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the eAst of lAke ontArio wAs first described by sAmuel de Champlain after he passed “five very large islands” while crossing “at one end, that pointing eastward.”1 It was the fall of 1615, and he was travelling in a light birchbark canoe with Wendat people heading for a rendezvous with the enemy. About three weeks later, they returned from the south shore of the lake after a deadly battle with the Haudenosaunee. The injured Champlain had to be carried. He was taken from an island, along a river, and then conveyed overland by a trail until they arrived at a lake where they remained for a period. The lake was probably Loughborough,2 north of Kingston. The river may have been the Cataraqui.3 If so, Champlain was an early visitor to the Kingston area and could have rested with his men and the Wendat on the very peninsula later named Point Frederick.

Champlain’s writing is vague in detail about this part of the journey, perhaps because of his injuries. But he did manage to observe and describe the method used by Wendat hunters to corral and harvest deer on a substantial scale. According to Champlain, one technique involved 400 to 500 hunters placing themselves in a line near the base of a peninsula. Armed with bows and arrows, they marched together into the bush, making noise and driving deer forward and along the peninsula toward its end. Their purpose was to force the deer into the water or against the fences built to funnel them into enclosures where they could be killed. Any deer escaping into the water were taken by hunters in canoes.4

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The forested Point Frederick was ideal for this kind of hunting, since it was long and narrow with water on three sides. Midway along the peninsula, the ground sloped into a narrowing depression pinched by two small inlets and joined by swampy ground. This depression, with an upslope on the other side, formed a natural wet hollow that could be used to crowd and congest the frightened deer.

A few years ago, archaeologists discovered evidence of a line of posts across the downslope, just above the hollow between the inlets, now filled. The posts were deliberately placed, some having pointed bottoms. The line of posts, probably a surviving section of a larger fence, was six and a half feet long and centred on the peninsula, an ideal place to trap deer within the hollow. This find, and Champlain’s description of Indigenous hunting, helped explain the dispersed pattern of recovered arrowheads, scattered perhaps because of wounded deer escaping and dying elsewhere. Other arrowheads were found in a concentrated pattern, suggesting a location employed to collect and manufacture the stone points. This system of hunting was known to be practised in the autumn, the time of Champlain’s trip.5

The line of posts was close to another discovery — an archaeological feature uphill on a bedrock outcropping that once overlooked the shore of the east inlet. The feature was identified as a fishing and hunting camp used periodically and perhaps seasonally for many years by Indigenous peoples. It was most active between 1100 and 950 BCE and between 800 and 1650 CE. Clues to the presence of people were found elsewhere along the peninsula, usually near the east shorelines. This suggested activities along the Navy Bay shorelines remote from the heavier traffic on the Cataraqui River on the other side of the peninsula. Any camps along the Navy Bay shore, especially within the small inlet, would have been sheltered from travellers on the Cataraqui River, yet a conveniently short distance to the river.6 The Wendat accompanying Champlain would have known about this site. It may have been there that Champlain witnessed the hunt.

The first suggestion of the Point Frederick peninsula comes from the founding of Fort Frontenac. By that time, epidemics of disease carried to North America by Europeans, such as smallpox and measles, had spread throughout First Nation communities, reducing the populations by more than half. As well, Haudenosaunee raids had destroyed the Wendat community

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and contributed to a near depopulation of today’s Southern Ontario.7 When Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, or Count Frontenac, the governor general of New France, arrived at Cataraqui in 1673, representatives from Haudenosaunee settlements on the north shore of Lake Ontario met with him.

Frontenac had led a party of soldiers in canoes up the St. Lawrence River to Lake Ontario, arriving on July 12. They met with Jesuit missionaries and the Haudenosaunee on the lake before entering the Cataraqui River. In addition to his many activities that day, Frontenac assessed the quality of the ground and defensibility of the river mouth before selecting the site for a fort. He “re-embarked in a canoe to explore both sides of the entrance to the river and some points which jut out into the lake, so he did not return until eight o’clock in the evening …”8 After addressing the assembled French and Indigenous people the next day, Frontenac had his soldiers raise the first wooden palisades of the new fort.

