Pickering Village, Ontario
Pickering Village is a community and former municipality in the Town of Ajax, Durham Region, Ontario, Canada.
Pickering Village | |
|---|---|
Unincorporated community | |
| Coordinates: 43°51′8″N 79°3′4″W | |
| Country | Canada |
| Province | Ontario |
| Regional municipality | Durham |
| Town | Ajax |
| Settled | 1807 |
| Incorporated (village) | 1953 |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| Forward sortation area | L?? |
| Area code(s) | 905 and 289 |
| NTS Map | 030M14 |
| GNBC Code | FEQTG |
History
Originally located in Pickering Township, a community began to grow in 1807, when Quaker Timothy Rogers purchased 800 acres (3.2 km2) of land and brought a number of Quaker families to settle in the area. A post office was granted in 1829 and called Pickering. The village itself went under a number of names in the early years, including Canton and Duffins Creek, but eventually adopted the same name as the post office.[1]
In 1878, the Quakers' Canada Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends established an educational institution, Pickering College, on the outskirts of the village. It was destroyed by fire in 1905 and relocated to Newmarket.
In 1953, it was incorporated as the Village of Pickering. At that time, it had a population of nearly 900. At the 1971 Census, the closest to the date of amalgamation, the municipality had a population of 2,535.
When the Regional Municipality of Durham was created in 1974, the Village of Pickering was confusingly included in the Town of Ajax. It became known as "Pickering Village" to differentiate it from the Town of Pickering, which consisted of the remainder of the former Pickering Township.
An historical plaque installed in October 1976 reads:
"The Founding of Pickering" Between 1801 and 1807 a settlement developed here in Pickering Township where the Danforth Road crossed Duffin's Creek. Among the early settlers was Timothy Rogers, a prominent Quaker and colonizer who built a saw and grist-mill in 1809. A post-office was established in 1829 but the hamlet of Duffin's Creek developed slowly. The construction of the Grand Trunk Railway, completed in 1856, and growing agricultural prosperity stimulated the community's development as an important grist-milling and local commercial centre. Known as Pickering from the late 1870s, it became a police village in 1900 with about 1,000 inhabitants. In 1953 it was made an incorporated Village and in 1974 amalgamated with the Town of Ajax.
References
- Ajax 1941-1979 (jpg) (Monograph). Ajax Historical Board. April 1979. p. 1. Retrieved 9 December 2013.