Toronto of Old Part 37

The original St. Paul's before it acquired in this singular manner the dignified appurtenance of a steeple, was a long, low, barn-like, wooden building. Mr. Howard otherwise improved it, enlarging it by the addition of an aisle on the west side. When some twenty years later, viz., in 1861, the new stone church was erected, the old wooden structure was removed bodily to the west side of Yonge Street, together with the tower, curtailed, however, of its spire.

We have been informed that the four fine stems, each eighty-five feet long, which formed the interior frame of the tower and spire of 1841, were a present from Mr. Allan, of Moss Park; and that the Rev. Charles Matthews, occasionally officiating in St. Paul's, gave one hundred pounds in cash towards the expense of the ornamental addition now made to the edifice.

The history of another of Mr. Howard's erections on Yonge Street, which we are perambulating, ill.u.s.trates the rapid advance and expansion of architectural ideas amongst us. In the case now referred to it was no sh.e.l.l of timber and deal-boards that was taken down, but a very handsome solid edifice of cut-stone, which might have endured for centuries. The Bank of British North America, built by Mr. Howard, at the corner of Yonge Street and Wellington Street in 1843, was deliberately taken down, block by block, in 1871, and made to give place to a structure which should be on a par in magnificence and alt.i.tude with the buildings put up in Toronto by the other Banks. Mr. Howard's building, at the time of its erection, was justly regarded as a credit to the town. Its design was preferred by the directors in London to those sent in by several architects there. Over the princ.i.p.al entrance were the Royal Arms, exceedingly well carved in stone on a grand scale, and wholly disengaged from the wall; and conspicuous over the parapet above was the great scallop-sh.e.l.l, emblem of the gold-digger's occupation, introduced by Sir John Soane, in the architecture of the Bank of England. (The Royal Arms of the old building have been deemed worthy of a place over the entrance to the new Bank.)

The Cemetery, the gates and keeper's lodge of which, after crossing the concession road and advancing on our way northward, we used to see on the left, was popularly known as "The Potter's Field"--"a place to bury strangers in." Its official style was "The York General or Strangers'

Burying Ground." In practice it was the Bunhill Fields of York--the receptacle of the remains of those whose friends declined the use of the St. James's churchyard and other early burial-plots.

Walton's Directory for 1833, gives the following information, which we transfer hither, as well for the slight degree of quaintness which the narrative has acquired, as also on account of the familiar names which it contains. "This inst.i.tution," Walton says, "owes its origin to Mr.

Carfrae, junior. It comprises six acres of ground, and has a neat s.e.xton's house built close by the gate. The name of the s.e.xton is John Wolstencroft, who keeps a registry of every person buried therein.

Persons of all creeds and persons of no creed, are allowed burial in this cemetery: fees to the s.e.xton, 5s. It was inst.i.tuted in the fall of 1825, and incorporated by Act of Parliament, 30th January, 1826. It is managed by five trustees, who are chosen for life; and in case of the death of any of them, a public meeting of the inhabitants is called, when they elect a successor or successors in their place. The present trustees (1833) are Thomas Carfrae, jun., Thomas D. Morrison, Peter Paterson, John Ewart, Thomas h.e.l.liwell."

(Mr. Carfrae was for some years the collector of Customs of the Port of York. The other trustees named were respectively the medical man, iron-merchant, builder, and brewer, so well known in the neighbourhood.)

A remote sequestered piece of ground in 1825, the Potter's Field in 1845 was more or less surrounded by buildings, and regarded as an impediment in the way of public improvement. Interments were accordingly prohibited. To some extent it has been cleared of human remains, and in due time will be built over. Its successor and representative is the Toronto Necropolis, the trustees of which are empowered, after the lapse of twenty-one years, to sell the old burying-ground.

Proceeding on, we were immediately opposite the Red Lion Tavern, anciently Tiers', subsequently Price's, on the east side; a large and very notable halting-place for loaded teams after the tremendous struggle involved in the traverse of the Blue Hill ravine, of which presently.

In old European lands, in times by-gone, the cell of a hermit, a monastery, a castle, became often the nucleus of a village or town. With us on the American continent, a convenient watering or baiting place in the forest for the wearied horses of a farmer's waggon or a stage-coach is the less romantic _punctum saliens_ for a similar issue. Thus Tiers's, at which we have paused, may be regarded as the germ of the flouris.h.i.+ng incorporation of Yorkville. Many a now solitary way-station on our railroads will probably in like manner hereafter prove a centre round which will be seen a cl.u.s.ter of human habitations.

