Last week, Donald Trump claimed to have renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. He didn’t. What he did do – in an effort to troll our biggest trading partner – was sign an executive order (14420) directing federal agencies and the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to use the new name: [Read more…] about Trump Changes Lake Ontario’s Federal Name; New Yorkers Are Not Amused
Ontario
The Great Blondin: Frenchman Jean François Gravelet
The tightrope is the simplest of spectacles. It relies on a human aerialist strolling along the abyss. In Roman times it was called funambulism, walking on rope.
Amid the golden age of daredevils during the nineteenth century, said to be the greatest of all “rope dancers” was the Frenchman Jean François Gravelet, born in 1824. [Read more…] about The Great Blondin: Frenchman Jean François Gravelet
New York Air Unhealthy Amid Extreme Heat, Canadian Wildfires
Air quality is “unhealthy” in much of New York as massive plumes of smoke from wildfires in Canada drift across the region causing a visible haze, reduced visibility, and a smell of smoke.
All New Yorkers should limit time spent outside and keep windows and doors closed to prevent smoke from entering your home. [Read more…] about New York Air Unhealthy Amid Extreme Heat, Canadian Wildfires
Seth Concklin: A Daring, Dedicated New York Abolitionist
Many New Yorkers before the Civil War contributed to the abolition of slavery, and the dangerous work of helping enslaved African-Americans flee their captors. Take Calvin Fairbank, a New York Methodist pastor born 1816, who spent 17 years in prison for his missions to help enslaved people escape.
Seth Concklin, a New Yorker whose name and sacrifice were more familiar in the 19th century, died tragically in 1851 while trying to help a mother and her three children escape from slavery. [Read more…] about Seth Concklin: A Daring, Dedicated New York Abolitionist
New York’s International Port at Rochester: Some History
As Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle effused, presciently, in 1874: Charlotte, the Rochester NY neighborhood situated “at the mouth of the Genesee River, surrounded by scenery of unequaled beauty,” is “daily growing more important as a shipping port.”
The paper could scarcely have anticipated the impact of an international deal signed decades later, in 1905. “Car ferries” would be built, with related infrastructure, plus dredging of port channels to accommodate heavy loads, to directly link Rochester, with Cobourg in Ontario, Canada, to its north. The ferries would carry both freight-laden train cars and paying passengers. [Read more…] about New York’s International Port at Rochester: Some History
Fort Ontario Military History, 1812-1945
After the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), remaining friction between Britain and the United States escalated into another war in North America 30 years later.
Both countries were determined to assert control over Lake Ontario, bringing Fort Ontario to the front lines of the War of 1812 (1812-1815). Britain saw Oswego as an integral connection to New York shipyards that could support future naval battles and supply additional American ships. [Read more…] about Fort Ontario Military History, 1812-1945
Fort Ontario During the American Revolutionary War
The American War for Independence (1775–1783) centered the Great Lakes in the middle of international conflict. By the 1770s, as tension between Britain and its American colonies reached a breaking point, Fort Ontario which had been constructed during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), was essentially abandoned.
It was located on Native land as defined by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the boundary line established by the subsequent 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. [Read more…] about Fort Ontario During the American Revolutionary War
Indigenous Transportation & Early Forts at Oswego
In attempts to maximize proximity to valuable trade with the Haudenosaunee and other Indigenous nations, Europeans established outposts and forts farther and farther into the interior of Haudenosaunee territory and the Great Lakes.
The French followed the St. Lawrence River into the Great Lakes and discovered that the Oswego River provided a water route inland to the Oswego-Oneida-Mohawk Carry, a trail using the largest portage connecting the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. [Read more…] about Indigenous Transportation & Early Forts at Oswego
The Burning of Buffalo during the War of 1812
On December 10, 1813, two New Yorkers raged at each other in the entryway of Joseph McCarthy’s store on Queen Street in the Upper Canada village of Newark, known today as Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
Soldiers held back a crowd as the ranking officer in charge of the American troops occupying nearby Fort George, Brigadier-General George McClure (1771-1851) cursed a Buffalo physician and militia captain, the forty-four-year-old Dr. Cyrenius Chapin (1769-1838). Both were part of the New York State militia assigned by the United States regular army to occupy Canada’s Fort George. [Read more…] about The Burning of Buffalo during the War of 1812
The Erie Canal’s Impacts on Indigenous People
New York’s canal building boom and the urban explosion that it triggered dramatically accelerated the dispossession and disruption of traditional life ways of the region’s Native American inhabitants that had been initiated by the introduction of European trade, diseases, colonial wars, the American Revolution, and encroaching settlement by non-natives. [Read more…] about The Erie Canal’s Impacts on Indigenous People
King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace
King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace:continues the contest for North America from the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, marking the beginning of the Thirty-Year Peace, through the start of King George’s War in 1744, to its conclusion with the signing of Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle four years later.
