Historic Hills

By the 1880s, poor sanitation had been identified as a major cause of disease and governments were taking action. Here in the hills, newly established health boards had a lot of catching up to do.

Christmas was once a simple season of carolling and school concerts, of neighbourly greetings and family visits, of tinkling bells and sleigh rides in gently falling snow, all blessedly free of commercial pressure. Well, maybe.

Before there were boards and commissions and tribunals and official plans, and before there were consultants and mission statements and surveys and regulations and codes, the local municipal council handled almost everything. And fast.

In the 1880s, prohibitionists took the fight for liquor control to the voting booths of the nation. In the hills, choosing “wet” or “dry” became such a hot button that neighbours and whole communities were pulled in different directions.

When it came into service in 1867, built on land donated by the Village of Brampton, Peel County jail was a grim edifice modelled on England’s notorious Newgate Prison.

In the early spring of 1967, the Stanley Cup playoffs…held the attention of hockey fans everywhere in these hills. Except in Bolton.

Mono’s Sheldon Creek was the site of one of Ontario’s two longest-serving waterpowered mills.

The settlers of these hills had fled wars and tyranny and repressive class system to seek a new life in a new world, but they were unable to escape the dreaded shadow of contagious disease, especially its grip on their children.

Shelburne’s first-ever bank robbery began as a pretty scary affair, but in the hands of a bumbling stickup man it ended more like a gong show.

“Why Die a Lingering Death of Direful Diabetes? Dodd’s Kidney Pills Cure It!”

Just over a century ago the horseless carriage chugged into these rural hills and ran head on into a horse-reliant culture. What began as a novelty soon became a nuisance, sparking a battle for supremacy on the roads.

Screaming headlines in Toronto newspapers turned an 1897 trial in Shelburne into a Canada-wide sensation, painting Melancthon as a hotbed of arson, fraud, perjury and intimidation.