Imagine traveling by stagecoach along what is now Derry Road on your way to the villages of Derry West or Meadowvale: traveling down the rough concession road, bumping and jostling over every rut and obstacle. Haven ridden for miles on this bumpy and muddy dirt road, you would have been tired, dusty, hungry and sore. The inn that once stood at the southwest corner of Derry and Tomken roads must have appeared as a godsend to the weary traveler: a place to gather, to eat or sleep, or to share in the day’s news. The inn (possibly Madigan’s) is shown on the 1859 Tremaine Map.

The small community that developed in the vicinity of the inn was dubbed “Palestine” in the 1877 Historical Atlas of Peel. The community was never large enough to acquire a post office or other early pioneer industries and it remained largely a rural crossroads hamlet. Palestine also became home to a Primitive Methodist Church, built in 1871, which celebrated its Diamond Jubilee in 1932. Palestine also acquired a store (apparently poorly stocked) and a school. The four corners of Palestine became humorously referred to as Education, Damnation, Salvation and Starvation. The church and the name “Palestine” were both gone by 1970.

Today, traces of Palestine have completely disappeared beneath the relentless sprawl of commercial and industrial development. There are no permanent reminders of this little stagecoach crossroads, and little to remind us of the families that once called upon the innkeeper or sung hymns at the Church. We can look at the names from the 1877 Atlas of Peel County – names like Wedgewood, Dobson, Aikens, McBride, Baldock, Gage, Grafton, Reed and Montgomery (amongst others) – in an attempt to stir a community memory or place a human face on this once forgotten hamlet from our pioneer past.

Perhaps as we speed along the asphalt at Tomken and Derry roads today, we can imagine that we are traveling in their footsteps, jostling along the same bumpy roads as the people that once called the area home. As we stop for a break or for food at the modern McDonalds (where the inn once stood) we can perhaps imagine back to this simpler time from our not-to-distant past. Please share your memories and photographs of Palestine with us and help to preserve the story of this vanished village.