Lucan, Ontario

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Lucan is a community in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the Township of Lucan Biddulph in Middlesex County. It is approx. 30 km (18 miles) north of London, which is the most important urban centre in the county and Southwestern Ontario.

The land in the area is almost entirely agricultural, relatively fertile soils used for crops (grains, tobacco) and livestock. Many of the township's residents are in employed in the same industries.

Lucan is home to the Lucan Irish, a junior hockey team that plays in the Southern Ontario Junior Hockey League.

[edit] History

Despite being more than 500 km (300 miles) to the North, in 1829, the area became a refuge for a group of free slaves from Cincinnati, Ohio who were under threat of being enslaved again, as a result of the Black Codes in Ohio. This group of roughly 200 disenfranchised Blacks were granted refuge and land by the Canada Lands Company and duly set up a colony named Wilberforce. This was one the earliest, if not the earliest, slave refuge colony in Upper Canada and existed before emancipation. The fleeing of Blacks northward into Canada beginning around this time was part of the Underground Railroad.

Most of the Blacks came from city life and did not adapt well to the harsh farming environment. Large lots of land were cleared (logged) and efforts were made to sustain the colony, but much it dwindled through the 1840s and many of the original colonists, moved on to larger, growing urban centres such as Detroit, Cleveland or Toronto to obtain wage-based employment. A small number remained on to work the land through subsequent generations.

The area was then further logged and settled by whites, many from Ireland, some of whom purchased farmsteads from the departing Blacks or new lots sold to them cheaply by the Canada Company.

After this time c. 1850, the majority of the townships landholders were Irish Catholics, a large number originating from then-meagre farming lands in County Tipperary, Ireland.

A very important railway route belonging to the Grand Trunk Railway opened in 1856, passing through the village. The village and surrounding township prospered as a result of quicker access to larger marketplaces, such as Toronto further to the east.

Prior to incorporation in 1872, the Village of Lucan had been known as Marystown, named in tribute to the wife of John McDonald, who was the original land surveyor of the area. When a duplicate Marystown was found to have already registered with the Post Office the name Lucan was put forth and accepted by the postal authorities. Lucan was named in tribute to Lord Lucan, a prominent landowner in Ireland.^[1]

Biddulph Township is probably most known for being the site of the brutal February 4, 1880 massacre of five of the Black Donnellys, an immigrant Irish family caught up in a long-standing local feud. This true story has been written about countless times and is etched into the criminal history of rural Ontario and is also known throughout the rest of Canada and the United States.

The area received an influx of Dutch farmers after World War II.