Halton Hills

The town of Halton Hills was created on January 1, 1974, when the province amalgamated the Town of Georgetown, the Town of Acton, and most of Esquesing Township — but both founding communities have roots reaching back a century and a half earlier.

The Barber brothers' paper empire

Around 1820, surveyor-settler George Kennedy dammed Silver Creek to build a sawmill and gristmill, and the small settlement that grew around it was known, unglamorously, as "Hungry Hollow." In 1837, brothers William and Robert Barber purchased Kennedy's mill and renamed the community Georgetown. In 1854 they launched a paper-making operation on the Credit River that grew into one of Ontario's major paper producers, at its peak turning out roughly 5,000 pounds of paper a day — the operation, by then called Provincial Papers, finally closed in 1991 after roughly 130 years of continuous production.

Acton's leather trade

Georgetown's twin community, Acton, became known regionally as a leather and tanning centre through the 19th and 20th centuries — a trade that shaped its identity much as papermaking shaped Georgetown's. As Halton Hills marked its 50th anniversary in 2024, its population had grown from about 32,200 at amalgamation to roughly 63,000, one of four local municipalities in the Regional Municipality of Halton alongside Oakville, Burlington and Milton.

Sources

• Ontario Heritage Trust — Founding of Georgetown
• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Halton Hills