Grand River

And to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the neck of their mothers.

After the war, many of the Mohawk and others who had fought for the crown moved north to the land on the Grand River in Ontario.

And it was there, a century later, that the Great Law was first written down in English.

The nation whose admirers say it learned union from the Six Nations destroyed more than 40 of their towns in a single season, a little more than three years after declaring its own independence.

But follow the story of the telephone more closely, and Canada keeps turning up.

There's the house in Brantford, Ontario that the Bell family called home, a spot along the Grand River where the idea for the telephone began to take shape, and some of the world's first tests of just how far a human voice could travel.

And then there's everything that happened once the telephone actually started catching on.

Like with any new technology, people were wary of integrating the telephone into their lives.

Yeah.

So Alexander Graham Bell did come up with the idea of the telephone in Brantford at his home.

He kind of thought about- This idea at his place called The Dreaming Place, which was kind of his favorite place, uh, where he used to go to a lot to, I guess, think and relax, and it was on the, uh, Grand River here in Brantford.

And then just right over there, he came up with the idea 'cause he was experimenting with a lot of different things, but he came up with the principal idea of the telephone, which was that, uh, sound and electricity traveling through vibrations are in waves.

You know, that's more of a, uh, a service that we're providing, whether it's flight training or, or spray.

It's a different image a- and we want to separate that because, you know, charters and tourism, even, even those are a little bit different themselves, right? Like, you know, some of these are short flights that you're doing, um, around, say, the CN Tower or, or, uh, you know, out of Kitchener-Waterloo going to see the Grand River, um, whatever it is.

And then, and then, you know, we are appealing to, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's not an inexpensive thing to hire someone to fly you up to land on their dock, right? So you are appealing to, um, a, a certain customer at that point.

So we really wanted to separate ourselves and offer, you know, a luxury service.

with some Indigenous partners on Six Nations, which is the largest reserve by population in Southern Ontario.

And through our relationship building, I've learned a lot about the Grand River, which is a waterway that runs 140 kilometers or so through a number of communities and cities and towns.

So I've learned a lot about the Grand River.

It used to be a dumping site until there were conservation efforts taken up.

And I've learned about the oldest treaty signed between the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee called Two Row Wampum Covenant Chain Treaty and paddled with our Indigenous partners along the Grand River.

And I've learned a lot from them.

I think that's probably the best example.

And last summer, I paddled with them for five days.

Under it, the crown takes the five southern nations, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, as protected peoples on the Arkansas River.

It's the same model Britain used for the Mohawks on the Grand River in Upper Canada after they lost their homes fighting for the king in the Revolution.

Britain fills the Indian country it asked for at Ghent with the very people Jackson sends west.

On August 28, 1833, the king gives his assent to an act of parliament abolishing slavery in every British colony and paying the owners 20 million pounds.

The Cherokee Cross in the winter of 1838.

Their principal chief, John Ross, brings about 15,000 people over the Mississippi at Memphis in December and up the Arkansas River toward Fort Smith.

A British Indian agent meets them there with the surveyed grant on the model of the Grand River.

The winter kills thousands on the road.