The pleasant view of the Niagara Escarpment and a man named Bill Buckley are the focus for this week’s street name history feature.
Each week, we speak with Milton Historical Society President John Challinor II to gather information and details about the namesakes of our roads. If you weren’t aware, he and the late great historian, Jim Dills, wrote the book on Milton street names, writing Milton Streets back in 2007.
Recently, we covered Bartleman Terrace and English Mill Court. This week, we’re focusing on Bill Buckley Ring Road and Mount Pleasant Way.
Starting alphabetically with Bill Buckley, Challinor says there is a very specific reason why it’s located next to the Mattamy National Cycling Centre.
Challinor had the chance to meet Buckley when naming a street after him became a real possibility. He says Buckley is a very professional man who has lived an immensely successful life.
Moving on to Mount Pleasant Way, it turns out, the street was NOT named after a mountain.
The street is not located on the original farmland unlike other similar Milton roads. Challinor says that by the time the name was proposed, the area behind the hospital had already been filled up. In order to properly acknowledge the significance of the Mount Pleasant farm that ran for roughly 100-years, the Town decided to place the street name elsewhere.
Challinor says it’s theorized that the name Mount Pleasant came from the ‘pleasant’ view of looking west from the farmland to the Niagara Escarpment, making it similar to Mountainview Drive in Milton.
Mount Pleasant is a common name around the world. In an article by The Telegraph Journal, it says that Mount Pleasant in the United Kingdom had a very different origin for the name:
“Mount Pleasant was the tongue-in-cheek name for the medieval dumping ground of household refuse, ashes, and other trash, along the banks of the woefully polluted Fleet River in Clerkenwell (before the river was buried underground).”
I like Milton’s origin story a lot more.
If you’re looking to understand how Milton’s streets are named, you should check out the book written by Challinor and Dills. Published by the Milton Historical Society back in 2007, it sold out in about six weeks and has since been long out of print. That said, according to Challinor, you can still find a copy at the Milton Public Library. With nearly 15-years having passed since the initial publication, and the extensive town growth in that time, an updated book is likely to come.
You can also take a walk with the late Jim Dills down Milton’s Main Street in 2002.
If you have a suggestion on what you’d like to learn about next week, let us know! We’re currently working on names that we find interesting. You can message our Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram page, or even email us at News1013@LocalRadio.ca. Otherwise, we’ll just continue asking about local street names that we find interesting.
If you have a news tip or story idea, you can now send us a heads up via email at News1013@LocalRadio.ca. If you’d like to get ahold of me personally, shoot me a message at Cameron.Wilkinson@LocalRadio.ca. We’re in the business of content creation, so no idea is a bad idea.
