Making a community : land policy in the Kawartha Lakes

Between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries, the Crown coordinated a revolution in land usage in the Kawartha Lakes, as elsewhere in the colony, through 'civilization' and land redistribution. Attempts to change native society and build settler communities did not quite unfold the way the government intended. 'Civilization' helped the Mississauga farm and taught skills that eased interaction with colonial society, but they continued to produce much of their food by traditional means. Speculation isolated settlers and made land acquisition more difficult, though some speculators provided essential services. Most immigrants bought land privately and many were not able to establish themselves as farmers. Preferential grants were particularly poor at distributing land to settlers and Crown or Clergy Reserves sales were much more likely to transfer property directly to users. The transition to agricultural land usage occurred largely through the state's mediation of conflicting claims to access