Early Land Survey in Ontario

City Park near the corner of King and West Streets

Commemoration

In September 1783, Deputy Surveyor-General John Collins was dispatched to Cataraqui by Governor Haldimand to lay out townships for loyalist settlers. The necessary land was purchased from Mississauga Indians, and on 27 October the first survey market was planted. By the year’s end the first concessions of four townships, stretching from Cataraqui to the Bay of Quinte, and been surveyed. A fifth was laid out the following summer. Collins then completed the first major survey made under civil authority in what is now Ontario.

Background

Note that the British government sought to secure land rights from the native people and recognized their ownership of the land. This was consistent with the Royal Proclamation of 1763. which angered the people of the 13 colonies by acknowledging native peoples as subjects of the King with land rights equal to those of British descendants. That scuppered plans of land speculators and was one cause of the unrest which led to the revolution.