Iroquois Finger Lakes region, and upstate New York along the St. Lawrence River area downstream to today's Montreal. French, Dutch and British colonists in both New France (Canada) and the what became the Thirteen Colonies recognized a need to gain favor with the Iroquois people, who occupied a significant portion of lands west of colonial settlements. Their first relations with them were for fur trading, which was favorable and became lucrative to both sides. The colonists also sought to establish positive relations to secure their settlement borders. For nearly 200 years the Iroquois were a powerful factor in North American colonial
Humber Valley Village homes along what became Royal York Road from Dundas north to Eglinton. The Iroquois shoreline, remnant of the ancient Lake Iroquois, which forms an escarpment along Dundas in Etobicoke, turns far to the north in this area, cut away by the Humber River creating the Humber Valley. The western extension of St. Clair Avenue (now called Rathburn in Etobicoke) ran through the centre of the area and it was near this point the local developer Robert Home Smith built his home 'Edenbridge' (named after a village in southern England) overlooking the Humber Valley, at the turn of the century, after