CHAPTER IV

TORONTO THE BEAUTIFUL

Toronto, city of education, culture, religion; a city of homes with all that makes for the beauty and the happiness of family life; Toronto, with her noble University whose enrolment of students exceeds in number that of Oxford, her conservatories of music, her impressive cathedrals and churches, her splendid Parliament Buildings, and her classic Public Library with its numerous branches--the capital of the rich province of Ontario, this beautiful and inspiring city of Canada provides, indeed, an ample basis for the enthusiasm and devotion of her citizens. No city could be more advantageously located, seeing that she commands the blue waters of Lake Ontario. Toronto is the centre from which radiate several of the most picturesque excursions into the western continent. The world-wonder of Niagara Falls is in her near neighbourhood. From Toronto all the summer "playgrounds" of Canada may be reached with the utmost convenience and readiness; or the tourist may make that picturesque sail down the St. Lawrence; or, again, would he be like Wordsworth's _Stepping Westward_, he may take train and embark at Sarnia for the tour of the Great Lakes, ending at the terminal of Fort William, {85} whence again he may wander into all the scenic glories of Canada.

At Toronto the holiday-maker may board the luxurious train for Huntsville, where he takes the steamer for that idyllic cruise by the chain of lakes that lands him at the fascinating Hotel Wawa; or gives him access to any one of a myriad resorts in the unique Lake-of-Bays region. Algonquin Park, the Muskoka Lakes, all these "Highlands of Ontario" which are attracting throngs of summer wanderers, are within easy reach of Toronto, to all of which, indeed, the city is the gateway, and the distributing centre as well. The playgrounds of the Dominion are much appreciated by the great nation lying on her southern border. New England and the West have long been increasingly familiar with the allurements of a Canadian summer; and now the southern states, on and near the Gulf of Mexico, are sending out for information of the facilities for vacation sojourns amid the parks and lakes and shining rivers of Canada. Those far-famed Canadian resorts, comprising not only the Lake of Bays, Algonquin Park, and Muskoka, but Timagami, Kawartha Lakes, French River, Lake Nipissing, and Georgian Bay, all lie north of Toronto, and these resorts, some of them over eighteen hundred feet above sea-level, with their invigorating, balsam-laden air, are a revelation to the visitor from the heated South.

The Southerner finds himself especially enthralled by Canada's long summer days and lingering {86} twilights, with their ethereal and almost unearthly beauty of amber lights and evanescent shadows, a beauty that has hitherto been rather exclusively associated with Scandinavia, the land of the midnight sun. What an hour for a twilight paddle across some crystal lake, in turning homeward after an idyllic day. Canada has been fortunate in keeping her wilds singularly unspoiled, for practically only one railway line extends into all these romantic regions, that of the Grand Trunk System, which has been the means of the multiplication of delightful summer hotels and rustic camps. These Canadian resorts (whose range of prices is so moderate as to amaze the people from the States) are as socially delightful as they are in scenic charm. They are characterised by the refinement of courtesy and generous hospitality that is the hall-mark of the Dominion.

Toronto is one of the most accessible centres of the North American continent, being only three hours from Buffalo, one night from New York and Boston, and fourteen hours from Chicago.

Does all this enumeration of her charms only have to do with getting away from them? The citizen of this beautiful city on the lake will assert that there is another equally spellbinding range of charms to be enjoyed without wandering far away from Toronto itself.

The harbour of Toronto is one of the most beautiful of any of the water-front cities. It has a rather {87} curious configuration formed by a picturesque island of more than two thousand acres that forms a species of breakwater. In the summer the waters near the island are alive with craft. Every kind of sailing boat, canoes, and yachts, as well as motor and steam launches, may be seen riding the waves. The island itself is utilised in much the same fashion as Coney Island in the New York harbour, as a resort for popular amusement. With this inland sea of Lake Ontario at its doors, with its fine architecture, its development and culture of the arts, professions, and industries; with such picturesque treasure as that of the Rosedale ravines, the Humber valley, the Don River, and the gentle hills, Toronto is well calculated to be one of the embodied inspirations of the Dominion.