We discover from a contemporary _Gazette_ that so early as 1808, previous, perhaps, to the establishment of the Red Lion on Yonge Street, Mr. Tiers had conducted a public house in the Town of York. In the _Gazette_ of June 13, 1808, we have the following announcement. It has an English ring; "Beefsteak and Beer House.--The subscriber informs his friends and the public that he has opened a house of entertainment next door to Mr. Hunt's, where his friends will be served with victualing in good order, on the shortest notice, and at a cheap rate. He will furnish the best strong beer at 8d. New York currency per gallon if drank in his house, and 2s. 6d. New York currency taken out. As he intends to keep a constant supply of racked beer, with a view not to injure the health of his customers, and for which he will have to pay cash, the very small profits at which he offers to sell, will put it out of his power to give credit, and he hopes none will be asked. N.B. He will immediately have entertainment for man and horse. Daniel Tiers. York, 12th January, 1808."

The singular _Hotel de Ville_ which in modern times distinguishes Yorkville, has a Flemish look. It might have strayed hither from Ghent.

Nevertheless, as seen from numerous points of view, it cannot be characterized as picturesque, or in harmony with its surroundings.--The s.h.i.+eld of arms sculptured in stone and set in the wall above the circular window in the front gable, presents the following charges arranged quarterly: a Beer-barrel, with an S below; a Brick-mould, with an A below; an Anvil, with a W below; and a Jackplane, with a D below.

In the centre, in a s.h.i.+eld of pretence, is a Sheep's head, with an H below. These symbols commemorate the first five Councillors or Aldermen of Yorkville at the time of its incorporation in 1853, and their trades or callings; the initials being those respectively of the surnames of Mr. John Severn, Mr. Thomas Atkinson, Mr. James Wallis, Mr. James Dobson, and Mr. Peter Hutty. Over the whole, as a crest, is the Canadian Beaver.

The road which enters from the west, a little way on, calls up memories of Russel-hill, Davenport and Spadina, each of them locally historic. We have already spoken of them in our journey along Front Street and Queen Street, when, in crossing Brock Street, Spadina-house in the distance caught the eye. It is a peculiarity of this old bye-road that, instead of going straight, as most of our highways monotonously do, it meanders a little, unfolding a number of pretty suburban scenes. The public school, on the land given to Yorkville by Mr. Ketchum, is visible up this road.

In this direction were the earliest public ice-houses established in our region, in rude buildings of slab, thickly thatched over with pine branches. Spring-water ice, gathered from the neighbouring mill-ponds, began to be stored here in quant.i.ties by an enterprising man of African descent, Mr. Richards, five-and-thirty years ago.

On the east side of Yonge Street, near the northern toll-gate, stood Dr.

R. C. Horne's house, the lurid flames arising from which somewhat alarmed the town in 1837, when the malcontents of the north were reported to be approaching with hostile intent. Of Dr. Horne we have already spoken, in connexion with the early press of York.

Were the tall and very beautiful spire which in the present day is to be seen where the Davenport Road enters Yonge Street, the appendage of an ecclesiastical edifice of the mediaeval period--as the architecture implies--it would indicate, in all probability, the presence of a Church of St. Giles. St. aegidius or Giles presided, it was imagined, over the entrances to cities and towns. Consequently, fancy will always have it, whenever we pa.s.s the interesting pile standing so conspicuously by a public gate, or where for a long while there was a public gate, leading into the town, that here we behold the St. Giles' of Toronto.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXV.

YONGE STREET, FROM YORKVILLE TO HOGG'S HOLLOW.

Of long standing is the group of buildings on the right after pa.s.sing the Davenport Road. It is the Brewery and malting-house of Mr. Severn, settled here since 1835. The main building over-looks a ravine which, as seen by the pa.s.ser-by on Yonge Street, retains to this day in its eastern recess a great deal of natural beauty, although the stream below attracted manufacturers at an early period to its borders at numerous points. There is a picturesque irregularity about the outlines of Mr.

Severn's brewery. The projecting galleries round the domestic portion of the building pleasantly indicate that the adjacent scenery is not unappreciated: nay, possibly enjoyed on many a tranquil autumn evening.

Further on, a block-house of two storeys, both of them rectangular, but the upper turned half round on the lower, built in consequence of the troubles of 1837, and supposed to command the great highway from the north, overhung a high bank on the right. (Another of the like build was placed at the eastern extremity of the First Concession Road. It was curious to observe how rapidly these two relics acquired the character and even the look, gray and dilapidated, of age. With many, they dated at least from the war of 1812.)

A considerable stretch of striking landscape here skirts our route on the right. Rosedale-house, the old extra-mural home, still existent and conspicuous, of Mr. Stephen Jarvis, Registrar of the Province in the olden time, afterwards of his son the Sheriff, of both of whom we have had occasion to speak repeatedly, was always noticeable for the romantic character of its situation; on the crest of a precipitous bank overlooking deep winding ravines. Set down here while yet the forest was but little encroached on, access to it was of course for a long time, difficult and laborious.