Upon his return to Quebec, Frontenac arranged for his friend, RenéRobert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, to be granted the seigneurial ownership of Fort Cataraqui, afterward known as Fort Frontenac, by the French king, Louis XIV. The grant included much of the surrounding land. So, according to the French legal system, La Salle became an owner of Point Frederick, the traditional lands of the Algonquin-speaking Indigenous people and the Haudenosaunee Iroquoian speakers.

La Salle soon replaced the wooden palisade with stone walls, indicating permanence and a willingness to defend the post. He recruited a few families to occupy and farm his seigneurie. A Haudenosaunee village was established near the fort and remained in some form for many years. Sailing vessels on Lake Ontario began with Sieur de La Salle, who built the Frontenac in the fall of 1678 near Fort Frontenac.9 Although the land around Fort Frontenac was cleared, there are no records to suggest any development or clearing of Point Frederick. Archaeologists have discovered buried foundations of a building on Point Frederick that are aligned with the orientation of those at Fort Frontenac, raising the tantalizing possibility that a French building did exist.10 But so far the thought remains conjecture. Historian Richard Preston asserted that the French quarried stone on Point Frederick.11

The first map that convincingly shows the existence of Point Frederick is from 1682 (see Fig. 1.1). The landscape depictions are inaccurate but

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Fig. 1.1:

The earliest convincing map of Point Frederick, circa 1682, nine years after the founding of Fort Frontenac. Features and modern context: (1) Point Frederick peninsula; (2) Navy Bay; (3) Kingston Inlet; (4) Haudenosaunee village; (5) Fort Frontenac; and (6) Kingston Harbour. Point Frederick is mostly forested. Compass label added to detail of map.

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recognizable. Along the west shoreline of Point Frederick is a small indentation, marked by number 3 in Fig. 1.1, which corresponds to Kingston Inlet. This map is one of the first to use the name “Pointe de Montréal” to refer to Point Frederick, which is shown to be forested and have meadows. The awkward positioning of Cedar Island suggests confusion with Point Henry.

The early maps appear remarkably inaccurate, even when allowing for the primitive survey instruments of the time. Some inaccuracies, whether those in Fig. 1.1 or others, may be explained by changes in water levels that altered shorelines. Seasonal water-level fluctuations are normal on lakes in Canada, with springtime high water due to snowmelt adding to rainfall. But there may have been longer-term trends. Early observers noted great variations in the level of Lake Ontario, some believing they followed a seven-year cycle. Settlers correctly predicted the water level in 1795.12 Lieutenant James Richardson, with long experience on Lake Ontario, recalled that the water level rose five feet after 1815.13 According to the writer and traveller John Howison in 1816, the water level was seven and a half feet above average, and Lake Erie was similarly affected.14 John Clark described the waters of the lake being three and a half feet lower in 1842 than 1838. By 1848, the water was down five feet.15

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Changes in water levels of this order would have altered the appearance of shorelines. In the case of Point Frederick, with low elevations and swampy areas, rising waters would have submerged parts of the peninsula and created one or two islands. Water at the two inlets rising above the low ground would have created a small strait, making the south part of Point Frederick an island. Rising waters in Navy Bay could have submerged low ground at the head of the bay and opened a channel to the Cataraqui River to form a second island. Fluctuating water levels also submerged or exposed the Navy Bay sandspit, resulting in its depiction in some maps and images but not others.

Rising lake water might also explain confusing historical accounts of islands near Fort Frontenac. Normally, the closest island is Belle Island, which is low and swampy and more than one-third of a mile north on the Cataraqui River. The next is Cedar Island, one and a quarter miles away on the opposite side of Point Frederick.

An example of such confusion is the narrative of Father Jean de Lamberville, a missionary. In 1687, he described a nearby island while escaping in a French vessel from Kingston Harbour.16 Another report mentions the “narrow channel between Point Henry and Ile Royale, as the French called it — the tongue of land, then an island, on which the Royal Military College buildings now stand.”17

With the evidence of the long but periodic presence of Indigenous peoples on Point Frederick prior to European contact, there is no reason that hunting and fishing camps ended with the founding of Fort Frontenac. Given its proximity to the fort, temporary habitation by traders, soldiers, and Indigenous peoples can be assumed if not documented. By 1686, French governors were beginning to use Fort Frontenac as a rallying point for massing troops. In 1686 and 1687, Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville, the governor general of New France, camped up to 2,000 troops at Fort Frontenac,18 no doubt straining local resources. If Point Frederick was not used as an overflow area, it was likely frequented for hunting, fishing, or collection of firewood.