It is claimed that there are more homes, each with its green lawn and its garden--homes owned by their occupants--within the thirty-six square miles that comprise Toronto than in any other city on the American continent. Toronto is truly a thing of life in its expansion. The construction of streets and buildings is in constant progress and the residential limits are being carried many miles into the country. Within the past decade the city has crossed two rivers, marched up a hill, and clambered over two ravines, all of which give the residential region an aspect of romantic beauty. The architectural charm of the city impresses the stranger; especially the cathedrals of St. James and St. Michael {88} and the University of Toronto, that great Norman pile, dignified and with its old-world atmosphere. Surrounding it are the colleges--Victoria, with its Gothic dining-hall and residences; St. Michael's, Knox, and Wycliffe. Soon Trinity will join the ranks of college settlements. McMaster, the Baptist University, is at the northern edge of the campus, and not far away are the great medical schools, the School of Science, the Conservatory of Music, the University Library, the Dental College, and the many college residences. The University of Toronto is perhaps the largest English-speaking University in the British Empire, and the year 1916 found two thousand five hundred of her sons fighting for the Empire. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its Oriental and Indian collection, lies to the north of the campus, and the great General Hospital as well as a special hospital for children are adjacent. Many of the churches are of real beauty--St. Paul's Anglican, a structure which cost one and a half million dollars; the Eaton Memorial on the hill; the Metropolitan Methodist, owning ground estimated as worth over two millions; and the parish church of St. James, with its tower over three hundred feet in height. The Margaret Eaton School of Literature and Expression is an institution of great value, attracting students from all parts of the Dominion. As a theatrical and a musical city, Toronto shares with New York, Boston, and Montreal many of the most noted dramas and {89} musical entertainments. As a musical centre herself, Toronto ranks fourth among the large cities of the continent; and she has an annual average of four thousand musical students. Her own Mendelssohn Choir is not only conceded to be the finest in America, but one of the best in the world.

Nor are the graphic arts neglected in Toronto. There are already two leading organisations, the Ontario Society of Artists and the Canadian Art Club. A College of Art was founded in 1912; there is a Women's Art Association, an Arts and Letters Club, which has issued a very creditable Year Book of Canadian Art, as well as a Heliconian Club, composed of women engaged in artistic and literary work, and who, presumably, quaff the living waters of Helicon to reinforce their energies.

In her Public School System, with an enrolment of thirty-five thousand pupils, Toronto employs many of the most advanced educational methods of the day.

If the visitor in Toronto were to ask for what is perhaps the most really significant factor in the city's life, and one which is likely to be missed by the surface observer, the answer would be that this factor would be found in the Public Library System, so splendidly administered by the Chief Librarian, George H. Locke. A Canadian, a native of Toronto, Mr. Locke was allured for a few years by Harvard University and the University of Chicago; but fortunately for his own city, he has {90} chosen to devote himself to her development and culture through the medium of library work, in a manner whose original genius for relating literature to the needs of the people, and more especially to the youth and the children, is making itself felt in the Dominion as well as in the city.

In many aspects of his manifold and remarkably adjustable system, Mr. Locke creates his own precedents. In any survey of the processes in many of the noted libraries of the past, the chief aim, if not regarded as the chief duty, of the keeper of books has seemed to be that of protecting them from popular contact. The books were to be safeguarded from too familiar approach as are the works of art in the great galleries and museums. In every case they did not, it is true, imitate the methods of the Laurentian Library in Florence and chain the books to the desks, but something of the spirit of the stern custodian was in them all. Mr. Locke at once outlined his policy on the basis of his conviction that books were made for the people, and not the people for books, and that opportunities for more knowledge and greater intelligence should be provided. More especially he held that books had indispensable messages for the youth of a great city. The adult readers were welcomed and accorded every possible opportunity and privilege; but the children were not to be merely welcomed, they were to be enticed by the very attractiveness of the surroundings to come in from the highways and the {91} byways to the feast of literature provided so lavishly for them.

Assisted by a staff of one hundred young women whose enthusiasm leapt up to meet his own, young women with wit and initiative of their own as well, all of which their chief especially encouraged on their parts, the work went forward. "If you think you have a good plan," Mr. Locke says, in effect, to his staff, "try it. Don't come to me about it. If it is successful, then let us talk it over. If it is not, bury it quietly and don't put up any monument to it."

