36 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE, 



haps, to be attractive to the Irish settler, but it quickly became a disused term. 

 Previous to the setting off of Upper Canada as a Province, the region about here had 

 been known as the District of Nassau, and various localities to the eastward had 

 designations sounding very German-like given them, such as Charlottenburg, Lunen- 

 burg, Osnabruck, etc. Such names were simply compliments to the reigning Hano- 

 verian family, or might be expected to attract German settlers ; but if not actually 

 become lapsed terms, they have > ceased to draw. The other lapsed name in connec- 

 tion with Toronto is "Gibraltar Point," meaning the western portion of the Island in 

 front of Toronto, and having a humorous allusion to the solitary Block House,- 

 erected there for the defense of the harbour and protection of a commissary store- 

 house. " Gibraltar Point " has lapsed into disuse, although we still occasionally 

 hear Blockhouse Bay for one of the inlets at the " Point." 



On the lake front of the Township of Whitby there was, for a time, the town of 

 Windsor, on Windsor Bay, where it appears, thus named, on the engraved maps of 

 Canada a few years since. Windsor is now a lapsed name, obliterated, possibly, by 

 th,e greater importance of the western Windsor on the Detroit River. Its site is 

 included iwithin the limits of the modern town of Whitby. In passing, it may be 

 mentioned that the site now occupied by Port Hope is marked on some of the old 

 r»aps Ti-ai-a-gon, which, as we have already seen, simply meant " a landing," this 

 having been a distinguished landing place for Indians and voyageurs en route to the 

 waters to the north, entitled by us Rice Lake. (2) 



The name " Cobourg " is not, as might have been supposed, a survival of one 

 of those German-sounding names prevalent in Canada just after the taking of Quebec. 

 'L?ke Guelph, it appears to have been a modern compliment to the reigning Han- 

 overian family. It alluded, probably, to the husband of the lamented Princess Char- 

 lotte, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg. The place, we are told, was for a short 

 time good-humoredly styled " Hard Scrabble," by settlers near the locality, but this 

 was simply a transient jest. 



At Kingston we have to recall the now lapsed names of Cataraqui and Fort 

 Frontenac. An attempted Latinized form of " Kingston" — Regiopolis — was for a 

 time heard of in ecclesiastical quarters, but, mongrel as it was, between Latin and 

 Greek, it is now dropped. As to the name '' Bay of Quinte" — the original word was 

 an Indian one — Kente or Kanti. French pronunciation produced the form Quinte, 

 conveying some notion of " five or fifth." While passing Gananoque on our way 

 east, it should be recalled that, strange as it may sound, the river which enters herer 

 and bore the name of Gananoque, was. at a very early period styled the Thames. 

 This we learn from a proclamation by Lord Dorchester, better known as Guy 

 Carleton, bearing date July 24th, 1788, wherein he speaks of a boundary line running 

 north and south, and intersecting the mouth of the River Gananoque, now called 

 " The Thames." This seems to have become a lapsed name at the time when the 

 Province of Upper Canada was set off and separated from the old Province of Que- 

 bec, when the previous arrangement of the region into four distinct sub-divisions 

 was dropped, and the terms District of Lunenburg, District of Nassau, District of 

 Mecklenburg, District of Hesse ceased to be heard. The town of Cornwall, just be 

 low the Long Sault Rapid, was (formerly known as New Johnstown, from the name 

 of a neighboring township. For the inhabitants of Cornwall the lapsed name. New 

 Johnstown, must, of course, possess some interest. 



In regard to the Long Sault Rapids, Guy Carleton, in the proclamation just 

 above referred to, makes use of a good English word, now fallen somewhat into 

 disuse. He speaks of " rifts," meaning thereby interruptions in the navigation of the 



(2) The river at Port Hope still bears the homely name of" Smith's Creek." The Indian name of the 

 stream, rightly treated, would have had a finer sound. Major Rogers, in his journey westward from Fort 

 Frontenac to Toronto, in 1760, passed two rivers bearing respectively the names of "The Grace of Man " and 

 "The Life of Man," according to the somewhat fanciful translation which he gives of their Indian appellations. 

 It is not easy to identify these streams, but Smith's Creek may have been one of them. " Lyons' Creek," a 

 little to the west of Smith's Creek, was once known by an Indian term signifying "the river of easy entrance." 



