I am also grateful for funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. The OAC's grant to me (2014) through the Writers' Reserve Program supported research and preliminary writing for my book on Peter Russell, administrator of Upper Canada 1796-99. My book research overlaps with research for the PARK LOT PROJECT — and I use the map as an organizational/ research tool for the book — and so I am taking this opportunity to say "thank you" here to the OAC.

My deepest gratitude to the National Archives of Canada (Ottawa), to its service, research and restoration staff — most especially Archivist Ilene McKenna, who facilitated the extraordinary opportunity to inspect the actual physical Upper Canada Land Books. This experience was key to my developing an understanding of the discussions and decisions that lead to the 1793 Toronto land grants. I plan to write about these insights in the near future.

Above: at the National Archives, April 8, 2014: recently retired Manuscript Archivist Patricia Kennedy on the left, myself on the right.
—  Wendy Smith

In the photo I am holding Upper Canada Land Book C, which contains the Executive Council minutes of September, 1793, where Lt.-Governor Simcoe made the initial land grants for Town of York (Toronto) house lots, the Toronto park lots, and other Township of York grants.

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I owe a great debt of gratitude to Patricia Kennedy. With her guidance I made a successful application to the National Archives for access to the original Upper Canada Land Books, which were withdrawn from public circulation four decades ago. Interestingly, it was Patricia, as manuscript archivist, who made the original decision in the 1970s to end public access to the fragile land books. Instead, black and white photos of the land book pages were available to the public on microfilm (and, more recently, online).

In early April 2014 I enjoyed an illuminating and exhausting research week in Ottawa at the National Archives of Canada. I rendezvoused there with Patricia in the Special Media Consultation Room, where we examined the land books, noting especially the marginalia (notes in pencil and coloured ink), and theorized about about the out-of-order sections of the minutes. (Why are the minutes of the 1793 Toronto land grants recorded in Land Book C, instead of chronologically in Land Book A?)

We had several very stimulating discussions about the creation of the executive council minutes, and what they can can tell us about the decisions and bureaucratic processes that lead to the creation of the land books as we know them today.

Thank you Patricia.

I am deeply indebted to Thomas Sylvester of Amherst Island, who in March, 2015 shared with me 100 pages of detailed research notes for his (not-yet-published) book on the forgotten Treasury Loyalists. His notes answered a number of dangling questions that had troubled me, added significant detail to the biographies of nine Township of York grantees, and fills an important gap in the story of the American Revolutionary Loyalists. I look forward to the book!

Helen Mills, founder of the inspirational Lost Rivers project. I have shared many delightful discussions with Helen on Toronto's lost waterways and the stories of people who settled those areas.

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Marcel Fortin, University of Toronto GIS and Map Librarian, for his interest and encouragement early and throughout the project.

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The passenger pigeon icons in flight at Mimico on the PARK LOT PROJECT map (Waterways layer) is adapted from a detail in painter John Ruthven's Martha mural at the Cincinnati Zoo, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1914 death of Martha, the last surviving passenger pigeon. My sincere thanks to John for his kind permission to sample his artwork in this way.

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My thanks to the Stackoverflow.com volunteers, especially Eric Bridger of Portland, Maine, who helped me with some sticky programming challenges.

And to my talented friend Jim Paterson of Non-Stop Design for a handful of brilliant colour and presentation suggestions that helped bring the web site to life.

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My thanks also to

Librarians RoseMarie Sprearpoint, Nicola Abraham, Jill Slack, and the rest of the kind and very supportive staff at the Toronto Public Library's Palmerston Branch.

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The TORONTO PARK LOT PROJECT — an exploration of the earliest days of the TOWN OF YORK, founded in 1793 by John Graves Simcoe, first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. Copyright © Wendy Smith 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.

parklotproject.com