-60. Major Rogers was. sent up, after the conquest of Canada in 1759, to take possession of the French military posts, and in his "Precise Account of North America" published in 1765, he tells his readers that "at the west end of Lake Ontario, a river runs in, from which are carrying places to both Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie, or to rivers that flow into them".
"Coote Paradise"
Another officer of the British army, while stationed at Fort Niagara, not long after the conquest, found his way to Burlington Bay, and strangely imparted his name for a time to the whole of the interior marsh. This was Captain Coote, of the 6th Regiment. Being a keen sportsman he was , drawn hither again and again by the wonderful abundance of the game which was to be found there. So ecstatic were the captain's laudations of the place as a game preserve that the interior marsh of Burlington Bay became known among his brother officers and others as "Coote's Paradise
 
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