As you walk along the Laura Secord Legacy Trail, keep your eyes open for a tall, distinctive, and decidedly prickly plant that still persists in out-of-the-way places along the edge of the trail. Introduced from Europe more than three centuries ago, the teasel, like the settlers who brought it, is an immigrant from the old world, first introduced into North America in the 1700s[i].[ii] It's also a throwback to a much simpler time and a long-vanished, much more labour-intensive technology. But what possible use could this sprawling, scratchy, inedible, and not particularly attractive relative of the common thistle have been to the early pioneers?
The paved roadways, cultivated landscapes, mowed lawns, and neatly manicured homes of present-day southern Ontario have few obvious reminders of the wilderness that confronted the early settlers. Establishing a homestead in the untamed countryside of the early 1800s was a real challenge, not least of all for the pioneer women of the era. Even carefully restored heritage buildings like the Laura Secord Homestead are tidy, clipped, modernized representations of their former selves, bearing more of a symbolic than a literal resemblance to their early history. The landscape has changed dramatically.
To be continued...
Patches of teasel can be found alongside the Laura Secord Legacy Trail north of the Dee Road allowance, just west of the Niagara Parkway crossing.