Mariposa, Ontario

Mariposa was a little known unincorporated settlement and geographic township in the Canadian province of Ontario.

The community was located by the Mariposa Brook near the intersection of Highway 7 and Victoria/Kawartha Lakes Road 6. It was formerly part of Victoria County, it is currently part of the one-tier City of Kawartha Lakes. Until the creation of Kawartha Lakes and the consequent disbandment of Victoria County and its constituent municipalities, Mariposa Township was also a political as well as a geographical township.

Inspiration for fiction

Stephen Leacock, McGill University political economy professor and humorist, spent about a decade of his childhood in Egypt, Ontario in Georgina Township about 20 kilometres away from this Mariposa. After being hired at McGill, he also bought a summer home across Lake Simcoe in Orillia which was near Mariposa Beach.

When Leacock wrote "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town", the subject matter was provided by Orillia and thinly disguised. He named the town in his fictional town Mariposa, inspired by some or all of the real Mariposas he had been acquainted with. The Mariposa Folk Festival is named after the fictional town and not any of the real places. Thus, the fictional meaning has almost completely supplanted the original meaning of what had been real places.

References

*Legate, David M. "Stephen Leacock: A Biography." 1970. Doubleday, Toronto. p. 62, 64.