Burlington, Ontario

, and was the largest resort in Canada. The hotel was expropriated and used as a military hospital in 1917, demolished and rebuilt in the 1930s, and then demolished in 1964. Before the 19th century, the land on which Burlington now stands was home to the Mississauga nation. The British purchased the land from the Mississaugas in Upper Canada Treaties 3 (1792), 8 (1797), 14 (1806), and 19 (1818). In 1792, John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, named the western end of Lake Ontario "Burlington Bay" after the town of Bridlington in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Treaty 8 concerned the purchase of the Brant Tract, on Burlington Bay which the British granted to Mohawk chief Joseph Brant for his service in the American Revolutionary War. Joseph Brant and his household settled on this tract of land around 1802. Brant is accordingly often referred to as the founder of Burlington, and the city still celebrates an annual Joseph Brant Day in early August. Subsequent disputes between the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the Canadian government over payment for the Brant Tract and the Toronto Purchase were settled in 2010 for the sum of $145 million (CAD). With the completion of the local survey after the War of 1812, the land was opened for settlement. Early farmers prospered in the Burlington area because the area had fertile soil and moderate temperatures. Produce from the farms was shipped out via the bustling docks of the lakeside villages of Port Nelson and Wellington Square, as well as Brown's Wharf in the nearby village of Port Flamborough (which was to become Aldershot). Lumber taken from the surrounding forests also competed for space on the busy docks. In the latter half of the 19th century, increased wheat production from Western Canada convinced local farmers to switch to fruit and vegetable production. In 1873, the villages of Wellington Square and Port Nelson merged to become the Village of Burlington which then became the Town of Burlington in 1914. The arrival of large steamships on the Great Lakes made the small docks of the local ports obsolete, and the increased use of railway to ship goods marked the end of the commercial wharves. Farming still thrived though, and the resultant growth resulted in continued prosperity. By 1906, the town boasted its own newspaper—the Burlington Gazette—as well as a town library and a local rail line that connected Burlington to nearby Hamilton. During the First World War, 300 local men volunteered for duty in the Canadian Expeditionary Force—38 did not return. In 1914, Burlington was incorporated into a town. As more settlers arrived and cleared the land, cash crops replaced subsistence farming. Gradually, mixed farming and market gardens became the dominant form of agriculture, and in the early 20th century the area was declared the Garden of Canada. The first peaches grown in Canada were cultivated in the Grindstone Creek watershed in the city's south-west part. The farming tradition has passed down through the generations. Today over 40 per cent of the Grindstone Creek watershed is still devoted to farms, orchards and nurseries. Following the Second World War, cheap electricity from nearby Niagara Falls and better transportation access due to the new (1939) Queen Elizabeth Way encouraged both light industry and families to move to Burlington. The population skyrocketed as new homes were built, encouraging developers to build even more new homes. On January 1, 1958, Burlington officially annexed most of the Township of Nelson, as well as Aldershot, formerly a part of East Flamborough Township. By 1967, the last cash crop farm within the city had been replaced by the Burlington Centre. Burlington was the site of the Brant Inn built by the lake in 1917, which became famous during the '40s and '50s for showing big-band performers. By 1974, with a population exceeding 100,000, Burlington was incorporated as a city. The extremely high rate of growth continued, and between 2001 and 2006, the population of Burlington grew by 9%, compared to Canada's overall growth rate of 5.4%. By 2006, the population topped 160,000. ==Geography==