[7] Before the railway boom in Upper Canada, Ontario's economy was heavily driven by its lake trade, with port cities such as Hamilton and Toronto beginning to industrialize.
Canalization, in theory, would connect new and existing settlements along the river to Lake Erie, allowing for easier trade logistics.
[12] The new town quickly boomed in population, with David Thompson, a prominent businessman and financial backer of the Grand River Navigation Company, taking an interest in it.
[13] Other early documents which used the new name include an 1834 advertisement placed by Thompson soliciting for canal workers at Indiana and an 1835 petition by townspeople for the government to construct a bridge across the river.
[18] While Indiana did not have the full characteristics of a company town in terms of rigid planning and direct control by a paternalistic owner, it nevertheless was guided by David Thompson as a wealthy patron with a vested interest in overseeing his large workforce.
[20] While Thompson invested in Indiana, he also diversified his real estate interests, and following his election to the legislative assembly, spent time away in Kingston.
He spent much of his childhood in Indiana and despite being a second son, he was designated as his father's heir, possibly due to his brother James' alcoholism.
[21] The younger David was a strict teetotaller who was an elder in the Presbyterian church, but also donated widely to other religious organizations, while also personally providing charity to Indiana residents.
[25] He compromised with the construction of a new settlement, Deans, which was intentionally planned as a railway town to connect Indiana with the Canada Southern line.
[26] Thompson, however, continued to focus on water power, developing a secondary mill site at Deans, which was intended to be a sawmill.
David Thompson built an impressive Greek Revival mansion in the late 1840s, which is now the centrepiece of the Ruthven Park National Historic Site.