Reparations made to installation of commemorative plaque

Jeff Green | Jun 01, 2022

Ten years ago, the Lanark County Neighbours for Truth & Reconciliation formed as a community group to promote education about the history of unceded Algonquin territory. The eclectic group from many different walks of life want to bring Truth & Reconciliation alive on a local level and lend support to the struggles of Indigenous communities in our midst.

One of their projects is creating artful plaques to place in public spaces with stories of the history of Indigenous people is this area.

One such plaque on #36 near Crow Lake Road at the north end of Bob’s Lake, adjacent to the Bolingbroke dam, tells a disheartening story about the Algonquins of Bedford, Oso and South Sherbrook. Under Chief Shawinipinessi the group sought to secure reservation land in Bedford after being pushed out of their ancestral forest home under the pressure of the burgeoning logging trade.

With the help of Tay Valley Township, using a piece of white stone that was donated by OMYA, the plaque was placed in the summer of 2021. As the snows of last winter receded, neighbours noticed that the boulder holding the plaque had been pushed over, possibly due to an inadvertent exchange with a snow-plough.

"A few weeks later the stone was found to be further pushed over with the risk of damaging the plaque face itself. Once again, Tay Valley Township came forward and carefully repositioned plaque and stone. We hope the plaque remains clearly visible and that the story continues to feed the knowledge of visitors and neighbours in our community,” said Jean Ogilvie, a supporter of the Neighbours for Truth and Reconciliation.

The Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Samuel P. Jarvis, wrote the following in early 1844: “The tract containing somewhere about 2000 acres and situate principally in the Townships of Oso and Bedford being bounded on all sides by chains of small lakes is quite secluded and is thereby rendered peculiarly adapted for an Indian settlement, although the quality of the soil is not particularly good…I therefore respectfully recommend that the tract asked for be set apart for them and their posterity on the same terms and conditions that the Reservations in other parts of the Province have been made for the several Resident Tribes and that the Surveyor General be directed to cause a survey of the same to be made for that purpose.”

Soon after, on March 21, 1844, the reserve was established by an order in Council from the government of the Province of Canada.

For years after there were incursions on the designated lands by loggers and others, and Peter Shawinipinessi petitioned the government to put an end to the incursions. In 1861, the new Superintendent of Indian Affairs W.P Bartlett, officially denied the existence of the 1844 order in Council, putting an end to the Bedford reserve.

Records show that Peter Shawinipinessi ended up moving to Golden Lake to the reserve to live in what is now called Pikwakanagan, the only Algonquin reserve in Ontario.

(Information provided by the Lanark County Neighbours For Truth and Reconciliation website, under Local Stories – The petitions of Chief Shawinipinessi