Toronto of Old Part 2

For some time after 1793, official letters and other contemporary records exhibit in their references to the new site, the expressions, "Toronto, now York," and "York, late Toronto."

[Sidenote: 1795.]

The ancient appellation was a favorite, and continued in ordinary use.

Isaac Weld, who travelled in North America in 1795-7, still speaks in his work of the transfer of the Government from Niagara to Toronto.

"Niagara," he says, "is the centre of the _beau monde_ of Upper Canada: orders, however," he continues, "had been issued before our arrival there for the removal of the Seat of Government from thence to Toronto, which was deemed a more eligible spot for the meeting of the Legislative bodies, as being farther removed from the frontiers of the United States. This projected change," he adds, "is by no means relished by the people at large, as Niagara is a much more convenient place of resort to most of them than Toronto; and as the Governor, who proposed the measure, has been removed, it is imagined that it will not be put in execution."

[Sidenote: 1803.]

In 1803-4, Thomas Moore, the distinguished poet, travelled on this continent. The record of his tour took the form, not of a journal in prose, but of a miscellaneous collection of verses suggested by incidents and scenes encountered. These pieces, addressed many of them to friends, appear now as a subdivision of his collected works, as Poems relating to America. The society of the United States in 1804 appears to have been very distasteful to him. He speaks of his experience somewhat as we may imagine the winged Pegasus, if endowed with speech, would have done of his memorable brief taste of sublunary life. Writing to the Hon.

W. R. Spencer, from Buffalo,--which he explains to be "a little village on Lake Erie,"--in a strain resembling that of the poetical satirists of the century which had just pa.s.sed away, he sweepingly declares--

"Take Christians, Mohawks, Democrats, and all, From the rude wigwam to the congress-hall, From man the savage, whether slav'd or free, To man the civilized, less tame than he,-- 'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life; Where every ill the ancient world could brew Is mixed with every grossness of the new; Where all corrupts, though little can entice, And nought is known of luxury, but its vice!"

He makes an exception in a note appended to these lines, in favour of the Dennies and their friends at Philadelphia, with whom he says, "I pa.s.sed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me." These friends he thus apostrophises:--

"Yet, yet forgive me, oh! ye sacred few, Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew: Whom known and loved thro' many a social eve, 'Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave.

Not with more joy the lonely exile scann'd The writing traced upon the desert's sand, Where his lone heart but little hoped to find One trace of life, one stamp of human kind; Than did I hail the pure, th' enlightened zeal, The strength to reason and the warmth to feel, The manly polish and the illumined taste, Which, 'mid the melancholy, heartless waste, My foot has traversed, oh! you sacred few, I found by Delaware's green banks with you."

After visiting the Falls of Niagara, Moore pa.s.sed down Lake Ontario, threaded his way through the Thousand Islands, shot the Long Sault and other rapids, and spent some days in Montreal.

The poor lake-craft which in 1804 must have accommodated the poet, may have put in at the harbour of York. He certainly alludes to a tranquil evening scene on the waters in that quarter, and notices the situation of the ancient "Toronto." Thus he sings in some verses addressed to Lady Charlotte Rawdon, "from the banks of the St. Lawrence." (He refers to the time when he was last in her company, and says how improbable it then was that he should ever stand upon the sh.o.r.es of America):

"I dreamt not then that ere the rolling year Had filled its circle, I should wander here In musing awe; should tread this wondrous world, See all its store of inland waters hurl'd In one vast volume down Niagara's steep, Or calm behold them, in transparent sleep, Where the blue hills of old Toronto shed Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed; Should trace the grand Cadaraqui, and glide Down the white rapids of his lordly tide.

Through ma.s.sy woods, 'mid islets flowering fair, And blooming glades, where the first sinful pair For consolation might have weeping trod, When banished from the garden of their G.o.d."

We can better picture to ourselves the author of Lalla Rookh floating on the streams and other waters "of Ormus and of Ind," constructing verses as he journeys on, than we can of the same personage on the St. Lawrence in 1804 similarly engaged. "The Canadian Boat Song" has become in its words and air almost a "national anthem" amongst us. It was written, we are a.s.sured, at St Anne's, near the junction of the Ottawa and the St.

Lawrence.

Toronto should be duly appreciative of the distinction of having been named by Moore. The look and sound of the word took his fancy, and he doubtless had pleasure in introducing it in his verses addressed to Lady Rawdon. It will be observed that while Moore gives the modern p.r.o.nunciation of Niagara, and not the older, as Goldsmith does in his "Traveller," he obliges us to p.r.o.nounce Cataraqui in an unusual manner.

