thoroughfares as we are obliged to word it, there was,
for a considerable time, but one solitary house — at
the north-east angle; a longish, one-storey, respectable
wooden structure, painted white, with paling in front, and
large willow trees : it was the home of Mr. Dennis, formerly super-
intendant of the Dock-yard at Kingston. He was one of the
United Empire Loyalist refugees, and received a grant of land on
the Humber, near the site of the modern village of Weston. His
son, Mr. Joseph Dennis, owned and commanded a vessel on Lake
Ontario in 1812. When the war with the United States broke out,
he and his ship were attached to the Provincial Marine. His ves-
sel was captured, and himself made a prisoner of war, in which
condition he remained for fifteen months. He afterwards com-
manded the Princess Charlotte, an early steamboat on Lake On-
tario.

To the eastward of Mr. Dennis' house, on the same side, at an
early period, was an obscure frame building of the most ordinary
kind, whose existence is recorded simply for having been tempo-
rarily the District Grammar School, before the erection of the spa-
cious building on the Grammar School lot.

On the opposite side, still passing on towards the east, was the
Jail. This was a squat unpainted wooden building, with hipped
roof, concealed from persons passing in the street by a tall cedar



§ 6.] King Street, from Yonge to Church Streets. 99

stockade, such as those which we see surrounding a Hudson's Bay
post or a military wood-yard. At the outer entrance hung a billet
of wood suspended by a chain, communicating with a bell within ;
and occasionally Mr. Parker, the custodian of the place, was sum-
moned, through its instrumentality, by persons not there on legiti-
mate business. We have a recollection of a clever youth, an im-
mediate descendant of the great commentator on British Law, and
afterwards himself distinguished at the Upper Canadian bar, who
was severely handled by Mr. Parker's son, on being caught in the
act of pulling at this billet, with the secret intention of running
away after the exploit.

The English Criminal Code, as it was at the beginning of the
century, having been introduced with all its enormities, public
hangings were frequent at an early period in the new Province.
A shocking scene is described as taking place at an execution in
front of the old Jail at York. The condemned refuses to mount
the scaffold. On this, the moral-suasion efforts of the sheriff
amount to the ridiculous, were not the occasion so seriously tragic.
In aid of the sheriff, the officiating chaplain steps more than once
up the plank set from the cart to the scaffold, to show the facility
of the act, and to induce the man to mount in like manner ; the
condemned demurs, and openly remarks on the obvious difference
in the two cases. At last the noose is adjusted to the neck of the
wretched culprit, where he stands. The cart is withdrawn, and a
deliberate strangling ensues.

In a certain existing account of steps taken in 181 1 to remedy
the dilapidated and comfortless condition of the Jail, we get a
glimpse of York, commercially and otherwise, at that date. In
April, 181 1, the sheriff, Beikie, reports to the magistrates at Quar-
ter Sessions " that the sills of the east cells of the Jail of the Home
District are completely rotten ; that the ceilings in the debtors'
rooms are insufficient; and that he cannot think himself safe,
should necessity oblige him to confine any persons in said cells or
debtors' rooms."

An order is given in May to make the necessary repairs ; but
certain spike-nails are wanted of a kind not to be had at the local
dealers in hardware. The chairman is consequently directed to
u apply to His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, that he will
be pleased to direct that the spike-nails be furnished from the
King's stores, as there are not any of the description required to



ioo Toronto of Old. [§ 6.

be purchased at York." A memorandum follows to the effect that
on the communication of this necessity to His Excellency, " the
Lieutenant-Governor ordered that the Clerk of the Peace do apply
for the spike-nails officially in the name of the Court : which he
did," the memorandum adds, ' ; on the 8th of May, 1811, and re-
ceived an answer on the day following, that an order had been
issued that day for 1500 spike-nails, for the repair of the Home
District Jail : the nails," it is subjoined, " were received by car-
penter Leach in the month of July following."

Again: in December, 181 1, Mr. Sheriff Beikie sets forth to the
magistrates in Session, that " the prisoners in the cells of the Jail
of the Home District suffer much from cold and damp, there being
no method of communicating heat from the chimneys, nor any
bedsteads to raise the straw from [[the floors, which lie nearly, if not
altogether, on the ground." He accordingly suggests that " a small
stove in the lobby of each range of cells, together with some rugs
or blankets, will add much to the comfort of the unhappy persons
confined." The magistrates authorize the supply of the required
necessaries, and the order is marked " instant." (The month, we
are to notice, was December.)

At a late period, there were placed about the town a set of
posts having relation to the Jail. They were distinguished from
the ordinary rough posts, customary then at regular intervals along
the sidewalks, by being of turned wood, with spherical tops, the
lower part painted a pale blue : the upper, white. These were
the "limits" — the certi denique fines — beyond which, detenus for debt
were not allowed to extend their walks.