The Central Library, with its fourteen branches, works as a unit; yet not as the unit of a machine, but in a unity of spirit and purpose inclusive of many individual variations. One feature of the system of the highest value is that of the open shelves. Nothing so educates the child, in all that most essential development of what Matthew Arnold so well terms the humanities, as the habit of browsing at will among books. From the official report made by Mr. Locke for the year 1915 the following extract is taken, as it illustrates clearly one novel and invaluable feature of the work--

"The work with the children, which showed such a remarkable increase last year, has shown even greater results, and we see new possibilities for the coming year. This department is decidedly aggressive in its methods, and no phase of public social service in this city has awakened such wide interest. The Story Hour, already popular, was given a decided help onwards by the series of lectures {92} which the Children's Librarians arranged for during October and November, when Miss Marie Shedlock, of London, England, spoke to five delighted audiences on 'Story Telling.' That part of the Story Hour which is devoted to Canadian historical characters is really a National Movement, for it supplies to the children, many of whom are of foreign parentage, a Canadian historical background, something much needed in a new country with its great problems to be solved by those who now are but children. This year there were 12,671 children in the Story Hours and 249,260 books were circulated among boys and girls."

The "Story Hour" is a semi-weekly feature of the library work, and one which has developed unmeasured ardour on the part of the youthful auditors.

Another signally refining and helpful influence is that of the culture of flowers; a garden plot, or beds of flowers, being a feature of the grounds surrounding each of the fourteen libraries. The children are encouraged to aid in this care of flowers, and seats placed in the gardens enable summer readers to pursue their work amid this beauty, and in the invigorating air.

The "J. Ross Robertson Historical Collection," housed in the Reference Library, is as a gallery of Canadiana of the utmost value to the student of the history of the Dominion. The collection numbers already three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine pictures, and in the year of 1915 alone, it was visited by more than twelve thousand people. These pictures tell the story of the development of Canada from the forest, lake, and prairie, with {93} tribes of wandering Red Men, into the land of fruit, grain, and manufactures. Mr. Robertson has proved a real benefactor to the entire province as well as the Dominion, for students come from all parts of the country to study this collection.

Toronto is constructively much like London, in that a number of separate communities are federated to form one city. In nearly every one of these separate and component parts a branch of the Public Library is established, taking the name of the specific centre, such as Wychwood, Dovercourt, and Yorkville. The latest of these branches, that at Wychwood, is a perfect architectural reproduction of the Shakespearean period, thus celebrating the tercentenary in 1916 in a tangible manner, and its Elizabethan charm attracts numerous appreciative visitors. One typical instance of the library spirit is that of taking a primitive and discarded little church, fitting it up with books, and with light and heat and flowers (for in every library interior beautiful flowers are an unfailing ornament) making of this a small branch in an undeveloped part of the city, and forming it into a notable centre of joy, helpfulness, and inspiration.

In addition to the University of Toronto, and in close alliance with it, is University College, a state institution, in which languages and the liberal arts are taught; and this notable university system in Toronto is inclusive of a number of other affiliated institutions, in which the students may avail {94} themselves of the university examinations and degrees, among which are the Toronto College of Music and the Conservatory of Music. There are four university museums, the Mineralogical and the Geological, the Archæological and the Biological; and there is also a Gallery set apart for Palæontology. A stately and impressive building, the School of Domestic Science, presented by Mrs. Massey Treble, is the centre of instruction as useful as it is important. No visitor in the Dominion can fail to perceive how Canada is especially a home-building, home-conserving country. If one were called upon to define the Canadian nation in a phrase, it would be that of a home-building people. That the home, in all the purity and sanctity of family life, is the unit of civilisation is an article of faith in Canada.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Toronto is an association of much importance in the scientific world. In May, 1916, it had the honour of being addressed by an astronomer whom it is no exaggeration to term the most brilliant figure of the age in interstellar physics. This was Doctor Percival Lowell, whose brilliant and original investigations have thrown great light upon the evolution of the planets, and whose especial discoveries (as they may now be claimed) of the conditions on Mars have arrested the attention of the entire scientific world. It was on this theme, including aspects of Mars developed in observations made as recently {95} as in January and March of 1916, that Doctor Lowell addressed the Society.[1]

[1] Dr. Percival Lowell died November 13, 1916, at Flagstaff Observatory, Arizona, U.S.A.

The population of Toronto is already over the half million mark, the city directory for 1915 recording a population of 534,000, and the number is said to increase on an average of thirty thousand a year. It is a great manufacturing city, which has been able to harness a waterfall, even the mighty cataract of Niagara, into its daily service. Is it that the twentieth century calls from the fabled past those genii and magicians who can command and control the forces of Nature? The result would almost confirm that fascinating speculation. Apparently the Torontian is more fortunate than one individual who is said to have been enabled to send the broomstick to fetch water, but forgetting the incantation necessary to stop it, he was drowned. Toronto apparently knows the secret of controlling her almost unrivalled water-power. There are in and about Toronto more than nine hundred factories that number over sixty-five thousand employees, with an annual pay-roll of twenty-nine millions, representing a capital of seventy-five millions. The electric power from Niagara Falls is supplied at moderate rates, and thus the extension of manufacturing plant is encouraged to the advantage of the city itself.