While there would be little fighting between the French, Spanish, and British colonies in North America during the Thirty-Year Peace — the Franco-Spanish conflict of 1719 being an exception — for the French and British it did not prove to be peaceful. [Read more…] about King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace
New Yorkers Exiled to Tasmania for the 1837-38 Canadian Patriot Rebellion
On September 30, 1970, in a simple ceremony, a monument was unveiled at Sandy Bay Beach Reserve in Hobart, Tasmania, by the Honorable Douglas Harkness, the former Canadian defense minister. It was in honor to the ninety-two Patriot exiles, transported to what was then called Van Diemen’s Land who had been captured in the 1837-38 Patriot War insurrection in Upper Canada against British domination.
Listed as Canadian rebels, a majority were in fact from the state of New York. Although imprisoned US citizens captured in the various conflicts with England – from the American Revolution to the War of 1812– was not a novelty, it was to be the first time that American prisoners were shipped to a penal colony in Australia due to a confrontation with the Empire. [Read more…] about New Yorkers Exiled to Tasmania for the 1837-38 Canadian Patriot Rebellion
American & Canadian Patriot War Exiles Subject of New Doc
A new documentary by filmmaker Deke Richards spotlights the little-known story of American and Canadian exiles sent as convicts to the penal colony of Australia after their capture during the 1837-38 Canadian Insurrections against the British (also known as the Patriot War). [Read more…] about American & Canadian Patriot War Exiles Subject of New Doc
Canadian Visits to United States Decline by 23 Percent
New data form Statistics Canada shows Canadians are avoiding trips to the United States amid tariffs and threats by President Donald Trump’s administration that have also taken American products off the shelves in Canada, seen spectators boo the American national anthem at sporting events, and threats of cutting of energy supplies from Ontario. Trump has repeatedly threatened to make Canada a 51st state. [Read more…] about Canadian Visits to United States Decline by 23 Percent
Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects
We recently passed the 50th anniversary of the release of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book about Robert Moses: The Power Broker. Exhaustively comprehensive, Caro’s monumental tome nonetheless virtually ignores one of the most fascinating chapters of Moses’s career: his time as Chairman of the Power Authority of the State of New York (PASNY) from 1954 to 1962.
While heading PASNY, known today as the New York Power Authority, the legendary New York City builder oversaw the remaking of Niagara Falls and the St. Lawrence River for hydropower. [Read more…] about Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects
Isaac Mann: A Saratoga County Loyalist
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution there is a concerted effort to broaden the story of our founding by seeking out the stories of those who either labored in the background on both sides – women, the enslaved, and Native Americans for example – or those who outright opposed the Revolution. [Read more…] about Isaac Mann: A Saratoga County Loyalist
Robert Land: Magistrate, Loyalist and Spy
In October of 1805, Robert Land, who was then 66 years old, penned his last will and testament, dividing up his considerable holdings in Ontario, Canada among a number of his children and providing a place for his wife Phoebe to reside as long as she might live. [Read more…] about Robert Land: Magistrate, Loyalist and Spy
The Great Lakes: World’s Largest Freshwater Ecosystem
The latest episode of “DEC Does What?!” a podcast from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, explores the work of DEC’s Great Lakes Program to protect the iconic Great Lakes, the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world.
DEC’s Great Lakes Program oversees the largest watershed by land area, working across more than 42 percent of the state’s land area and along over 750 miles of shoreline. [Read more…] about The Great Lakes: World’s Largest Freshwater Ecosystem
June 18, 1812: War of 1812 Begins When US Declares War On Great Britain
On June 18, 1812, Congress passed and President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain, marking the beginning of the War of 1812. Frustrated by Britain’s maritime practices and support of Native American resistance to western expansion, the U.S. entered the war with ambitious plans to conquer Canada, a goal that was never realized. [Read more…] about June 18, 1812: War of 1812 Begins When US Declares War On Great Britain
Confederate Spies at the Canadian Border
We often think about the Civil War in terms of two large armies facing off on the battlefield, but less seldom do we consider the clandestine efforts on behalf of the Confederate States of America to bring the war to United States territory and influence Great Britain and other European nations to join the attack on the United States. [Read more…] about Confederate Spies at the Canadian Border