Brockville
August 14, 2019
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Indigenous peoples lived along both sides of the Saint Lawrence River for thousands of years. The first people known to have encountered Europeans in the area
were the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. These people had disappeared from the area by the late 16th century ... they may have been driven out or defeated by the
more powerful Mohawk people of the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), who by then had reserved the Saint Lawrence Valley as a hunting ground.
Brockville was settled in 1785 by American refugees still loyal to Britain during the American Revolutionary War with Britain, 1776-1783. Many of these
refugees settled in Quebec, but some ventured south along the St. Lawrence (named by French explorers in the 18th century to honour the martyred Roman Christian,
Saint Laurentis) to the Prescott and Brockville areas. Brockville became a city in 1962 and today with it metropolitan area, is about six times the population
of Prescott.
Canada's first railway tunnel was constructed in Brockville, started in 1854, completed in 1860, closed in 1970 and converted to a pedestrian tunnel in 2017,
featuring regular LED light shows. The tunnel was built to allow the Brockville and Ottawa railways to connect the Brockville industrial waterfront area
to the outlying areas between the St Lawrence and Ottawa rivers.
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