07/01/2026
June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada and on this last day of the month I want you to meet an important person buried in Toronto. I don’t often have the opportunity to speak about significant Indigenous individuals as part of the cemetery tours because I have encountered very few buried in the city. In fact, the 1901 census counted only 36 “Indians” living within Toronto. I was shocked to discover that Fred Ogilvie Loft, such an important First Nations advocate, was buried here in Park Lawn Cemetery.
Loft was born February 3rd, 1861 on the Six Nations Reserve on the Grand River. His mother, Ellen Smith, was the granddaughter of Oneida Joseph, an accomplished warrior in the American Revolutionary War under Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea). The Loft household belonged to the Christian community and spoke both Mohawk and English. The children were given both English and Iroquoian names. Fred Loft’s Mohawk name was Onondeyoh, meaning “Beautiful Mountain.”
Education was also valued by the family and young Fred attended the First Nation primary school near his home until the age of 12. He then boarded for a year at the Mohawk Institute, a residential school near Brantford. One could believe that this is where his passion for political advocacy was kindled. He detested the school and recalled later that the children were constantly hungry and half frozen. With his parent’s blessing, he did not return to the residential school but instead began a daily commute to the public school in neighbouring Caledonia. It was an almost 13km return trip but he walked it every day before being able to board in the town and finish his studies in 1881.
Loft wore a number of hats in the following years, from lumberjack and timber inspector to receiving a full scholarship to study bookkeeping and working as a journalist for the Brantford Expositor. Politically he was a staunch Liberal which helped him win an appointment in 1890 as an accountant in Toronto at the Asylum for the Insane. He would remain in this position for 36 years. His move to Toronto also corresponded with an increase in his advocacy efforts and Fred wrote letters to the Department of Indian Affairs arguing for greater autonomy of the First Nations. This time period is also when he married Affa Geare, a Torontonian living in Chicago. The couple had three children and were respected members of society.
In 1908, Loft wrote a series of articles published in the Globe and later the Saturday Night. The writing focused mostly on Natives and education. He called for an immediate end to residential schools as unsanitary death-traps and suggested they be replaced instead with day schools on the reserves where children could stay within their communities.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Frederick Loft spent three years visiting reserves throughout Ontario and encouraging recruitment. While he was most definitely a loyal supporter of Britain, he also saw enlistment of Indigenous people in the armed forces as a political leverage after the war. Loft himself spent six months overseas as part of the 256th Infantry Battalion but was soon transferred to the Canadian Forestry Corps. While in Europe, the Six Nations Council honoured him by naming Loft a pine tree chieftain. With this title, he was able to act as a representative of the Council and was granted an audience with King George V at Buckingham Palace to discuss matters on behalf of the First Nations of Canada.
Upon returning home in 1918, the veteran’s activism and advocacy grew and in December of that year he founded the League of Indians of Canada. This was the first pan-Indigenous political organization in Canada and had branches all over the country. Their main objectives were to end residential schools, establish self-governance, and to oppose an amendment to the Indian Act which allowed the government to expropriate reserve land without consent or compensation. The department of Indian Affairs constantly tried to push back against the League and went so far as to try to enfranchise Loft. (At the time, Native status meant you were a ward of the Canadian government and could not vote or manage your own affairs. By trying to enfranchise Loft, or force voting rights upon him, they were essentially trying to revoke his status and illegitimize his leadership of the League.)
Thankfully the plan did not work and Loft was able to continue his fight but constant opposition to the League meant growth was hampered. Loft had to move back to Chicago for four years when his wife fell ill and he found it even harder to direct the group's activities. By the early 30s, only League branches in Alberta and Saskatchewan were still active, and in later years these led to the formation of the Assembly of First Nations.
Fred Loft, Onondeyoh, died in Toronto in 1934. He suffered from senile psychosis before succumbing to a rapid succession of “epileptiform seizures”. This Mohawk pine tree chief, veteran, reporter, lumberman, civil servant, and activist may not be well known now but he was undoubtedly one of the most important Indigenous activists of the 20th century.