Isaac Weld, it will have been noticed, also preferred the name Toronto, in the pa.s.sage from his Travels just now given, though writing after its alteration to York. The same traveller moreover indulges in the following general strictures: "It is to be lamented that the Indian names, so grand and sonorous, should ever have been changed for others.

Newark, Kingston, York, are poor subst.i.tutes for the original names of the respective places, Niagara, Cataraqui, Toronto."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Dead vegetable matter made the humus; into that the roots of the living tree were struck, and because there had been vegetation in the past, there was vegetation in the future. And so it was with regard to the higher life of a nation. Unless there was a past to which it could refer, there would not be in it any high sense of its own mission in the world. . . . . .

They did not want to bring the old times back again, but they would understand the present around them far better if they would trace the present back into the past, see what it arose out of, what it had been the development of, and what it contained to serve for the future before them."--_Bishop of Winchester to the Archaeological Inst.i.tute, at Southampton, Aug.

1872._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

TORONTO OF OLD

I.

PALACE STREET TO THE MARKET PLACE.

In Rome, at the present day, the parts that are the most attractive to the tourist of archaeological tastes, are those that are the most desolate; quarters that, apart from their a.s.sociations, are the most uninviting. It is the same with many another venerable town of the world beyond the Atlantic, of far less note than the old Imperial capital, with Avignon, for example; with Nismes and Vienne in France; with Paris itself, also, to some extent; with Chester, and York, and St. Albans, the Verulam of the Roman period, in England.

It is the same with our American towns, wherever any relics of their brief past are extant. Detroit, we remember, had once a quaint, dilapidated, primaeval quarter. It is the same with our own Toronto. He that would examine the vestiges of the original settlement, out of which the actual town has grown, must betake himself, in the first instance, to localities now deserted by fas.h.i.+on, and be content to contemplate objects that, to the indifferent eye, will seem commonplace and insignificant.

To invest such places and things with any degree of interest will appear difficult. An attempt in that direction may even be p.r.o.nounced visionary. Nevertheless, it is a duty which we owe to our forefathers to take what note we can of the labours of their hands; to forbid, so far as we may, the utter oblivion of their early efforts, and deeds, and sayings, the outcome of their ideas, of their humours and anxieties; to forbid, even, so far as we may, the utter oblivion of the form and fas.h.i.+on of their persons.

The excavations which the first inhabitants made in the construction of their dwellings and in engineering operations, civil and military, were neither deep nor extensive; the materials which they employed were, for the most part, soft and perishable. In a few years all the original edifices of York, the infant Toronto, together with all the primitive delvings and cuttings, will, of necessity, have vanished. Natural decay will have destroyed some. Winds, fires, and floods will have removed others. The rest will have been deliberately taken out of the way, or obliterated in the accomplishment of modern improvements, the rude and fragile giving way before the commodious and enduring.

At St. Petersburg, we believe, the original log-hut of Peter the Great is preserved to the present day, in a casing of stone, with a kind of religious reverence. And in Rome of old, through the influence of a similar sacred regard for the past, the lowly cottage of Romulus was long protected in a similar manner. There are probably no material relics of our founders and forefathers which we should care to invest with a like forced and artificial permanence. But memorials of those relics, and records of the a.s.sociations that may here and there be found to cl.u.s.ter round them,--these we may think it worth our while to collect and cherish.

Overlooking the harbour of the modern Toronto, far down in the east, there stands at the present day, a large structure of grey cut-stone.

Its radiating wings, the turret placed at a central point aloft, evidently for the ready oversight of the subjacent premises; the unornamented blank walls, pierced high up in each storey with a row of circular-heading openings, suggestive of shadowy corridors and cells within, all help to give to this pile an unmistakable prison-aspect.

It was very nearly on the site of this rather hard-featured building that the first Houses of Parliament of Upper Canada were placed--humble but commodious structures of wood, built before the close of the eighteenth century, and destroyed by the incendiary hand of the invader in 1813. "They consisted," as a contemporary doc.u.ment sets forth, "of two elegant Halls, with convenient offices, for the accommodation of the Legislature and the Courts of Justice."--"The Library, and all the papers and records belonging to these inst.i.tutions were consumed, and, at the same time," the doc.u.ment adds, "the Church was robbed, and the Town Library totally pillaged."--The injuries thus inflicted were a few months afterwards avenged by the destruction of the Public Buildings at Was.h.i.+ngton, by a British force. "We consider," said an Address of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada to Sir George Prevost, "the destruction of the Public Buildings at Was.h.i.+ngton as a just retribution for the outrages committed by an American force at the seat of Government of Upper Canada."

