Map 11. West of Paris, the original straight alignment of Dundas Street, south of the Nith River, has been interrupted by a huge quarry. King Edward Street (Highway 2) is now the main route from Paris to the crossroads village of Falkland, though there’s a stub of Governors Road West north of it on the old alignment. West of Falkland, that stub rejoins Highway 2, loses its old name, and forms the boundary between Oxford County (to the north) and Brant County (to the south) as far as the western edge of the map above.
The four lanes of Highway 403, the freeway which runs along the bottom edge of the map, is now the main artery connecting Toronto, the Head of Lake Ontario, and Brantford with points west. The 403 is the latest avatar of the Old Stage Road (a.k.a. the Detroit Path), based on a Native trail, that was early preferred to Simcoe’s Dundas Street. The above section of old Dundas Street is quiet, the 403 carrying most of the heavy traffic.
132. Just off a short section of Dundas Street West after the main Paris Cemetery, there’s the head of a trail through Barker’s Bush. This was a forest that occupied the south bank of the last loop of the Nith River before it joins the Grand River. Paris west of the Grand has seen a lot of development in recent years. A large housing survey is currently under construction in what used to be the heart of Barker’s Bush. But after a public campaign, in 2019 Brant County conserved some of the edge of Barker’s Bush, at least for the present. From the rugged trail, the Nith is just about visible through the early spring foliage.
133. A quiet stub of Governors Road West heads east toward the quarry, where it comes to a dead end.
134. On the western part of Governors Road West (County Road 134) is this small walled enclosure in which headstones from a former graveyard are gathered. A notice from Blandford-Blenheim Township identifies it as an inactive Pioneer Cemetery. So what happened to the pioneers’ bodies? The plaque on the right side of the entry reads, “On this site stood The Christian Church 1848-1915 and in the surrounding land rest her dead. 1963.”
135. Oxford County was created in 1798, and by 1855 comprised eleven townships, six of which – Blenheim, Blandford, East Zorra, North, East, and West Oxford – converged on Woodstock. After reorganization in 1975, Oxford was reduced to five townships – Blandford-Blenheim, East Zorra-Tavistock, Zorra, Southwest Oxford, and Norwich, as well as two towns – Ingersoll and Tillsonburg – and the city of Woodstock.
In the baroque, irrational dispositions of Ontario local government, Oxford County in 2001 was restructured as a two-tier regional municipality (a.k.a. region). So while it’s no longer a county, Oxford has retained the name of one, possibly for historical reasons, or maybe just to confuse the unwary. Its seat is at Woodstock, by far the largest urban centre and the only city in the county-that-is-not a-county. But, like the much smaller Tillsonberg and Ingersoll, Woodstock is a mere “lower-tier” municipality.
The welcome sign where Governors Road West meets Highway 2 doesn’t fill you with confidence that those who run the region are quite on the ball. The legend Oxford County growing stronger together has faded to near illegibility, while the population of the “county” is now around 125,000.
136. “The withdrawal of travel from the Governor’s road to the new road from Brantford in 1843, greatly injured Princeton” (Wadsworth vii).
What saved Princeton was the Great Western Railway, which opened in 1853. The village (pop. 500), the only community of any size between Paris and Woodstock, is centred on the (now CN) rail line about 1 km north of Dundas Street East. Princeton was named for the university city in New Jersey by one Thomas Watson, and recalls that a number of the original settlers, including Watson, were from that American state. Princeton is now in the township of Blandford-Blenheim, the southern boundary of which is Dundas Street. Above is the former Sacred Heart Church, now a private dwelling, just north of the CN tracks.
137. This plaque stands on Highway 2 just by the entrance to Princeton Cemetery, where Colonel Hornor is buried. The cemetery is notable for its large yew trees.
Thomas Hornor (1767-1834) was a New-Jersey born Quaker, the son of the co-founder of the New York Morning Post. He was educated at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. He came to this area with twenty other New Jersey settlers and built the first sawmill on what is now Horner Creek (yes, it misspells his name) that crosses Highway 2 just west of the cemetery. He also built the first grist mill in Oxford County, though as was then typical, both mills soon burned down.
