Part 21

Jordan's York Hotel answered every purpose very well. Members of Parliament and other visitors considered themselves in luxurious quarters when housed there. Probably in no instance have the public dinners or fashionable assemblies of a later era gone off with more _eclat_, or given more satisfaction to the persons concerned in them, than did those which from time to time, in every season, took place in what would now be considered the very diminutive ball-room and dining-hall of Jordan's.

In the ball-room here, before the completion of the brick building which replaced the Legislative Halls destroyed by the Americans in 1813, the Parliament of Upper Canada sat for one session.

In the rear of Jordan's, detached from the rest of the buildings, there long stood a solid circular structure of brick, of considerable height and diameter, dome-shaped without and vaulted within, somewhat resembling the furnace into which Robert, the huntsman, is being thrust, in Retzsch's illustration of Fridolin. This was the public oven of Paul Marian, a native Frenchman who had a bakery here before the surrounding premises were converted into a hotel by Mr. Jordan. In the _Gazette_ of May 19, 1804, Paul Marian informs his friends and the public "that he will supply them with bread at their dwellings, at the rate of nine loaves for a dollar, on paying ready money."

About the same period, another Frenchman, Francois Belcour, is exercising the same craft in York. In _Gazettes_ of 1803, he announces that he is prepared "to supply the ladies and gentlemen who may be pleased to favor him with their custom, with bread, cakes, buns, etc. And that for the convenience of small families, he will make his bread of different sizes, viz., loaves of two, three, and four pounds' weight, and will deliver the same at the houses, if required." He adds that "families who may wish to have beef, etc., baked, will please send it to the bake-house." In 1804, he offers to bake "at the rate of pound for pound; that is to say he will return one pound of Bread for every pound of Flour which may be sent to him for the purpose of being baked into bread."

After the abandonment of Jordan's as a hotel, Paul Marian's oven, repaired and somewhat extended, again did good service. In it was baked a goodly proportion of the supplies of bread furnished in 1838-9, to the troops, and incorporated militia at Toronto, by Mr. Jackes and Mr. Reynolds.

As the sidewalks of King Street were apt to partake, in bad weather, of the impassableness of the streets generally at such a time, an early effort was made to have some of them paved. Some yards of foot-path, accordingly, about Jordan's, and here and there elsewhere, were covered with flat flagstones from the lake-beach, of very irregular shapes and of no great size: the effect produced was that of a very coarse, and soon a very uneven mosaic.

At Quebec, in the neighborhood of the Court House, there is retained some pavement of the kind now described: and in the early lithograph of Court House Square, at York, a long stretch of sidewalk is given in the foreground, seamed over curiously, like the surface of an old Cyclopean or Pelasgic wall.

On April the 26th, 1823, it was ordered by the magistrates at Quarter Sessions that "L100 from the Town and Police Fund, together with one-fourth of the Statute Labour within the Town, be appropriated to flagging the sidewalks of King Street, commencing from the corner of Church Street and proceeding east to the limits of the Town, and that both sides of the street do proceed at the same time." One hundred pounds would not go very far in such an undertaking. We do not think the sidewalks of the primitive King Street were ever paved throughout their whole length with stone.

After Jordan's came Dr. Widmer's surgery, associated with many a pain and ache in the minds of the early people of York, and scene of the performance upon their persons of many a delicate, and daring, and successful remedial experiment. Nearly opposite was property appertaining to Dr. Stoyell, an immigrant, non-practising medical man from the United States, with Republican proclivities as it used to be thought, who, previous to his purchasing here, conducted, as has been already implied, an inn at Mrs. Lumsden's corner. (The house on the other side of Ontario Street, westward, was Hayes' Boarding House, noticeable simply as being in session-time, like Jordan's, the temporary abode of many Members of Parliament.)

After Dr. Widmer's, towards the termination of King Street, on the south side, was Mr. Small's, originally one of the usual low-looking domiciles of the country, with central portion and two gable wings, somewhat after the fashion of many an old country manor-house in England.