On the same site succeeded the more conspicuous and more capacious, but still plain and simply cubical brick block erected for legislative purposes in 1818, and accidentally burned in 1824. The conflagration on this occasion entailed a loss which, the _Canadian Review_ of the period, published at Montreal, observes, "in the present state of the finances and debt of the Province, cannot be considered a trifling affair." That loss, we are informed by the same authority, amounted to the sum of two thousand pounds.

Hereabout the Westminster of the new capital was expected to be. It is not improbable that the position at the head, rather than the entrance, of the harbour was preferred, as being at once commanding and secure.

The appearance of the spot in its primaeval condition, was doubtless more prepossessing than we can now conceive it ever to have been. Fine groves of forest trees may have given it a sheltered look, and, at the same time, have screened off from view the adjoining swamps.

The language of the early _Provincial Gazetteer_, published by authority, is as follows: "The Don empties itself into the harbour, a little above the Town, running through a marsh, which when drained, will afford most beautiful and fruitful meadows." In the early ma.n.u.script Plans, the same sanguine opinion is recorded, in regard to the mora.s.ses in this locality. On one, of 1810, now before us, we have the inscription: "Natural Meadow which may be mown." On another, the legend runs: "Large Marsh, and will in time make good Meadows." On a third it is: "Large Marsh and Good Gra.s.s."

At all events, hereabout it was that York, capital of Upper Canada, began to rise. To the west and north of the site of the Houses of Parliament, the officials of the Government, with merchants and tradesmen in the usual variety, began to select lots and put up convenient dwellings; whilst close by, at Berkeley Street or Parliament Street as the southern portion of the modern Berkeley Street was then named, the chief thoroughfare of the town had its commencing-point.

Growing slowly westward from here, King Street developed in its course, in the customary American way, its hotel, its tavern, its boarding-house, its waggon-factory, its tinsmith shop, its bakery, its general store, its lawyer's office, its printing office, its places of wors.h.i.+p.

Eastward of Berkeley Street, King Street became the Kingston road, trending slightly to the north, and then proceeding in a straight line to a bridge over the Don. This divergency in the highway caused a number of the lots on its northern side to be awkwardly bounded on their southern ends by lines that formed with their sides, alternately obtuse and acute angles, productive of corresponding inconveniencies in the shapes of the buildings afterwards erected thereon; and in the position of some of them. At one particular point the houses looked as if they had been separated from each other and partially twisted round, by the jolt of an earthquake.

At the Bridge, the lower Kingston road, if produced westward in a right line, would have been Queen Street, or Lot Street, had it been deemed expedient to clear a pa.s.sage in that direction through the forest. But some way westward from the Bridge, in this line, a ravine was encountered lengthwise, which was held to present great engineering difficulties. A road cut diagonally from the Bridge to the opening of King Street, at once avoided this natural impediment, and also led to a point where an easy connection was made with the track for wheels, which ran along the sh.o.r.e of the harbour to the Garrison. But for the ravine alluded to, which now appears to the south of Moss Park, Lot Street, or, which is the same thing, Queen Street, would at an early period, have begun to dispute with King Street, its claim to be the chief thoroughfare of York.

But to come back to our original unpromising stand-point.

Objectionable as the first site of the Legislative Buildings at York may appear to ourselves, and alienated as it now is to lower uses, we cannot but gaze upon it with a certain degree of emotion, when we remember that here it was the first skirmishes took place in the great war of principles which afterwards with such determination and effect was fought out in Canada. Here it was that first loomed up before the minds of our early law-makers the ecclesiastical question, the educational question, the const.i.tutional question. Here it was that first was heard the open discussion, childlike, indeed, and vague, but pregnant with very weighty consequences, of topics, social and national, which, at the time, even in the parent state itself, were mastered but by few.