Leaving the picketted enclosure of the Prison, we soon arrived
at an open piece of ground on the opposite (north) side of the
street, — afterwards known as the "Court House Square." One
of the many rivulets or water-courses that traversed the site of York
passed through it, flowing in a deep serpentine ravine, a spot to
be remembered by the youth of the day as affording, in the winter,
facilities for skating and sliding, and audacious exploits on " lea-
ther ice." In this open space, a Jail and Court House of a pre-
tentious character, but of poor architectural style, were erected in
1824. The two buildings, which were of two storeys, and exactly
alike, were placed side by side, a few yards back from the road.
Their gables were to the south, in which direction were also the
chief entrances. The material was red brick. Pilasters of cut stone



§6.] King Street, from Yonge to ^Church Streets; ipi

ran up the principal fronts, and up the exposed or outer sides of
each edifice. At these sides, as also on the inner and unornamented
sides, were lesser gables, but marked by the portion of the wall
that rose in front of them, not to a point, but finishing square in
two diminishing stages, and sustaining chimneys.

It was intended originally that lanterns should have surmounted
and given additional elevation to both buildings, but these were
discarded, together with tin as the material of the roofing, with a
view to cutting down the cost, and thereby enabling the builder to
make the pilasters of cut stone instead of " Roman cement." John
Hayden was the contractor. The cost, as reduced, was to be
,£3,800 for the two edifices.

We extract from the Canadian Review for July, 1824, published
by H. H. Cunningham, Montreal, an account of the commence-
ment of the new buildings : " On Saturday, the 24th instant, [April,
1824,] his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, attended by his
staff, was met by the Honourable the Members of the Executive
Council, the Judges of the Court of King's Bench, and the Gen-
tlemen of the Bar, with the Magistrates and principal inhabitants
of York, in procession, for the purpose of laying the foundation-
stone of the new Jail and Court House about to be erected in this
Town. — A sovereign and half-sovereign of gold, and several coins
of silver and copper, of the present reign, together with some news-
papers and other memorials of the present day, were deposited in
a cavity of the stone, over which a plate of copper, bearing an
appropriate inscription, was placed ; and after his Excellency had
given the first blow, with a hammer handed to him for the purpose,
the ceremony concluded with several hearty cheers from all who
were present. — If the question were of any real importance," the
writer adds, " we might have the curiosity to inquire why the de-
posit was made in the south-east, rather than in the north-east cor-
ner of the building?" — a query that indicates, as we suppose, a
deviation from orthodox masonic usage.

In one of the lithographic views published in 1836 by Mr. J.
Young, the Jail and Court House, now spoken of, are shewn.
Among the objects inserted to give life to the scene, the artist has
placed in the foreground a country waggon with oxen yoked to it,
in primitive fashion. — Near the front entrance of the Jail, stood,
to the terror of evil-doers, down to modern times, a ponderous spe-
cimen of the " parish stocks" of the old country, in good condition.



: i.02 Toronto of Old. [§ 6.

After 1825, the open area in front of the Jail and Court House
became the " Public Place'' of the town. Crowds filled it at elec-
tions and other occasions of excitement. We have here witnessed
several scenes characteristic of the times in which they occurred.
We here once saw a public orator run away with, in the midst of
his harangue. This was Mr. Jesse Ketchum, who was making use
of a farmer's waggon as his rostrum or platform, when the vehicle
was suddenly laid hold of, and wheeled rapidly down King Street,
the speaker maintaining his equilibrium in the meanwhile with
difficulty. Mr. Ketchum was one of the most benevolent and
beneficent of men. We shall have occasion to refer to him here-
after.

It was on the same occasion, we believe, that we saw Mr. W.
L. McKenzie assailed by the missiles which mobs usually adopt.
From this spot we had previously seen the same personage,
after one of his re-elections, borne aloft in triumph, on a kind of
pyramidal car, and wearing round his neck and across his breast a
massive gold chain and medal (both made of molten sovereigns),
the gift of his admirers and constituents : in the procession, at the
same time, was a printing-press, working as it was conveyed along
in a low sleigh, and throwing off handbills, which were tossed,
right and left, to the accompanying crowd in the street.

The existing generation of Canadians, with the lights which they
now possess, see pretty clearly, that the agitator just named, and
his party, were not, in the abstract, by any means so bad as they
seemed : that, in fact, the ideas which they sought to propagate are
the only ones practicable in the successful government of modern
men.

Is there a reader nowadays that sees anything very startling in
the enunciation of the following principles ? — " The control of the
whole revenue to be in the people's representatives \ the Legisla-
• tive Council to be elective j the representation in the House of
Assembly to be as equally proportioned to the population as possi-
ble ; the Executive Government to incur a real responsibility ; the
law of primogeniture to be abolished ; impartiality in the selection
of juries to be secured ; the Judiciary to be independent j the mili-
tary to be in strict subordination to the civil authorities ; equal
rights to the several members of the community ; every vestige of
Church-and-State union to be done away ; the lands and all the
revenues of the country to be under the control of the country ;



I 6.] King Street, from Yonge to Church Streets. 103

and education to be widely, carefully and impartially diffused ; to
these may be added the choice of our own Governor."