The memorable fancy-ball given here at a comparatively late period, but during the Sheriff's lifetime, recurs as we go by. On that occasion, in the dusk of evening, and again probably in the gray dawn of morning, an irregular procession thronged the highway of Yonge Street and toiled up and down the steep approaches to Rosedale-house--a procession consisting of the simulated shapes and forms that usually revisit the glimpses of the moon at masquerades,--knights, crusaders, Plantagenet, Tudor and Stuart princes, queens and heroines; all mixed up with an incongruous ancient and modern canaille, a Tom of Bedlam, a Nicholas Bottom "with amiable cheeks and fair large ears," an Ariel, a Paul Pry, a Pickwick, &c., &c., not pacing on with some veri-similitude on foot or respectably mounted on horse, a.s.s, or mule, but borne along most prosaically on wheels or in sleighs.

This pageant, though only a momentary social relaxation, a transient but still not unutilitarian freak of fas.h.i.+on, accomplished well and cleverly in the midst of a scene literally a savage wild only a few years previously, may be noted as one of the many outcomes of precocity characterizing society in the colonies of England.

In a burlesque drama to be seen in the columns of a contemporary paper (the _Colonist_, of 1839) we have an allusion to this memorable entertainment. The news is supposed to have just arrived of the union of the Canadas, to the dismay, as it is pretended, of the official party, among whom there will henceforth be no more cakes and ale. A messenger, Thomas, speaks:

List, oh, list--the Queen hath sent A message to her Lords and trusty Commons-- All--What message sent she?

Thomas.--Oh the dreadful news!

That both the Canadas in one be joined.--(_faints._)

Sheriff William then speaks:

Farewell ye masquerades, ye sparkling routs: Now routed out, no more shall routs be ours; No gilded chariots now shall roll along; No sleighs that sweep across our icy path,-- Sleighs! no: this news that slays our warmest hopes, Ends pageantry, and pride and masquerades.

The characters in the dramatic _jeu d'esprit_, from which these lines are taken, are the princ.i.p.al personages of the defeated party, under thinly disguised names, Mr. Justice Clearhead, Mr. John Scott, William Welland, Judge Brock, Christopher, Samuel, Sheriff William, as above, and Thomas, &c. Rosedale is a name of pleasant sound. We are reminded thereby of another of the same genus, but of more recent application in these parts--Hazeldean--the pretty t.i.tle given by Chief Justice Draper to his rural cottage, which overhangs and looks down upon the same ravine as Rosedale, but on the opposite side. (A residence of the Earl of Shaftesbury in Kew-foot Lane near Richmond, on the Thames is called Rosedale House, and is a.s.sociated with the memory of the poet Thomson, who is said to have written his _Castle of Indolence_ there.)

The perils and horrors encountered every spring and autumn by travellers and others in their ascent and descent of the precipitous sides of the Rosedale ravine, at the point where the primitive Yonge Street crossed it, were a local proverb and by-word: perils and horrors ranking for enormity with those a.s.sociated with the pa.s.sage of the Rouge, the Credit, the Sixteen, and a long list of other deeply ploughed watercourses intersected of necessity by the two great highways of Upper Canada.

The ascent and descent of the gorge were here spoken of collectively as the "Blue Hill." Certain strata of a bluish clay had been remarked at the summit on both sides. The waggon-track pa.s.sed down and up by two long wearisome and difficult slopes cut in the soil of the steep sides of the lofty banks. After the autumnal rains and during the thaws at the close of winter, the condition of the route here was indescribably bad.

At the period referred to, however, the same thing, for many a year, was to be said of every rood of Yonge Street throughout its thirty miles of length.

Nor was Yonge Street singular in this respect. All our roads were equally bad at certain seasons every year. We fear we conveyed an impression unfavourable to emigration many years ago, when walking with two or three young English friends across some flat clayey fields between Cambridge and the Gogmagogs. It chanced that the driftways for the farmers' carts--the holls as they are locally called, if we remember rightly--at the sides of the ploughed land were mire from end to end.

Under the impulse of the moment, pleased in fact with a reminder of home far-distant, we exclaimed, "Here are Canadian roads!" The comparison was altogether too graphic; and our companions could never afterwards be got to entertain satisfactory notions of Canadian civilization.

But English roads were not much better a century ago. We made a note once of John Moody's account of Lady Townley's journey with her coach-and-four and large household to London, from the veritable old-country York, in Sir John Vanbrugh's comedy of the Provoked Husband, so perfect a parallel did it furnish to the traveller's experience here on Yonge Street on his way from the Canadian York to the Landing in stage-coach or farmer's waggon in the olden time.