If Hornor came to Upper Canada as a peaceable Quaker to avoid the US draft, he changed his mind once here, and became a captain in the local militia. He also served as a justice of the peace and registrar for Oxford County. Anxious to prove his loyalty to the Crown during the War of 1812 when a number of his American-born contemporaries deserted, he enlisted as a private soldier. A friend to First Nations on the Grand River, he mustered 75 Native warriors at his own expense and marched them towards Detroit. After the war, his loyalty no longer in doubt, he was commissioned as Colonel of the 1st Oxford Militia. In 1820 he was elected Oxford County’s first member of the Upper Canada House of Assembly (the provincial legislature). He died of cholera in 1834, survived by his wife and six children.
Map 12. This map takes us from the crossroads hamlet of Creditville west through central Woodstock, where Dundas Street once again assumes its original name, to the bridge over the main branch of the Thames River just west of the city. North of Woodstock, the Thames has been dammed to form a reservoir. The eastern portion of the city is dominated by the huge Toyota plant. The Y-shaped junction where Highways 401 and 403 merge is at the southwest corner of Woodstock. That highway continues west as the 401 via London to Windsor on the Detroit River, the border beween Ontario and the US state of Michigan.
The CN rail line runs under Highway 2 just west of Creditville. The first ever train on this line, going 10 km/h, pulled into Woodstock on 15 December 1853. So, Woodstock found itself on the Great Western mainline from Niagara to Windsor, and this led to an economic boom in the town. These days most trains on the CN tracks carry freight, though Woodstock retains an infrequent VIA passenger rail service, including two trains a day to Toronto.
The other rail line along the north shore of the Pittock Reservoir is the former Credit Valley Line between Toronto and St. Thomas, later taken over by Canadian Pacific (CP). Still an active freight line, it has been owned since 2023 by the Canadian Pacific Kansas City consortium (CPKC).
138. Here’s a business you probably don’t expect to see on a quiet stretch of Dundas Street in the middle of nowhere: an “adult entertainment venue known for its lively atmosphere,” as AI puts it. It’s at Creditville, on the Brant County side of the border where Highway 2 and County Road 130 (Muir Line) meet, about 13 km east of downtown Woodstock. There are reviews, some extensive, on the TERB.cc website, in case you’re curious about what services are offered.
139. Actually, no place near Woodstock is in the middle of nowhere. The city has one of the prime locations in the province as far as transportation links are concerned. As Map 12 shows, the two major east-west freeways in southern Ontario merge at the southeast corner of the city. Thus Woodstock stands at a pivotal point between the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area and the Canada-US border between Windsor and Detroit. Here a truck going west on the 401 passes in front of the giant water tower that looms on the eastern edge of the city.
140. Woodstock is a small-to-mid-sized city, about 35th in the rank of Ontario cities by population. It’s 70 km from the eastern end of Dundas Street and about 50 km from its western end in London. Like the many other Woodstocks in the Anglosphere, including the one in New York State that gave its name to the famous music festival,* it’s named for a small town in Oxfordshire, England. That Woodstock is the location of Blenheim Palace, built to reward the military hero John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) for his victories at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) and elsewhere in the War of the Spanish Succession. The Duke is buried at Blenheim Palace, and his direct descendant Sir Winston Churchill was born there in 1874.
It was Lt. Gov. Simcoe who gave English names to locations on Dundas Street, and this accounts for London, the Thames River, Oxford County and Blenheim Township (though this last is actually a distortion of a German village name, Blindheim in Bavaria).
Woodstock was first settled in 1800, named in 1835, incorporated as a town in 1851, and elevated to city status in 1901. The tall spire of the Anglican Church of the Epiphany downtown at Dundas and Wellington can be seen in the far distance.
*The Woodstock Festival of August 1969, that drew an audience of half a million to see some of the greatest musical acts of the era, actually took place at Bethel, NY. Woodstock, NY, a well-known arts colony 95 km from Bethel, had been intended as the location for the Festival, but refused to issue a permit. The Festival took its name from its organizers, Woodstock Ventures, based in New York City.