Denonville’s aggressive attitude toward Indigenous nations included his own allies. A historic betrayal of the Haudenosaunee, which involved imprisonment and transportation of some to slave ships in France,19 led to war. A far-ranging conflict soon engulfed not only Fort Frontenac and Fort Niagara but also rural Quebec, Montreal, and Lachine.

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During a siege in the summer of 1687, starvation was reported at Fort Niagara and supplies were desperately needed. To make the delivery from Fort Frontenac, the French had to run a Haudenosaunee blockade of the harbour. The Haudenosaunee were armed with traditional weapons and firearms and travelled in canoes. Their proclivity for torture was known and widely feared.

Father Lamberville, the chaplain of the crew, left a description of what occurred. He described loading the needed supplies into a barque in plain sight of the Haudenosaunee. When a light northeast breeze came up, he joined the crew of 12 on board the vessel. The subsequent events have been characterized as the first naval engagement on Lake Ontario. Lamberville recounted his passage out of Kingston Harbour. What follows are a few select passages:

At first we had quite a good wind which helped us out of the harbour.…

Hardly had we doubled the nearest point than an Iroquois in ambush fired at us…. They had come together in such great numbers to take part in the festival, that the narrow passage through which we must pass to go into the lake seemed to us to be all covered with canoes….

First … two Iroquois … came out from the woods on to the beach; these were followed immediately by several others who carried their canoes to the water where they hastily embarked to cut off our route, and to reach a little island which they well knew the bark must pass … a large number of canoes in which there were for the most part seventeen Iroquois musketeers, standing up, paddled hard to come to surround us, whilst others went along the shore to stop us from getting to the woods in the event that we were beaten. A large number of men, women, and even children ran on the land on both sides of the passage, to have the diversion, it seems, of seeing us captured….

We tested their first fury, lying on the deck, and more than 800 balls skimmed over in no time….

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One party withdrew to the little island,20 which we had to pass, to disembark their wounded and to repair their canoes damaged by our small artillery.

The Iroquois, however, were not discouraged … seeing us without wind, and almost aground on a reef,21 shouted that we were in their power….

We soon felt … a little wind which arose and which gently made us pass beyond the little isle….

This was the last attempt of the enemy who did not wish to follow us into the lake for fear of being surprised by a wind, or perishing in the water when they were far from land.22

In 1689, with the war still raging and Denonville in a panic, the withdrawal and destruction of Fort Frontenac was ordered. Denonville sent a command to “get ready to abandon the fort at Catarokouy and withdraw all from it as best you can” and advised them “to be careful when leaving Catarokouy to avoid the point of land called Montreal behind which I believe the enemy has gone in order to await you there.”23,24 Fort Frontenac was abandoned for several years but then reoccupied and rebuilt in 1695.

Aside from the Frontenac, which was soon lost on Lake Ontario, La Salle constructed three more vessels. Any surviving ships were likely lost when Fort Frontenac was abandoned.25 The harbour was well suited for assembling small vessels. According to a noted traveller who visited in 1720, the “Bay of Cataraqui is double; that is to say, that almost in the middle of it there is a point that runs out a great way, under which there is good anchorage for large barks.”26 After the return of the French, ships were again built, and by 1726, at least two schooners had been constructed at Fort Frontenac. Two more were built in 1743 and 1745, and the fort became a transshipment centre for the fur trade. By 1756, there was a fleet of four armed vessels commanded by Captain René-Hippolyte Laforce. His flagship was the 20-gun Marquis de Vaudreuil. He and his crew were involved in the fur trade but also acted as a naval unit moving troops and supplies.

René Laforce was a truly remarkable man. He was a soldier, sailor, shipwright, carpenter, mapmaker, surveyor, engineer, and commander, excelling at all. The accounts of his involvement in historic events reads like a

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Fig. 1.2: This

labelled map detail is attributed to Pierre Pouchot and dated 1755 or 1756. The features contain (1) Point Frederick; (2) Fort Frontenac; and (3) Navy Bay. In this depiction, “Pointe de Montreal” is wooded except for the suggestion of a clearing on south Point Frederick. The handwritten notes appear to be plans for a defensive work on Point Frederick.

