WILKET CREEK ARTIFACT

As seen in May, 2012

Our final stop along the Don River system keeps us to the West Don branch by way of a tributary known today as Wilket Creek. "Wilket" seems to be a surname of rather obscure origin. Indeed, it is a matter of mere guesswork that, through consulting the Oxford Names Companion (in which this name does not appear), we should link it to the given name Will, which has spawned similar diminutive and patronymic variants such as Wilkin, Wilkens, Willet, and Wilcock. As to the original "Will" of these cognomens, it is likely itself a diminutive of one of various common Old English names such as William, Willard, Wilbur, and Wilfred, in which the primary syllable has retained its meaning to the present day in the sense of "desire," "intention," "willpower," etc. According to the ONC, however, in certain cases "will" may instead refer to a water "well" or "spring," coming from the West Saxon root of wiell(a). Going by the book, the next most likely link, after this, would be to the Walcott/Walken/Walch family of surnames which all stem from the Old English wealh (and the earlier Germanic walho), a term for any "stranger" or "foreigner."

Beyond here, it is perhaps too far a stretch to pose any connection with the Polish surname Wilk, meaning "wolf;" or to the surname Welk, which has various meanings depending on whether you're referring to its German, Dutch, English, or Slavic iteration. Perhaps the closest equivalent is the French name Wilquet, but all this conjecture may be moot in any case considering the original name for this creek was not even "Wilket," but rather "Milne." In a mapping mixup worthy of Ptolemy's earlier Avoca confusion, it seems that sometime during the 1950's Milne Creek became Wilket after the original Wilket Creek, further to the north, was mislabelled as the Newtonbrook Creek — itself a name now estranged from a certain Newton's Brook, today lost somewhere beneath the modern sprawl of North York.

In "Milne" we thankfully have a much more straightforward, if somewhat less intriguing, toponym; a simple Scottish version of the common surname Miller which refers, of course, to someone who worked, or lived by a mill. What re-ignites our intrigue, however, is a peculiar artifact found by the side of this creek in Windfields Park: a simple concrete cube, roughly three feet all around, with a rectangular opening on the north facing side, that one could, conceivably, mistake as the remains of a miniature mill, if not some similar structure.

Rear View, May 2012

Although its dwarven dimensions would seem to preclude any such use, the area's extensive milling history is clearly reinforced by certain local denominations. Just as the East Don ruin sits downstream from the Villaways housing complex, we note that our current subject sits not very much farther from a Millway complex, at the intersection of Bayview Avenue and York Mills Road. Of some additional interest is the fact that, among the Anvil, Cartwheel, and Powderhorn Millways of this particular complex, we find both a "Crimson" and "Maroon" Millway, absent of any other colours.

Beyond these rather domestic points, one may also recall how such devices figure in the concept of a "World" or "Cosmic Mill," prevalent throughout Indo-European (if not global) mythology, which at once is said to grind-out and grind-up all the material of this earth and, in some cases, maintain the very rotation of time and the universe itself. Instances of this idea were first uncovered/introduced in the writings of the 19th century Swedish polymath Viktor Rydberg, and were then most famously catalogued in Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend's 1969 book Hamlet's Mill; the title being a reference to the fabled Danish prince and his supposed connection to a vast, sub-aquatic mill which has come down to us as the Maelstrom. Considering the mentions of Denmark at our previous ruins, can it be mere further coincidence that in the adjacent Banbury subdivision, just to the east of this creek and its "mill," we find both a "Cosmic" Drive and a "Hamlet" Gate?

Looking south, May 2012

Lest we now start getting too far afield from the actual artifact in question (in terms of both location and purpose), let us return to its immediate vicinity at Windfields Park. "Windfields," rather than describing some particularly breezy plain, is likely a variant of the English habitational name Winfield or Wingfield, a place found throughout England and, depending on which you're referring to, could mean either "open pasture" (Derbyshire, from wynn + feld), "a meadow frequented by lapwing birds" (Bedfordshire, from wince + feld), "a field of warlike people" (Suffolk, from wiga + feld), or possibly the "field of a pagan temple" (also Suffolk, from weoh + feld).

Putting aside the more prosaic meaning of "open pasture," we first note the lapwing to be a bird of often sinister prestige, associated with deception and ill-omen. Its deceptive, insincere reputation stems from a tactic of luring predators from their nesting sites by fluttering and crying in opposite, far-off directions — hence such maxims as "the lapwing cries most, farthest from her nest." And it is this cry which has also earned the lapwing its reputation as a dark harbinger, specifically in English-speaking realms, as it is said to sound not unlike someone calling "Bewitched! Bewitched!"

Interestingly enough, the lapwing was also an early emblem of Lower Egypt (land, as we have already seen, of the original "red kings"), likely since it is such a common site in the Nile Delta during winter months. It seems mostly, however, to have been employed in this way as an epithet by the rulers of Upper Egypt to signify the Lower Egyptians subjugation to them, having the bird usually depicted with its wings clipped, or under the foot of a "white king." By the time of the New Kingdom this symbol appears to have been applied to any enemy of Egypt, though also to the Egyptian people themselves when used in conjuction with a basket and star to form a hieroglyphic rebus meaning "to give praise," or "worship." Might we, then, have in this one "Windfields" a name encompassing lapwings, warfare, and pagan adoration, all in the same open space?