"Some impish trick or other," said John Moody, "plagued us all the day long. Crack goes one thing: bounce goes another: Woa, says Roger--then sowse! we are all set fast in a slough. Whaw, cries Miss: scream go the maids: and bawl just as tho' they were stuck: and so, mercy on us! this was the trade from morning to night."

The mode of extricating a vehicle from a slough or mudhole when once in, may be gathered from a pa.s.sage in McTaggart's "Three Years in Canada,"

ii., 205. The time referred to is 1829: "There are few roads," McTaggart says, "and these are generally excessively bad, and full of mudholes in which if a carriage fall, there is great trouble to get it out again.

The mail coaches or waggons are often in this predicament, when the pa.s.sengers instantly jump off, and having stripped rails off the fence, they lift it up by sheer force. Coming up brows they sometimes get in; the horses are then taken out, and yoked to the stern instead of the front; and it is drawn out backwards."

The country between York and Lake Huron was, as we have already seen, first explored by Governor Simcoe in person, in 1793. It was also immediately surveyed, and in some measure occupied; and so early as 1794, we read in a _Gazette_ the following notice: "Surveyor-General's Office, Upper Canada, 15th July, 1794. Notice is hereby given that all persons who have obtained a.s.signments for land on Dundas Street, leading from the head of Burlington Bay to the upper forks of the River Thames, and on Yonge Street leading from York to Lake Simcoe, that unless a dwelling-house shall be built on every lot under certificate of location, and the same occupied within one year from the date of their respective a.s.signments, such lots will be forfeited on the said Roads.

D. W. Smith, Acting Surveyor General."

All the conditions required to be fulfilled by the first settlers were these: "They must within the term of two years, clear fit for cultivation and fence, ten acres of the lot obtained; build a house 16 by 20 feet of logs or frame, with a s.h.i.+ngle roof; also cut down all the timber in front of and the whole width of the lot (which is 20 chains, 133 feet wide), 33 feet of which must be cleared smooth and left for half of the public road." To issue injunctions for the performance of such work was easy. To do such work, or to get such work effectually done, was, under the circ.u.mstances of the times, difficult. Hence Yonge Street continued for some years after 1794 to be little more than a rambling forest wheel-track through the woods.

In 1794, as we have before heard, Mr. William Berczy, brought over from the Pulteney Settlement, on the south side of Lake Ontario, sixty German families, and conducted them to the towns.h.i.+p of Markham, north-east of York, where lands had been a.s.signed them. In effecting this first lodgement of a considerable body of colonists in a region entirely new, Mr. Berczy necessarily cut out by the aid of his party, and such other help as he could obtain, some kind of track through the forest, along the line of Yonge Street. He had already once before successfully accomplished a similar work. He had, we are told, hewn out a waggon road for emigrants through trackless woods all the way from Philadelphia to the Genesee country, where the Pulteney Settlement was.

In 1795, Mr. Augustus Jones, a Deputy Provincial Surveyor, who figures largely in the earliest annals of Upper Canada, was directed by the Lieutenant Governor to survey and open in a more effective manner the route which Mr. Berczy and his emigrants had travelled. A detachment of the Queen's Rangers was at the same time ordered to a.s.sist.

On the 24th December, 1795, Mr. Jones writes to D. W. Smith, Acting Surveyor General:--"His Excellency was pleased to direct me, previous to my surveying the towns.h.i.+p of York, to proceed on Yonge Street, to survey and open a cart-road from the harbour at York to Lake Simcoe, which I am now busy at (_i. e._ I am busily engaged in the preparations for this work.) Mr. Pea.r.s.e is to be with me in a few days' time with a detachment of about thirty of the Queen's Rangers, who are to a.s.sist in opening the said road."

Then in his Note-book and Journal for the new year 1796, he records the commencement of the survey, thus:--"Monday, 4th (January, 1796). Survey of Yonge Street. Begun at a Post near the Lake, York Harbour, on Bank, between Nos. 20 and 21, the course being Mile No. 1, N. 16 degrees W., eighty chains, from Black Oak Tree to Maple Tree on the right side, along the said Yonge Street: at eighteen chains, fifty links, small creek; at twenty-eight chains, small creek; course the same at thirty-two eighty: here First Concession. At, N. 35 W. to 40-50, At 39-50 swamp and creek, 10 links across, runs to the right: then N. 2 E., to 43 chains in the line. At 60-25, small creek runs to right; swampy to 73; N. 29 W. to 77, swamp on right. Then N. to 80 on line. Timber chiefly white and black oak to 60, and in many places windfalls thereon: maple, elm, beech, and a few oaks, black ash; loose soil. Mile No. 2 do.

80 chains; rising Pine Ridge to 9 on top," &c., and so on day by day, until Tuesday, February 16th, when the party reached the Landing.