141. Woodstock’s chief industry these days takes place in this enormous building just north of Dundas Street on the eastern edge of the city. It’s the West Plant of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC), a subsidiary of the Japanese auto giant. (The North and South Toyota plants are in Cambridge, Ontario.) The Woodstock plant, completed in 2008, covers 170,000 sq. m. (1,800,000 sq. ft.) and cost $1.1 billion to construct. Here the RAV4 compact crossover SUV and the Hino XL diesel truck are assembled. The most recent, sixth generation of RAV4s are exclusively hybrid. The 2,000 workers in the plant have included six humanoid robots since February 2026, and can assemble up to 150,000 vehicles a year.
142. Do you feel the need for a bit of shinrin-yoku (Japanese for “forest-bathing”) before subjecting yourself to the urban charms of Woodstock? Turn right after the Toyota plant, head north up Oxford Road 4 for about 5 km, and P at (top) the southern shore of what looks like a large lake. It’s actually a reservoir, a dammed section of the main branch of the Thames River. The Pittock Conservation Area occupies both shores, with most of the day use facilities on the north shore, along which runs the CPKC line. (Bottom) There’s a much quieter, pleasant wooded trail along the south shore.
143. The watershed of the Thames River.
The main branch of the Thames is 273 km long, making it the second longest river in southern Ontario after the Grand. It rises near Tavistock, flows through Woodstock, London, and Chatham, and empties into Lake St. Clair, the small lake between Lakes Huron and Erie. However, two other waterways, tributaries of the main branch, also bear the Thames name: the Middle Thames River, which rises near Embro and joins the main branch near Dorchester; and the North Thames River, which arises in Perth County and joins the main branch at the Forks in downtown London.
This profusion of Thameses reflects early settlers’ uncertainty about which rivers were which. On a 1755 French map, the Thames was marked as “Rivière inconnue” [unknown river], and its headwaters were confused with those of the Grand River. This muddle continued as late as 1792, when the surveyor Augustus Jones mistook the source of the Conestoga River (a tributary of the Grand) for that of the upper Thames. Jones’s error continues to have repercussions in respect of First Nations land claims.
144. (Top) Woodstock Museum at 466 Dundas Street in the heart of downtown is a National Historic Site. It occupies the former Town Hall (1853), and is surrounded by a public square. Architecturally, the old Town Hall was modelled on the town hall of Woodstock, England. Its lower level first served as a market, with the council chamber and administrative offices above. The building was meticulously restored between 1980-2000, and is now one of the most outstanding civic museums in Ontario. At right is the Pattullo Fountain (1917), surmounted by the Maid of the Mist statue. The “cage” around it holds an array of blue lights that allow the fountain to “flow” nightly during the winter season.
(Bottom) The Royal Coat of Arms in stone over the front entrance of the old Town Hall was a gift in 1858 from one W.S. Light to show that Woodstock had reached “that rank among the towns of Western Canada to which she is so entitled” (qtd. Byers 256). It served as a visual acknowledgement of the aristocratic British heritage that the town liked to emphasize.
145. This 1830 map shows how important Dundas Street was in the settlement of the area. It also shows the original “Surveyed Plot,” on the north bank of the Thames River, which remains undeveloped even today. In fact, it was Chewett’s survey that reported that the “Surveyed Plot” was unsuitable and “recommended a new one east of the Thames, north of Dundas in Blandford Township” (Symons 23). The squatters already knew better: as the map shows, they occupied both sides of Dundas Street east of the river, where Woodstock now stands.
Woodstock’s first official settlers were Empire Loyalists from the US: Zacharias Burtch, Levi Luddington, and Levi Babbitt, all of New York State. In 1800 Burtch built the first cabin in the area, on the site of 808 Dundas Street, now occupied by the Woodstock YMCA building about 1.5 km east of downtown. But as late as the early 1830s there was still no village, just a few scattered houses, a tavern and a small store.
The complicated early history of the settlement of what is now Woodstock is summarized on the city’s own website. By the mid-1830s two villages had come into existence within a mile of one another, both on Dundas Street: the Town Plot, a.k.a. Brighton, where the current centre of downtown is, and Blandford, to the east. They were united by being renamed Woodstock, according to Rayburn in 1835 by Henry Vansittart and Andrew Drew, presumably before these two fell out (see #152-157 below).