The material of Mr. Small's dwelling was hewn timber. It was one of the earliest domestic erections in York. When re-constructed at a subsequent period, Mr. Charles Small preserved, in the enlarged and elevated building, now known as Berkeley House, the shape and even a portion of the inner substance of the original structure.

We have before us a curious plan (undated but old) of the piece of ground originally occupied and enclosed by Mr. Small, as a yard and garden round his primitive homestead: occupied and enclosed, as it would seem, before any building lots were set off by authority on the Government reserve or common here. The plan referred to is entitled "A sketch showing the land occupied by John Small, Esq., upon the Reserve appropriated for the Government House at York by His Excellency Lt. Gov. Simcoe." An irregular oblong, coloured red, is bounded on the north side by King Street, and is lettered within--"Mr. Small's Improvements." Round the irregular piece thus shewn, lines are drawn enclosing additional space, and bringing the whole into the shape of a parallelogram: the parts outside the irregularly shaped red portion, are colored yellow: and on the yellow, the memorandum appears--"This added would make an Acre." The block thus brought into shapely form is about one-half of the piece of ground that at present appertains to Berkeley House.

The plan before us also incidentally shows where the Town of York was supposed to terminate:--an inscription--"Front Line of the Town"--runs along the following route: up what is now the lane through Dr. Widmer's property: and then, at a right angle eastward along what is now the north boundary of King Street opposite the block which it was necessary to get into shape round Mr. Small's first "Improvements." King Street proper, in this plan, terminates at "Ontario Street:" from the eastern limit of Ontario Street, the continuation of the highway is marked "Road to Quebec,"--with an arrow shewing the direction in which the traveller must keep his horse's head, if he would reach that ancient city.--The arrow at the end of the inscription just given points slightly upwards, indicating the fact that the said "Road to Quebec" trends slightly to the north after leaving Mr. Small's clearing.

XVI.

FROM BERKELEY STREET TO THE BRIDGE AND ACROSS IT.

We now propose to pass rapidly down "the road to Quebec" as far as the Bridge. First we cross, in the hollow, Goodwin's creek, the stream which enters the Bay by the cut-stone Jail. Lieutenant Givins (afterwards Colonel Givins), on the occasion of his first visit to Toronto in 1793, forced his way in a canoe with a friend up several of the meanderings of this stream, under the impression that he was exploring the Don. He had heard that a river leading to the North-West entered the Bay of Toronto, somewhere near its head; and he mistook the lesser for the greater stream: thus on a small scale performing the exploit accomplished by several of the explorers of the North American coast, who, under the firm persuasion that a water highway to Japan and China existed somewhere across this continent, lighted upon Baffin's Bay, Davis Strait, the Hudson River, and the St. Lawrence itself, in the course of their investigations.

On the knoll to the right, after crossing Goodwin's creek, was Isaac Pilkington's lowly abode, a little group of white buildings in a grove of pines and acacias.

Parliament Street, which enters near here from the north, is a memorial of the olden time, when, as we have seen, the Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada were situated in this neighbourhood. In an early section of these Recollections we observed that what is now called Berkeley Street was originally Parliament Street, a name which, like that borne by a well-known thoroughfare in Westminster, for a similar reason, indicated the fact that it led down to the Houses of Parliament.

The road that at present bears the name of Parliament Street shews the direction of the track through the primitive woods opened by Governor Simcoe to his summer house on the Don, called Castle-Frank, of which fully, in its place hereafter.