Here it was, during a period of twenty-seven years (1797-1824), at each opening and closing of the annual session, amidst the firing of cannon and the commotion of a crowd, the cavalcade drew up that is wont, from the banks of the Thames to the remotest colony of England, to mark the solemn progress of the sovereign or the sovereign's representative, to and from the other Estates in Parliament a.s.sembled. Here, amidst such fitting surroundings of state, as the circ.u.mstances of the times and the place admitted, came and went personages of eminence, whose names are now familiar in Canadian story: never, indeed, the founder and organiser of Upper Canada, Governor Simcoe himself, in this formal and ceremonious manner; although often must he have visited the spot otherwise, in his personal examinations of every portion of his young capital and its environs. But here, immediately after him, however, came and went repeatedly, in due succession, President Russell, Governor Hunter, Governor Gore, General Brock, General Sheaffe, Sir Gordon Drummond, Sir Peregrine Maitland.

And, while contemplating the scene of our earliest political conflicts, the scene of our earliest known state pageants in these parts, with their modest means and appliances, our minds intuitively recur to a period farther removed still, when under even yet more primitive conditions the Parliament of Upper Canada a.s.sembled at Newark, just across the Lake. We picture to ourselves the group of seven crown-appointed Councillors and five representatives of the Commons, a.s.sembled there, with the first Speaker, McDonell, of Glengary; all plain, una.s.suming, prosaic men, listening, at their first session, to the opening speech of their frank and honoured Governor. We see them adjourning to the open air from their straightened chamber at Navy Hall, and conducting the business of the young Province under the shade of a spreading tree, introducing the English Code and Trial by Jury, decreeing Roads, and prohibiting the spread of Slavery; while a boulder of the drift, lifting itself up through the natural turf, serves as a desk for the recording clerk. Below them, in the magnificent estuary of the river Niagara, the waters of all the Upper Lakes are swirling by, not yet recovered from the agonies of the long gorge above, and the leap at Table Rock.--Even here, at the opening and close of this primaeval Legislature, some of the decent ceremonial was observed with which, as we have just said, the sadly inferior site at the embouchure of the Don became afterwards familiar. We learn this from the narrative of the French Duke de Liancourt, who affords us a glimpse of the scene at Newark on the occasion of a Parliament there in 1795. "The whole retinue of the Governor," he says, "consisted in a guard of fifty men of the garrison of the fort. Draped in silk, he entered the Hall with his hat on his head, attended by his adjutant and two secretaries. The two members of the Legislative Council gave, by their speaker, notice of it to the a.s.sembly. Five members of the latter having appeared at the bar, the Governor delivered a speech, modelled after that of the King, on the political affairs of Europe, on the treaty concluded with the United States (Jay's treaty of 1794), which he mentioned in expressions very favourable to the Union; and on the peculiar concerns of Canada."

(Travels, i. 258.)

By the Quebec Act, pa.s.sed in 1791, it was enacted that the Legislative Council for Upper Canada should consist of not fewer than seven members, and the a.s.sembly of not less than sixteen members, who were to be called together at least once in every year. To account for the smallness of the attendance on the occasion just described, the Duke explains that the Governor had deferred the session "on account of the expected arrival of a Chief Justice, who was to come from England: and from a hope that he should be able to acquaint the members with the particulars of the Treaty with the United States. But the harvest had now begun, which, in a higher degree than elsewhere, engages in Canada the public attention, far beyond what state affairs can do. Two members of the Legislative Council were present, instead of seven; no Chief Justice appeared, who was to act as Speaker; instead of sixteen members of the a.s.sembly, five only attended; and this was the whole number that could be collected at this time. The law required a greater number of members for each house, to discuss and determine upon any business; but within two days a year would have expired since the last session. The Governor, therefore, thought it right to open the session, reserving, however, to either house the right of proroguing the sitting, from one day to another, in expectation that the s.h.i.+ps from Detroit and Kingston would either bring the members who were yet wanting, or certain intelligence of their not being able to attend."

But again to return to the Houses of Parliament at York.--Extending from the grounds which surrounded the buildings, in the east, all the way to the fort at the entrance of the harbour, in the west, there was a succession of fine forest trees, especially oak; underneath and by the side of which the upper surface of the precipitous but nowhere very elevated cliff was carpeted with thick green-sward, such as is still to be seen between the old and new garrisons, or at Mississaga Point at Niagara. A fragment, happily preserved, of the ancient bank, is to be seen in the ornamental piece of ground known as the Fair-green; a strip of land first protected by a fence, and planted with shrubbery at the instance of Mr. George Monro, when Mayor, who also, in front of his property some distance further on, long guarded from harm a solitary survivor of the grove that once fringed the harbour.