Why “Woodstock”? Well, this is Oxford County, named for its English equivalent. Woodstock, associated with the heroic Duke of Marlborough, is for the English the most historically resonant place in the English county after Oxford itself.
146. Belying its modest size, Woodstock has been a hive of industry since the railway reached it in the mid-nineteenth century.
(Top) A detail of an 1865 hand-drawn bird’s-eye view of Woodstock. The large group of buildings on Mill Street south of Dundas Street …
(Bottom) … was the Anderson Furniture Factory. This began in 1844 as Hay and Co., a cabinet-making business. After several fires, Hay and Co. were established at the corner of Mill and Main Streets. Its owner James Hay, Jr. was Woodstock’s mayor in 1893-94, but was forced to sell his business in 1895. The firm flourished thereafter, and by 1901 Anderson Furniture comprised a dozen buildings on 25 acres. But the factory closed in 1929, and by 1960 there was little physical trace of the once enormous operation.
Current major Woodstock industries aside from Toyota include Canada’s largest General Motors Parts Distribution Centre, automotive trim manufacturer Vuteq, and RWF Bron, who make heavy equipment such as plows and ultility tractors.
147. Dundas Street looking east from the Market Square, 1865.
This photograph shows Dundas Street running through downtown Woodstock in the late nineteenth century. It captures the appalling state of urban roads back then, covered by a mixture of churned-up mud and horse droppings.
Yet by 1900 this section of Dundas Street had an electric streetcar running down its centre. In about 1905 “four million clay bricks were used to cover [downtown Dundas St.] It was paved over in 1948, and an extensive renovation of the entire streetscape in 1997 included the removal of the bricks” (Symons 8).
148. The Woodstock Town Council Chamber as it was in 1872 is preserved in the Museum. At that time, Woodstock had a population of about 4,000 and had considerable autonomy in local government. Its current population is more than ten times that, but now as a lower-tier municipality, its government is split between Woodstock City Council in City Hall – a mayor, four city councillors and two city-and-county councillors – and the County of Oxford in the County Administration Building – the mayors of the eight Oxford municipalities plus the two Woodstock city-and-county councillors – which divide administrative tasks between them.
149. Downtown Woodstock today, looking west. That’s the colourful block of businesses between Graham and Light Streets on the north side of Dundas Street.
150. Woodstock retains some fine public buildings, though their function may have changed. This is the Old Fire Hall at 12 Perry Street (1899), half a block south of Dundas. It was built in Romanesque style to house horse-drawn wagons. The square tower (once capped with a spire) housed a 2,000 lb. brass bell. It was rung for fires, curfews, lost children, and other emergencies, but was removed in 1965. The well-preserved building now houses a medical centre and offices.
151. The former Post Office Building (1901) at 500 Dundas Street, Woodstock’s City Hall since 1968. It’s also in Romanesque style, built of sandstone. The Oxford County Administration Building, a less distinguished-looking modern shoebox, is half a block away.
152. Vice-Admiral Henry Vansittart (1777-1843) was a British naval officer who served the Royal Navy with distinction during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, in Newfoundland, Ireland, the Mediterranean, South Africa, and the West Indies, among other places. In 1832, on half-pay as his active duty was no longer required, Vansittart sent his former midshipman, Captain Andrew Drew (1792-1878), also on half-pay, to the “Town Plot” in Oxford County to prepare for a settlement. Half-pay officers could receive land grants from the Crown on unoccupied land in the colonies. And the Crown was eager to import British subjects, especially high-ranking ones, to Oxford County, as the existing American-born settlers’ loyalty could not be assured. When Drew arrived in what is now Woodstock, the land he’d been granted already had squatters living on it. So the new arrival had to buy them out or scare them off.
