Tiny is a township, part of Simcoe County in south-central Ontario, Canada. The Township of Tiny can be found in the Southern Georgian Bay region and is approximately 43 miles long or 160 square miles.
The township was named, in 1822, after a pet dog of Lady Sarah Maitland (1792-1873), wife of Sir Peregrine Maitland, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. Two other adjoining townships were also named for her pet dogs, Tay and Flos (now Springwater Township).
The history of Tiny Township reflects its three founding cultures: Native, French and British. Located within Wendake, the historical homeland of the Huron people, the region is closely tied to early missionary exploration of the region, including the Jesuit mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in nearby Midland.
The township is also the location of an important archaeological site, the 17th century ossuary of the community of Ossossane, the capital of the Huron Confederacy.
In 1798, the British government purchased the land in the area and soon after established a naval base at Penetanguishene. By the mid 1800s, families from Quebec began moving to the Tiny Township area for the cheap and fertile land to farm.
Today, the Tiny Township area is still very much a bilingual (French and English) area of Ontario, and is one of 25 municipalities in Ontario designated for bilingual government services under the French Language Services Act. In honour of the region's French history, Lafontaine hosts the annual Le Festival du Loup, a festival of francophone music and culture which celebrates the death of a wolf that terrorised the village in the 1800s, which takes place in July.
Lafontaine was originally called Sainte-Croix (French for Holy Cross) due to many large crosses found in the area that were planted by the Jesuits. It was renamed Lafontaine to honor the politician Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, one of the early Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada.
Tiny contains an artesian well that produces some of the purest spring water in the world. Many residents were concerned that a proposed garbage dump over the aquifer would contaminate the water, and a series of protests achieved a one-year moratorium on the dump.
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