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novel. Born in 1728 in La Prairie, Quebec, he spent much of his early life at Niagara. He received part of his education on Lake Ontario and in the surrounding forestlands, where he learned the culture and language of the Haudenosaunee. While his career started on Lake Ontario, he completed it by constructing vessels and the dockyard at Point Frederick.27

In the lead-up to the Seven Years War, which spilled into North America and led to the British conquest of Quebec, improvements were made to the French defences. Captain Pierre Pouchot, a French military engineer, journeyed to Fort Frontenac in 1755. There, he undoubtedly soon met Captain Laforce. Pouchot’s mission was to improve the defences of the fort and those at Niagara. Pouchot closely inspected Fort Frontenac, the surrounding area, and Point Frederick, then ordered improvements that included constructing “entrenchments around Fort Frontenac….”28

A detail of the map in Fig. 1.2 shows Fort Frontenac and Point Frederick, although the proportions are wildly inaccurate. The depiction of Point Frederick (Pointe de Montréal) shows clearing, an earthwork, and a possible barrier, perhaps an abatis meant to provide defence against an attack from the woods. Pouchot wrote in his memoir that he “very easily brought everything to favor his arrangement.”29 He does not indicate what work was done

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on Point Frederick, but Charles de Plantavit, Chevalier de La Pause, visiting a year later, implied the presence of a redoubt that was not adequately built.30 It is clear that the site was considered important for defence.

The British established a maritime presence on Lake Ontario at Oswego in 1755 by building small vessels. 31 The French navy did not take it seriously at first. French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, who arrived at Quebec in 1756 to lead the defence of Canada, had another opinion. He promptly dispatched a different military engineer, La Pause, to Fort Frontenac to assess the defences of the fort and surrounding area.

La Pause identified the problems in a professional manner. In a devastating analysis that may have influenced Montcalm, he correctly predicted how it would be attacked and defeated. La Pause wrote of “the redoubt on Montreal Point” and considered it imperative to fortify. While he noted that it was not sufficient,32 he stated that the redoubt “should have been large enough to hold a hundred men with cannon.” In his report, La Pause also described “a small bay only an eighth of a league in depth but protected from bad weather,” most likely Navy Bay but possibly Deadman Bay.33

With Montcalm also present at Fort Frontenac in 1756, he may have personally inspected the fortification and ordered the redoubt enlarged as La Pause had suggested. But Montcalm’s greater priority was his upcoming attack against the British at Oswego. He would have been less interested in shoring up an undefendable trading post than massing his 3,000 troops, boats, and ships for the attack across the lake. The staging areas probably included Point Frederick. The artillery batteries on the south tip of Point Frederick may have provided protection during loading of the troops. In charge of the French ships was Captain Laforce in the frigate Marquise de Vaudreuil. Captain Pierre de La Brocquerie was the commander of the other vessel, the Huron.

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The attack on Oswego was a success. As well as protecting the army and putting the troops ashore, Laforce and La Brocquerie had fought the British and sunk a few of their small boats.35 The rest of the British vessels were captured or destroyed. The British naval presence was effectively removed on the lake for the moment.

Montcalm, or another senior officer, may have appreciated the poor quality of the French charts being used on the lake. Doubtlessly wanting to improve their charts in anticipation of the return of the British to the lake, both

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Figs. 1.3A And

1.3B: Two maps, two opinions. Fig. 1.3A: The 1757 RenéHippolyte Laforce map of Cataraqui shows sounding depths, although not in Navy Bay. Fig. 1.3B: Pierre de La Brocquerie’s map of the same place, also from 1757, is similar but less stylized.

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Laforce and La Brocquerie undertook surveys to produce accurate maps of the lake and harbours. They decided, or were otherwise directed, to produce their maps independently.

