eastendbooks

Settling the Hills : Historical Reflections — Caledon East and District

Northrop Frye said that a community “without memory becomes senile.” In Settling the Hills the Caledon East and District Historical Society sets out to thwart the process by collecting memories of earlier times in its own corner of the world today — in the rising edge-city hinterland of the Greater Toronto Area.

Now situated in what the Ontario government calls the Town of Caledon, the old village of Caledon East and its surrounding district has so far had only a little of its local history written down. The Historical Society became concerned that the recollections of the area’s oldest residents would soon be lost forever. The result is a lively volume by a diverse group of authors, dedicated to all those who laid such resourceful foundations for the twenty-first century.

Caledon East is probably best known today as a green and pleasant (and environmentally conscious) place, that has been home to such distinguished figures as movie director Norman Jewison and the late great Canadian novelist Robertson Davies. It will also be familiar to some as the site of the first pavilion on the Trans Canada Trail — situated on land where railway tracks once wound their way.

Settling the Hills shows how the earlier experience of the modern community deserves to be better known in its own right. It marks an important addition to the growing literature on Ontario local history, and will be a valuable resource for students, libraries, and genealogical researchers. For more general readers it is a book of real nostalgia, with sometimes surprising insight into the deeper roots of life in at least some of the suburbs of a sprawling megalopolis, at the edge of the information age.

Published for the Caledon East and District Historical Society.