The illumination of the Toronto streets by night is {96} a feature of no little interest. The use of hydro-electric power has permitted the lighting by means of cluster lights, a system of unique beauty and incomparable service, and of great decorative effect as well. This power is supplied from the main station located at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, which itself is supplied directly from the cataract, with a high voltage of electrical energy.

The annual Canadian National Exposition held in Toronto during the last week in August and the first in September is considered to be almost a barometer of the progress of the world in general. Its promoters point with pride to the fact that this Exposition was the first to introduce the dawn of the Electrical Age to Canada; the first to introduce to general knowledge Marconi's wireless telegraphy; the first to demonstrate the uses of the telephone, and the advantages of the electric car service, and has thus, for a long series of years, made itself an important factor of contemporary progress.

This Exposition is held in a natural park of some two hundred and sixty acres, sloping from the blue and sparkling waters of Lake Ontario, with a water front of nearly two miles in extent. The grounds are made a very "garden-city," with wide, paved streets and walks; with vistas of emerald turf enriched with shrubs and flowering plants and trees, amid which the permanent State buildings, graceful and rich in architectural detail, reveal themselves to great advantage. This Exposition is justly held {97} throughout the Dominion as an annual focussing of the latest inventions and appliances, as a gauge of productive power in every direction, and it draws over a million visitors to the city every season.

As the Capital and metropolis of the rich and important province of Ontario, Toronto can hardly be adequately considered without some outline of the activities of the Province as well. The Parliament buildings occupy a prominent site in the city, and the Commissioners who are lodged in their various departments represent every important industry and interest in Ontario. Among these interests are the Good Roads Association, the Vegetable Growers, the Game and Fisheries, and the Women's Institute of Ontario, under the head of the Minister of Agriculture. Ontario has its Agricultural College at Guelph with the Macdonald Institute for girls in which homemaking as well as housekeeping is taught and which is the inspiration centre of the Women's Institutes of the province. The system of travelling libraries is of unsurpassed aid in the disseminating of information. The Women's Institute and the Farmers' Institute co-operate to the mutual advantage of each. Among the topics discussed in the former are "Discipline for Children," "Problem of the Farmer's Wife," "Furnishing a Living-room for Comfort," "Old-Fashioned Hospitality," and "The Value of Pleasing Manners." The activities of this Institute radiate an influence and suggest {98} a series of standards that is little less than invaluable in its effect on the general rural life. The Institute has a membership of more than twenty-five thousand women; they represent some eight hundred and fifty branches; and their influence easily reaches twice the number of the membership. Courses of lessons in Domestic Science are given in stated centres; special instructors in cooking, dairying, poultry-raising; and topics relating to household labour of all kinds are assigned for discussion from time to time, the meetings always drawing large and eager audiences. The entire instruction is eminently practical, and in one Report made to the Minister of Agriculture the programme of lessons offered as typical included "Invalid Cookery," "Table Seating and Serving," "How to Spend the Winter Evenings," and "Wholesome Reading for Boys and Girls." It will readily be seen how extremely valuable is such a range of discussion as this, in a comparatively new country, where each household must so largely depend upon its own resources. "The strength of the Empire is in the homes of her people," said one lecturer, and the opinion is wide-spread. This Association further urges that its prevailing spirit shall know no distinction of class or creed; that it shall reach and include, with cordial, gracious welcome, every woman who is inclined to come into it. The motto of the Institute is, "If you know a good thing, pass it on." The Ontario Vegetable Growers' Association is another {99} energetic organisation, whose aim is to "plant and make things grow."

The importance of social welfare is very fully recognised in Canada. "We are not here simply to make a living, to spend all our days in work," states one leading member; "we are here to enjoy life, and I believe that God intended that every one should enjoy a well-rounded life, with time for recreation and for mental and spiritual development."

In the prominence given to social service in the Dominion, a new and distinctive profession is opened, and one especially fitted for educated and cultivated young women. Various spheres of work are open, as those of assistants to city pastors, and as nurses, park attendants, health inspectors, police matrons, school inspectors, and as officials in the many charitable and educational institutions. Friendly visiting is not the least of these many channels for aid to social betterment, and for the extension of sympathies and the promotion of the higher life.

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