Laforce left Fort Frontenac and made his way to Quebec during the winter of 1756–57. A measure of his personal dedication to completing the map at Quebec is indicated by the date of February 4, 1757.36 This was a little more than three weeks after his marriage to Madelaine. The map he completed at Quebec was the most accurate depiction of Lake Ontario yet. It included four small inset maps of key harbours. While stylized, each inset map contained important details, such as water depths of the harbours. One of the insets is

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the first precise map of the Cataraqui River and Point Frederick, with the depths of the harbour shown (see Fig. 1.3A). Not shown are the depths of Navy Bay.

La Brocquerie’s map was completed at Fort Frontenac on October 4, 1757 (see Fig. 1.3B). This map was similar but not identical to Laforce’s (see Fig. 1.3A). La Brocquerie also reported water depths of the harbours. They are different in detail to those of Laforce. Unlike Laforce, La Brocquerie included inset drawings of the vessels of the French and British fleets. These would have been helpful to captains attempting to identify other vessels on the lake as friend or foe.

Although the lake was by this time referred to as Lake Ontario, the French had other names for most Ontario places. In the Kingston area, Garden Island was “Île aux Cochons,” Wolfe Island was “Grand Île,” Deadman Bay was “Le Mariegeau,” and Point Frederick was “Pte du Moralle” (short for “Montreal”).37 Both captains were certainly very familiar with Point Frederick and Navy Bay, yet neither reported the depths.

Neither the maps nor the French naval control of Lake Ontario prevented the fall of Fort Frontenac. British Lieutenant-Colonel John Bradstreet crossed the end of the lake and arrived on August 25, 1758, landing about one mile to the west. His force included 80 bateaux with artillery, provisions, and canoes for his 3,100 men, while Fort Frontenac was defended by just over 100 soldiers. Among them were the two mapmakers, Laforce and La Brocquerie. Scouts brought early warnings of the British force, and any lookouts on Pointe Montréal were pulled in.

Although the outcome was a foregone conclusion, the French offered resistance. The British established an artillery battery about 500 yards west of the fort on the high ground. They began a bombardment that lasted until the surrender of the fort on the morning of August 28. Two of the French vessels attempted to escape by running the harbour, but the wind was unfavourable, and after taking fire, they ran both vessels aground “on the island opposite to the fort and made off in their boats, as did the eight Indians who had been inside the fort.…” About 40 were on board the vessels.38 Laforce and La Brocquerie were the captains, and among those who made the dramatic escape. 39

Bradstreet ordered the destruction of Fort Frontenac. The British took all they could carry and destroyed the rest, leaving behind a desolate and deserted ruin. A small French force returned and occupied the site for a short

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time. Laforce attempted to build two schooners to replace the ones lost, but those attempts were half-hearted and unsuccessful.40 The scattered cannons remained where they fell.

The French were not yet finished on Lake Ontario. They still held Niagara. Because the British lacked large vessels on the lake, the French were still technically in control with their fleet of three. Captain Laforce was now in charge of the Iroquoise.41 In June 1759, the British emerged from Oswego without large-vessel naval support. They were intent on attacking and capturing Niagara, the last French fort on the lake. The British flotilla was led by Brigadier-General John Prideaux. As they made their way along the shore, Laforce, nearly alone on the lake, missed finding the flotilla, and the British took Niagara.

The French navy withdrew to Fort Lévis, on the St. Lawrence River. Command of the fort devolved to Pouchot, who was determined to fight. Laforce anchored the Iroquoise and moved ashore to continue service as a soldier for Pouchot. They spent the winter of 1759–60 preparing for a last-stand defence they knew was coming. An army of 11,000 under Major-General Jeffrey Amherst coasted the eastern Lake Ontario shorelines, descended the St. Lawrence, and appeared in front of Pouchot. The French offered a spirited defence, although brief. It was the last battle of the war. The French surrendered at Montreal at Place d’Armes on September 9, 1760. Britain now possessed French Canada by right of conquest. Pouchot and Laforce were taken as prisoners to New York.

The Iroquoise, the Outaouaise, and a vessel not yet completed were captured by the British. They were pressed into service and then used as transports on Lake Ontario,42 joining a small collection of vessels constructed at Oswego or Niagara to form the core of a British marine service on Lake Ontario. But with scant knowledge of Lake Ontario, the new British provincial transport service would need the expertise of someone with real experience on the lake.

Someone like René-Hippolyte Laforce.