Looking up Parliament Street we are reminded that a few yards westward from where Duke Street enters it, lived at an early period Mr. Richard Coates, an estimable and ingenious man, whose name is associated in our memory with the early dawn of the fine arts in York. Mr. Coates, in a self-taught way, executed, not unsuccessfully, portraits in oil of some of our ancient worthies. Among things of a general or historical character, he painted also for David Willson, the founder of the "Children of Peace," the symbolical decorations of the interior of the Temple at Sharon. He cultivated music likewise, vocal and instrumental; he built an organ of some pretensions, in his own house, on which he performed; he built another for David Willson at Sharon. Mr. Coates constructed, besides, in the yard of his house, an elegantly-finished little pleasure yacht, of about nine tons burden.

This passing reference to infant Art in York recalls again the name of Mr. John Craig, who has before been mentioned in our account of the interior of one of the many successive St. Jameses. Although Mr. Craig did not himself profess to go beyond his sphere as a decorative and heraldic painter, the spirit that animated him really tended to foster in the community a taste for art in a wider sense.

Mr. Charles Daly, also, as a skilful teacher of drawing in water-colours and introducer of superior specimens, did much to encourage art at an early date. In 1834 we find Mr. Daly promoting an exhibition of Paintings by the "York Artists and Amateur Association," and acting as "Honorary Secretary," when the Exhibition for the year took place. Mr. James Hamilton, a teller in the bank, produced, too, some noticeable landscapes in oil.

As an auxiliary in the cause, and one regardful of the wants of artists at an early period, we name, likewise, Mr. Alexander Hamilton; who, in addition to supplying materials in the form of pigments and prepared colours, contributed to the tasteful setting off of the productions of pencil and brush, by furnishing them with frames artistically carved and gilt.

Out of the small beginnings and rudiments of Art at York, one artist of a genuine stamp was, in the lapse of a few years, developed--Mr. Paul Kane; who, after studying in the schools of Europe, returned to Canada and made the illustration of Indian character and life his specialty. By talent exhibited in this class of pictorial delineation, he acquired a distinguished reputation throughout the North American continent; and by his volume of beautifully illustrated travels, published in London, and entitled "Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America," he obtained for himself a recognized place in the literature of British Art.

In the hollow, a short distance westward of Mr. Coates's, was one of the first buildings of any size ever erected in these parts wholly of stone. It was put up by Mr. Hutchinson. It was a large square family house of three storeys. It still exists, but its material is hidden under a coating of stucco. Another building, wholly of stone, was Mr. Hunter's house, on the west side of Church Street. A portion of Hugill's Brewery likewise exhibited walls of the same solid, English-looking substance. We now resume our route.

We immediately approach another road entering from the north, which again draws us aside. This opening led up to the only Roman Catholic church in York, an edifice of red-brick, substantially built. Mr. Ewart was the contractor. The material of the north and south walls was worked into a kind of tesselated pattern, which was considered something very extraordinary. The spire was originally surmounted by a large and spirited effigy of the bird that admonished St. Peter, and not by a cross. It was not a flat, moveable weathercock, but a fixed, solid figure, covered with tin.

In this building officiated for some time an ecclesiastic named O'Grady. Mingling with a crowd, in the over-curious spirit of boyhood, we here, at funerals and on other occasions, first witnessed the ceremonial forms observed by Roman Catholics in their worship; and once we remember being startled at receiving, by design or accident, from an overcharged _aspergillum_ in the hands of a zealous ministrant of some grade passing down the aisle, a copious splash of holy water in the eye.

Functionaries of this denomination are generally remarkable for their quiet discharge of duty and for their apparent submissiveness to authority. They sometimes pass and repass for years before the indifferent gaze of multitudes holding another creed, without exciting any curiosity even as to their personal names. But Mr. O'Grady was an exception to the general run of his order. He acquired a distinctive reputation among outsiders. He was understood to be an unruly presbyter; and through his instrumentality, letters of his bishop, evidently never intended to meet the public eye, got into general circulation. He was required to give an account of himself, subsequently, at the feet of the "Supreme Pontiff."

Power Street, the name now applied to the road which led up to the Roman Catholic church, preserves the name of the Bishop of this communion, who sacrificed his life in attending to the sick emigrants in 1847.

The road to the south, a few steps further on, led to the wind-mill built by Mr. Worts, senior, in 1832. In the possession of Messrs. Gooderham & Worts are three interesting pictures, in oil, which from time to time have been exhibited. They are intended to illustrate the gradual progress in extent and importance of the mills and manufactures at the site of the wind-mill. The first shows the original structure--a circular tower of red brick, with the usual sweeps attached to a hemispherical revolving top; in the distance town and harbour are seen. The second shows the wind-mill dismantled, but surrounded by extensive buildings of brick and wood, sheltering now elaborate machinery driven by steam power. The third represents a third stage in the march of enterprise and prosperity. In this picture gigantic structures of massive, dark-coloured stone tower up before the eye, vying in colossal proportions and ponderous strength with the works of the castle-builders of the feudal times. Accompanying these interesting landscape views, all of them by Forbes, a local artist of note, a group of life-size portraits in oil, has occasionally been seen at Art Exhibitions in Toronto--Mr. Gooderham, senior, and his Seven Sons--all of them well-developed, sensible-looking, substantial men, manifestly capable of undertaking and executing whatever practical work the exigencies of a young and vigorous community may require to be done.

Whenever we have chanced to obtain a glimpse of this striking group (especially the miniature photographic reproduction of it on one card), a picture of Tancred of Hauteville and his Twelve Sons, "all of them brave and fair," once familiar as an illustration appended to that hero's story, has always recurred to us; and we have thought how thankfully should we regard the grounds on which the modern Colonial patriarch comforts himself in view of a numerous family springing up around him, as contrasted with the reasons on account of which the enterprising Chieftain of old congratulated himself on the same spectacle. The latter beheld in his ring of stalwart sons so many warriors; so much good solid stuff to be freely offered at the shrine of his own glory, or the glory of his feudal lord, whenever the occasion should arise. The former, in the young men and maidens, peopling his house, sees so many additional hands adapted to aid in a bloodless conquest of a huge continent; so much more power evolved, and all of it in due time sure to be wanted, exactly suited to assist in pushing forward one stage further the civilizing, humanizing, beautifying, processes already, in a variety of directions, initiated.

"Peace hath her victories, No less renowned than war;"

and it is to the victories of peace chiefly that the colonial father expects his children to contribute.

When the families of Mr. Gooderham and Mr. Worts crossed the Atlantic, on the occasion of their emigration from England, the party, all in one vessel, comprised, as we are informed, so many as fifty-four persons more or less connected by blood or marriage.

We have been told by Mr. James Beaty that when out duck shooting, now nearly forty years since, he was surprised by falling in with Mr. Worts, senior, rambling apparently without purpose in the bush at the mouth of the Little Don: all the surrounding locality was then in a state of nature, and frequented only by the sportsman or trapper. On entering into conversation with Mr. Worts, Mr. Beaty found that he was there prospecting for an object; that, in fact, somewhere near the spot where they were standing, he thought of putting up a wind-mill! The project at the time seemed sufficiently Quixotic. But posterity beholds the large practical outcome of the idea then brooding in Mr. Worts's brain. In their day of small things the pioneers of new settlements may take courage from this instance of progress in one generation, from the rough to the most advanced condition. For a century to come, there will be bits of this continent as unpromising, at the first glance, as the mouth of the Little Don, forty years ago, yet as capable of being reclaimed by the energy and ingenuity of man, and being put to divinely-intended and legitimate uses.--Returning now from the wind-mill, once more to the "road to Quebec," in common language, the Kingston road, we passed, at the corner, the abode of one of the many early settlers in these parts who bore German names--the tenement of Peter Ernst, or Ernest as the appellation afterwards became.

From these Collections and Recollections matters of comparatively so recent a date as 1849 have for the most part been excluded. We make an exception in passing the Church which gives name to Trinity Street, for the sake of recording an inscription on one of its interior walls. It reads as follows:--"To the Memory of the Reverend William Honywood Ripley, B.A., of University College, Oxford, First Incumbent of this Church, son of the Rev. Thomas Hyde Ripley, Rector of Tockenham, and Vicar of Wootton Bassett in the County of Wilts, England. After devoting himself during the six years of his ministry, freely, without money and without price, to the advancement of the spiritual and temporal welfare of this congregation and neighbourhood, and to the great increase amongst them of the knowledge of Christ and His Church, he fell asleep in Jesus on Monday the 22nd of October, 1849, aged 34 years. He filled at the same time the office of Honorary Secretary to the Church Society of the Diocese of Toronto, and was Second Classical Master of Upper Canada College. This Tablet is erected by the Parishioners of this Church as a tribute of heartfelt respect and affection. Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation."

Canadian society in all its strata has been more or less leavened from England. One of the modes by which the process has been carried on is revealed in the inscription just given. In 1849, while this quarter of Toronto was being taken up and built over, the influence of the clergyman commemorated was singularly marked within it. Mr. Ripley, in his boyhood, had been trained under Dr. Arnold, at Rugby; and his father had been at an early period, a private tutor to the Earl of Durham who came out to Canada in 1838 as High Commissioner. As to the material fabric of Trinity Church--its erection was chiefly due to the exertions of Mr. Alexander Dixon, an alderman of Toronto.

The brick School-house attached to Trinity Church bears the inscription: "Erected by Enoch Turner, 1848." Mr. Turner was a benevolent Englishman who prospered in this immediate locality as a brewer, and died in 1866. Besides handsome bequests to near relations, Mr. Turner left by will, to Trinity College, Toronto, L2,000; to Trinity Church, L500; to St. Paul's L250; to St. Peter's L250.

Just opposite on the left was where Angell lived, the architect of the abortive bridges over the mouths of the Don. We obtain from the York _Observer_ of December 11, 1820, some earlier information in regard to Mr. Angell. It is in the form of a "Card" thus headed: "York Land Price Current Office, King Street." It then proceeds--"In consequence of the Increase of the population of the Town of York, and many applications for family accommodation upon the arrival of strangers desirous of becoming settlers, the Subscriber intends to add to the practice of his Office the business of a _House Surveyor_ and _Architect_, to lay out Building Estate, draw Ground plans, _Sections_ and _Elevations_, to _order_, and upon the most approved _European_ and _English_ customs. Also to make _estimates_ and provide contracts with _proper securities_ to prevent impostures, for the performance of the same. E. Angell. N.B.--Land proprietors having estate to dispose of, and persons requiring any branch of the above profession to be done, will meet with the most respectful attention on application by letter, or at this office. York, Oct. 2, [1820]."

The expression, "York Land Price Current Office," above used is explained by the fact that Mr. Angell commenced at this early date the publication of a monthly "Land Price Current List of Estates on Sale in Upper Canada, to be circulated in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales."

Near Mr. Angell, on the same side, lived also Mr. Cummins, the manager of the _Upper Canada Gazette_ printing office; and, at a later period, Mr. Watson, another well-known master-printer of York, who lost his life during the great fire of 1849, in endeavouring to save a favourite press from destruction, in the third storey of a building at the corner of King and Nelson streets, a position occupied subsequently by the Caxton-press of Mr. Hill.

On some of the fences along here, we remember seeing in 1827-8, an inscription written up in chalk or white paint, memorable to ourselves personally, as being the occasion of our first taking serious notice of one of the political questions that were locally stirring the people of Upper Canada. The words inscribed were--No Aliens! Like the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which we ourselves also subsequently saw painted on the walls of Paris; these words were intended at once to express and to rouse public feeling; only in the present instance, as we suppose now, the inscription emanated from the oligarchical rather than the popular side. The spirit of it probably was "Down with Aliens,"--and not "Away with the odious distinction of Aliens!"