Gete-Onigaming (Davenport Road) plaque, 2024.  

Plaque Text

This trail, over 13,500 years old, followed the north shore of glacial Lake Iroquois (now Lake Ontario) during the last ice age. Between the Humber and the Don rivers, it connected thriving Indigenous villages, fishing grounds, and trade routes leading to the Great Lakes, the Atlantic coast, and the Midwest. The ancient footpath, now called Gete-Onigaming in Anishinaabemowin ("at the old portage" in English), avoided uneven ground by following the base of an escarpment — a prominent cliff that remains just north of here. Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples used trails like this one to travel for resources, communication, and the fur trade until roughly the end of the 19th century. Gete-Onigaming follows the natural landscape and does not fit into Toronto's rigid street grid system, which was imposed by European and American colonists, who appropriated land without the consent of Indigenous nations. During early colonization, the trail began to appear on maps as a road linking Montreal to Niagara and was named for the first house on the escarpment in 1797 — John McGill's "Davenport." Paid for by tolls, the road was paved in 1833. Tollkeepers' cottages were located every few kilometres, and one is preserved nearby. In 2016, in response to a campaign from the Indigenous community — led by the Ogimaa Mikana Project — Gete-Onagaming was added to the city's street signs to highlight the land's shared history and restore Indigenous place names in Tkaronto/Aterón:to/Chi-Odena (Toronto).