Drew arrived with a new bride and £1,400 of Vansittart’s money. He invested it to his own advantage, rather than Vansittart’s. Vansittart then arrived in Woodstock, but two weeks later his wife died, leaving him with four young children to raise. A couple of years later he scandalized the local community by marrying a much younger woman of a much lower social station. Vansittart’s 65-year-old sister also came to Woodstock, and her brother built for her a large house at Eastwood, just outside the settlement. Vansittart died in Woodstock in 1843, and is usually considered the founding father of the city, though Drew, who returned to England in 1842, had much more to do with the actual pattern of settlement.
153. Leafy Vansittart Avenue (Oxford Road 59), known locally as “Van Ave,” runs north from Dundas Street, and for about 1 km it and its side streets are lined with some fine houses.
154. The Thomas Parker House (1861), at 84 Vansittart Avenue.
It’s one of the finest examples in Ontario of the Italianate style of domestic architecture. English-born Thomas H. Parker was a prominent local merchant, first president of the Board of Trade in 1877 and Mayor of Woodstock in 1878 and 1879. The Parkers had twin girls, neither of whom married, who continued to live in this house, possibly accounting for its excellent state of preservation.
155. Not all Vansittart Avenue homes are mansions. This is the Regency brick cottage at No. 146, the home of the Izzard family from 1853-61. English-born Henry Izzard was a schoolteacher, and he and his wife had 13 children. Presumably the need for a larger domicile occasioned the move.
156. (Top) Just off Van Ave is Drew Street, named for the Admiral’s associate. No. 419 (built 1886), opposite Victoria Park, is one of the more flamboyant Woodstock homes. It was once the home of Robert Notman Ball (1861-1935), a lawyer and Crown attorney, and his family.
(Bottom) Detail of the front garden of the above.
157. Continuing east, “Rathbourne” (1832), a Regency cottage at 735 Rathbourne Avenue, about 500 m north of Dundas Street via Huron, is probably the oldest surviving and most historically significant house in Woodstock. A plaque by it reads: “This house was built by Capt. Drew who came here in 1832 as agent for Admiral Henry Vansittart, founder of Woodstock. Purchasing land now included in the eastern section of the city, Drew divided it into town lots and formed the nucleus of this community. During the Rebellion of 1837-38 he led the Canadian force that destroyed the American steamer Caroline,* which was supplying William Lyon Mackenzie’s supporters on Navy Island. This action almost precipitated war between Britain and the United States, and several attempts were made on Drew’s life. He returned to England in 1842 and resumed his naval career.”
Andrew Drew has a better claim than Henry Vansittart to be the founder of Woodstock, though he used Vansittart’s money to develop the townsite to his own advantage in ways that did not please the Admiral. That caused the two men to quarrel bitterly, ending their partnership.
*For more on the Caroline affair, see Magill and Part 8 of my blog on the Niagara River Trail.
158. At the west end of downtown, Dundas Street steeply descends the ancient riverbank into the valley of the now much reduced Thames. The brick tower of Dundas Street United Church is at right.
159. The Dundas Street Bridge over the Thames from the east riverbank. The Ojibwa name of the Thames is Deshkaan-ziibi, meaning “Antler River.” The French first called it La Tranchée [The Trench] for its muddy, undistinguished appearance, later moderated to La Tranche [The Slice, or Portion].
160. The Thames River upstream from the Dundas Street Bridge. The Woodstock Millennium Trail System has developed trails on both sides of the river, all worth exploring. There’s a P off Dundas Street between the rail bridge and the river and another, smaller P at the end of Bexley Street.
There’s a story that Admiral Vansittart, expecting this Thames to be of similar grandeur to the English one in London, arrived in Woodstock with wooden rigging and a shipwright, only to be sadly disappointed by the very modest size of this stream. No ship was ever built.
161. Dundas Street west of Ingersoll Road down to the Thames Bridge was under reconstruction when I visited. There was no through traffic on Dundas, and drivers had to take a long diversion northward to pick up the road on the other side of the river. Pedestrians, however, could walk through. This is the view eastward from under the CPKC Rail bridge toward downtown …
162. … and here’s the reverse angle of #161. Dundas Street, devoid of traffic thanks to the construction, crosses the Thames River bridge and snakes off toward London.
Part 6 coming soon
Holmström Ruddick 