HomeMy WebLinkAbout786"Article taken from the Pickering News, June 29, 1961, page 17, written by W.C. Murkar.
Pickering Was Once Called ""Duffin's Creek''.
By W. C. MURKAR
Strangely, we don't know of anyone who knows when Pickering Village was first
recognized. The writer has in his possession a map showing what is now Pickering
Village, as ""Canton"".
An elderly lady, a friend of ours, now gone, told us of her being employed by the Spink
Family (owners of the Spink Mills on the site of the Moodie Motel here) when the place
was known as Canton. This same map, dated 1855, shows another curious fact. What
we now know as the Brock Road, waS only trail through the Bush up to Lake Simcoe
in those days, and the Brock Road was what is now known as No, 12 Highway, running
from Whitby Harbor, north, and Whitby was known as Windsor.
Pickering Village may have been better known to some, at one time, as Duffin's Creek,
getting that name from an Irish bachelor, who lived on the Kingston Road, on the way
down the hill, at the west end of the village. Bachelor Duffin was a trapper and fisherman,
who traded with the Indians. It is said that a Methodist minister, who travelled over
Ontario and Durham Counties on horseback, through the bush, stopped with Duffin,
when in this area. On one of his trips, Duffin'a body was found, and the story would have
it—murdered by Indians. A now well-on-in years friend of the writer's has promised to
show us where Duffin is buried—down near the mouth of Duffin's Creek. We never
expect to find the grave, however.
We have in our possession two photographs, which in our estimation must have been
taken sixty to seventy-five years ago —a picture of our main street— few trees,
and buildings, now long removed, but including our old town hall, where the writer
saw his first moving picture show. We people here had heard about ""Moving pitchers"",
but no one had yet seen any. A travelling medicine show (popular in those days) had
posters up around town announcing the coming show of this terrific new invention —
moving pictures. And, I well recall, my own conception of what moving pictures might be—
paintings or other large pictures travelling along some kind of a track—moving pictures
(hard to believe isn't it kids?). They were the real ""flickers"" from which you came away
with a headache and eye-ache. A sure laugh-getter was a man being run over by a
steam roller and flattened out like a sheet of paper.
I recall, too, being taken into Toronto, as a youngster, by an older young man of the
village, who ""Knew his way around the big city"" and attended a well-know picture
palace of that day (remembered by some oldsters, possibly) ""The Red Mill"" on
lower Yonge Street. The auditorium was one of those of the day—long, narrow
halls, with the tin-pan piano down in the pit, having the stuffing hammered out of it by a
big, fat male pianist The film being shown was of an automobile race,
where the rushing car comes right at you, filling up the whole screen before
passing out of sight. It was just at that exciting moment when my guardian escort
stood up in his seat and yelled, at the top of his voice ""lookit 'em go"".
We were ordered out of the theatre."