Town & Township

Community Roots
Oakville and Trafalgar Township's roots were primarily Canadian, British and American.  The first census for Upper Canada (Ontario), taken in 1841, listed the origins of the 4,495 residents of Trafalgar Township, including 431 living in Oakville, as follows:

A number of those who arrived were of Loyalist stock.  At the close of the American Revolution (1775-83), their families had fled from such states as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Vermont, first to Niagara or Atlantic Canada.  They or their children moved again to this area, when settlement began.  Loyalist families and sentiments would play significant roles in the community and have substantial influence.

Whether or not they were Loyalists, newcomers perceived opportunities here.  Land grants or purchases, along with family and business networks, attracted many of the early settlers.  Others were refugees fleeing from intolerable situations.  Some came equipped with considerable financial or personal resources and skills.  Others arrived penniless, with no connections and few skills, relying on a willing community to help them get started.

From Separation to Amalgamation
For almost a century following incorporation in the 1850s, Oakville and the rural communities within Trafalgar Township remained physically separated from each other by the surrounding farms and countryside.  Although distinct, they were nevertheless economically and socially interdependent.

For the balance of the 19th Century, they did not grow appreciably.  But shortly before World War I, immigration and urbanization began to increase.  Immigrants from countries other than the British Isles cam to call Oakville home.  Growth quickened during and after World War II.  the area benefited from its strategic location between Toronto and Hamilton on the main road and rail routes to the U.S.  Trafalgar and Bronte had land for industrial and residential development, but Oakville had the core services needed to support growth.

When multinationals like Ford (1951), Oil Refineries (1956) and other companies chose to locate in Trafalgar, the logic of amalgamation became clear to the municipalities.  For some years they had cooperated through joint boards and agencies.  By mutual agreement they merged on January 1, 1962, bringing together the 10,200 people of Oakville with the 30,000 in the Township and Bronte.  The "new" Oakville looked both forward to future prospects and backward to a quieter, smaller, more rural past.

A Multicultural Community
In the "horse trading" that preceded amalgamation, honours were even.  Oakville became the name, but Trafalgar's "farmers" gained the location for the new town offices on the Red Hill, east of Trafalgar Road and north of the QEW.

Growth pressures increased, but the community felt ambivalent.  There was "the old to protect and the new to pursue", but at what pace and sequence?  At length, in October 1978, the Ontario Municipal Board determined that development should occur "in tiers", northwards from the lake, both east and west of Sixteen Mile Creek (as it had done historically), with room for affordable housing, commerce and industry.

Meanwhile, Oakville became culturally more diverse.  The proportion of British immigrants diminished as the pattern of immigration changed.  From the 1950s and 1960s onwards, Italians, Germans, Poles, Portuguese, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Hungarians and Ukrainians arrived, then people from India, Pakistan, China, Columbia, Mexico, Iraq, Korea, Argentina, Peru, Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

To help newcomers integrate into the community, volunteers found the Oakville Multicultural Council in 1979.  Subsequently, it became the Halton Multicultural Council.

The McGowans
The story of the McGowan family illustrates life in Trafalgar Township over the past hundred years.

John McGowan, born in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1844, married Rebecca Gwynne of Londonderry, Ireland.  He worked as an equerry to the Duke of Buccleuch, and as a Superintendent on the famous Stockton Darlington Railway.  On his fiftieth birthday in 1894 he told his brother Jim, "This job is getting to be a rat race.  Let's go farming in Canada".  Within a month the families were on their way.

John purchased a well kept 110 acres farm up for auction on Trafalgar Road in Oakville, for $4,880 cash down.  The two Clydesdale horses he had brought with his family worked the farm.  They were wonderful animals, "almost human".  Several teams of these horses were bred.

John's son Jack married Jean Elvin White in 1918.  The Whites were a prominent pioneer family, including Sir Thomas White, Canada's Finance Minister in World War I.  Jack and Jean had three children: John (1920), Elizabeth Rebecca, "Bessie" (1922-1992) and Samuel, "Sam" (1924-2001).

Jack continued to work the family farm and was active in Munn's Church.  He died in 1934 just as the Great Depression was beginning to ease, leaving a growing family.  The Munn's congregation rallied 'round, helping the family until the animals could be sold, and the property leased.

Samuel, the youngest, had to learn to fend for himself at a young age.  He apprenticed as a metal smithy.  In time he bought a sheet metal business, Oakville Sheet Metal Co., which still operates today.  He met his wife, Margaret Tyrrell, at a dance in Islington.  They married in 1948.

Sam and Margaret were deeply involved in the Oakville community, most notably with Munn's Church.  Sam was also a lifetime member of the Lions Club, taking particular pride in the Seeing Eye Program.