A Northern Playground: National Park Creation and the Logics of (Dis)Possession in Ontario, 1928–40

In December 1929, Georgian Bay Islands National Park was created, encompassing twenty-nine islands in Ontario's southern Georgian Bay region. To Canadian government officials and most of the local settler population, the park’s creation was heralded as a ‘vast playground’ that would attract tourists and capital to the region. In May 1930, park officials undertook to remove several Indigenous families who were living within park boundaries. Using a diverse range of sources including Canadian Department of Indian Affairs and Parks Branch correspondence, newspapers, and early twentieth century legal correspondence, this paper argues that authorities’ use of terms such as “squatter” in reference to these families normalized the logics of (dis)possession, thereby making Indigenous removal appear commonsense and linking both material and discursive dispossession. It further contends that the actions of DIA and park officials vis-à-vis the removal and ‘management’ of the area’s Indigenous peoples relied on an uncomplicated narrative of surrender that had both immediate and long-lasting consequences for individuals and communities within the park’s boundaries and beyond. A close reading of surrender documents, correspondence within the Department of Indian Affairs, and oral histories highlights complexities and contradictions often overlooked in earlier histories of the park. Extending the analysis to local histories, tourist pamphlets, and curricula, this paper argues that narratives of surrender and the myth of the ‘vanishing Indian’ formed, and in many ways continue to form, the basis of bureaucratic and popular narratives of settlement and park creation in the region.