Although the Thomson family can arguably be considered the first family to settle in the old Township, and the first post office was opened at Scarborough Village, the first true ‘community’ to be established was at Highland Creek. The community originally stretched from the Pickering border west to Galloway Road. Prior to any settlement, Elizabeth Simcoe, in describing the Township of Glasgow (as Scarborough was first called), referred to the “high lands of Toronto”. The river flowing through the high land became known as the Highland Creek.

William Knowles emigrating from New Jersey in 1802, was forced to stop near what is now Grimsby where his wife gave birth to their eighth child. Knowles moved on ahead and in October, 1802 bought a 200 acre lot from Joseph Ketchum who had settled in the area of Highland Creek a few years earlier. Family stories handed down through the generations indicated that Knowles was expecting a house with the land but found only a roofless log shanty. His first days in Scarborough may well have been spent under the tall pines.

Knowles was a blacksmith and built the Township’s first smithy, making the nails for the first frame barn in Scarborough and planting one of the first orchards. His son, Daniel, kept the first store in Highland Creek, was a Commissioner for the straightening of Kingston Road in 1837 and was a prominent member of the Scarborough, Markham and Pickering Wharf Company which did an excellent business in shipping grain, timber and cord wood from Port Union to Oswego, New York and other Lake Ontario ports.

The combination of the Kingston Road, the old Danforth Road and the Highland Creek coming together in one location encouraged the village’s rapid growth in the early 19th century. Saw millers, grist millers, cobblers, merchants, coopers, tanners, blacksmiths, ship builders, and a host of other tradesmen helped build the community and in time it boasted churches from all major denominations including the first Roman Catholic Church (St. Joseph’s) and the first Anglican Church (St. Margaret’s) in Scarborough.

The community’s first school serving what was then known as School Section # 7, was erected in 1844 on the west side of the Highland Creek Valley, but a new, larger frame school was erected in the valley in 1870. As the community grew after the turn of the century, a new brick school was built in 1918 and became known as Highland Creek Public School. As of 2003, it was still standing, as one of the oldest school buildings in Scarborough still in use as a regular public school.

The community identity of Highland Creek would be further divided in two when the West Hill Post Office was created, taking with it all customers west of the Highland Creek valley.

_____________________________________

Highland Creek & West Hill – Historical Image Gallery: