Josh Matlow (Ward 22) writes in his current newsletter that Deer Park will soon receive branded street signs identifying the neighbourhood. He says the Yonge and St. Clair community has “a long and storied history” noting the Indigenous name of the Ojibway as “mashquoteh” meaning meadow or woodland where the deer come to feed. In 1837 Agnes Heath, widow of Col. Charles Heath, relocated from India to Canada with her children and purchased 40 acres northwest of Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue West (then known as the Third Concession Road) and named it Deer Park. The area was annexed to the City of Toronto in 1908 and was established as one of Toronto’s finest residential districts by the 1930s. Matlow recalls that Glenn Gould, Group of Seven founding member J. E. H. MacDonald, writer Farley Mowat, and former Prime Minister John Turner have all called Deer Park home.
