I first visited the community of Oakville as part of a tour of Sheridan College. Sheridan was among the colleges I had applied to in my final year in High School. I only chose two colleges, Mohawk and Sheridan, but chose programs at both Davis Campus in Brampton and the Trafalgar Campus in Oakville. Ultimately, I attended the Trafalgar Road Campus and started there in 2002. That same year I attended a PYPS (Presbyterian Young People’s Society) event at Knox Presbyterian Church in downtown Oakville, getting my first taste of the town’s historic core. But it wasn’t until I started working full-time at Sheridan after graduation that I thoroughly explored and appreciated what the town had to offer. Not only as a photographer but someone who enjoys exploring history, especially local history.
Downtown Oakville first appeared in my photography in 2011. I was armed with some of my final rolls of Kodachrome and my Nikon F4. Looking back at those images, I’ve seen how much the downtown has changed in a decade. It was then I discovered a haven from the stresses of work. The downtown is filled with historic buildings and homes and many stories to tell. It wasn’t until later that I started researching and reading more about Ontario’s colonisation and William Chisholm’s role. So during my project on Canadian Confederation, I began to poke my head into some of the tiny stories that make up the grander story of Ontario. And while things like canals and railroads make for fantastic tales, sometimes a little community on a lake offers something.
So armed with a box of twenty-five sheets of film, I looked at the history of the modern community of Oakville and promptly fell into a rabbit hole. Oakville, as we know it today, is made up of the original community founded by William Chisholm and a series of what can only be called ‘lost villages’ that, in many cases, predated the founding of Oakville. Some are less lost than others, but these made up the core of the Trafalgar Township. I also went down a rabbit hole of how the area had been colonised and surveyed. For the film, I went with 4×5, so I could easily focus on twenty-five interesting stories, and I used Arista EDU Ultra 400, a rebrand of Fomapan 400, a film I have figured out how to shoot best. Armed with my Crown Graphic, four lenses (125mm, 150mm, 180mm and 210mm), the Pentax Spotmeter V and Ilfotec HC to develop at a 1+47 dilution. And throughout September last year pushed to capture all twenty-five sheets, this time with no mistakes.
Thankfully, Oakville is home to several historical societies with many online materials to help with the actual writing parts. In addition to the Oakville Historical Society, the Trafalgar Township Society and the Bronte Society. In the case of the Trafalgar Township society, I had the chance to talk to the members when I passed through to capture the old Palermo schoolhouse. The project will proceed in almost chronological order, but like anything, history can be a bit messy, so it won’t always be a straight line. So let’s start back at the very beginning.