Thorold’s Curious Old Tree
The badly misshapen tree shown in our old photo this week was once a unique element in the rural landscape along the northeastern border of Thorold. But what was it? Just an ugly, misshapen old elm tree, the victim of one too many windstorms? Or, as many believe, a relic of pre-settlement times, crafted by local aboriginals before the white man appeared on the scene, to mark trails or the locations of important elements of the Thorold countryside?
The documentation of the old tree is pretty sparse. Many believe that the tree is an example of what are commonly called “Indian Marker Trees,” examples of which have been found in many places in Southern Ontario, the American Midwest, and further down into the American South. The belief is that indigenous North Americans would take a young sapling, bend its still flexible trunk over into almost an L-shape, and let it grow thick and strong in the shape while also producing one or more branches that would then grow straight upward out of the bent trunk, producing a second trunk thrusting up toward the sky. Their purpose? To point the way to native villages or camps, to water sources and river fords, or to mark boundaries between aboriginal nations.
This particular tree once stood along one of the major Indian trails that European settlers found when they arrived in Niagara. The most important one was the Iroquois Trail, which began in Queenston and stretched westward all the way to Ancaster, along the shoreline of an ancient predecessor to Lake Ontario – the same path later followed by Old Highway 8/Regional Road 81.
Another significant trail was the Mohawk Trail, which branched off from the Iroquois Trail near St. Davids, ascended the escarpment somewhere east of Thorold, and continued southwestward through Beaverdams, also ending in Ancaster. It was beside this trail that Thorold’s Marker Tree once stood – on what is today the northwest corner of the intersection of Thorold Townline Road and Old Thorold Stone Road.
But was it a natural tree whose growth had been affected by accidents of nature – storms and the like?
Or was it intentionally crafted by aboriginal inhabitants? If so, for what purpose? Today we can only guess – documentation of the life of this poor, misshapen old tree is sparse. It is odd that something so unusual in form and supposed function was not mentioned in the 1898 Jubilee History of Thorold, the classic history of the community.
All that is known is that it was a very old tree, tall and majestic (albeit misshapen) until it was ravaged by Dutch Elm disease in 1970. After that it was trimmed down to a height of perhaps 15-20 feet, and remained that way until December 28, 1982, when a wind storm completed its destruction. The remains of the tree were soon cleared away, but one large branch survives, in the Thorold and Beaverdams Historical Society Museum.