These were the political principles sought to be established in
the Governments of Canada by the party referred to, as set forth
in the terms just given (almost verbatim) in Patrick Swift's Almanac,
a well known popular, annual brochure of Mr. McKenzie's. It
seems singular now, in the retrospect, that doctrines such as these
should have created a ferment.

But there is this to be said : it does not appear that there were,
at the time, in the ranks of the party in power, any persons of very
superior intellectual gifts or of a wide range of culture or historical
knowledge : so that it was not likely that, on that side, there would
be a ready relinquishment of political traditions, of inherited ideas,
which their possessors had never dreamt of rationally analyzing,
and which they deemed it all but treason to call in question.

And moreover it is to be remembered that the chief propagan-
dist of the doctrines of reform, although very intelligent and ready
of speech, did not himself possess the dignity and repose of char-
acter which give weight to the utterances of public men. Hence,
with the persons who really stood in need of instruction and en-
lightenment, his words had an irritating, rather than a conciliatory
and convincing effect. This was a fault which it was not in his
power to remedy. For his microscopic vision and restless tempera-
ment, while they fitted him to be a very clever local reformer, a
very clever local editor, unfitted him for the grand role of a national
statesman, or heroic conductor of a revolution.

Accordingly, although the principles advocated by him finally
obtained the ascendancy, posterity only regards him as the Wilkes,
the Cobbett, or the Hunt of his day, in the annals of his adopted
country. In the interval between the outbreak or feint at outbreak
in 1838, and 1850, the whole Canadian community made a great
advance in general intelligence, and statesmen of a genuine quality
began to appear in our Parliaments.

Prior to the period of which we have just been speaking, a name
much in the mouths of our early settlers was that of Robert Gour-
lay. What we have to say in respect to him, in our retrospect of
the past, will perhaps be in place here.

Nothing could be more laudable than Mr. Gourlay's intentions
at the outset. He desired to publish a statistical account of Can-
ada, with a view to the promotion of emigration. To inform him-



104 Toronto of Old. [§ 6„

self of the actual condition of the young colony, he addressed a
series of questions to persons of experience and intelligence in
every township of Upper Canada. These questions are now lying
before us ; they extend to the number of thirty-one. There are
none of them that a modern reader would pronounce ill-judged or
irrelevant.

But here again it is easy to see that personal character and tem-
perament marred the usefulness of a clever man. His inordinate
self-esteem and pugnaciousness, insufficiently controlled, speedily
rendered him offensive, especially in a community constituted as
that was in the midst of which he had suddenly lighted ; and drove,
naturally and of necessity, his opponents to extreme measures in
self-defence, and himself to extreme doctrines by way of retaliation :
thus he became overwhelmed with troubles from which the tact of
a wiser man would have saved him. But for Gourlay, as the event
proved, a latent insanity was an excuse.

It is curious to observe that, in 1818, Gourlay, in his heat
against the official party, whose headquarters were at York, threat-
ened that town with extinction ; at all events, with the obliteration
of its name, and the transmutation thereof into that of Toronto.
In a letter to the Niagara Spectator, he says :— "The tumult excited
stiffens every nerve and redoubles the proofs of necessity for action.
If the higher classes are against me, I shall recruit among my
brother farmers, seven in eight of whom will support the cause of
truth. If one year does not make Little York surrender to us,
then we'll batter it for two \ and should it still hold out, we have
ammunition for a much longer siege. We shall raise the wind
against it from Amherstburgh and Quebec — from Edinburgh, Dub-
lin and London. It must be levelled to the very earth, and even
its name be forgotten in Toronto."

But to return for a moment to Mr. McKenzie. On the steps of
the Court House, which we are to suppose ourselves now passing,
we once saw him under circumstances that were deeply touching.
Sentence of death had been pronounced on a young man once
employed in his printing-office. He had been vigorously exerting
himself to obtain from the Executive a mitigation of the extreme
penalty. The day and even the hour for the execution had arrived ;
and no message of reprieve had been transmitted from the Lieu-
tenant-Governor. As he came out of the Sheriff's room, after re-
ceiving the final announcement that there could be no further



§ 6.] King Street, from Yonge to Church Streets. 105

delay, the white collars on each side of his face were wet through
and through with the tears that were gushing from his eyes and
pouring down his cheeks ! He was just realizing the fact that
nothing further could be done ; and in a few moments afterwards
the execution actually took place.

We approach comparatively late times when we speak of the
cavalcade which passed in grand state the spot now under review,
when Messrs. Dunn and Buchanan were returned as members for
the town. In the pageant on that occasion there was conspicuous
a train of railway carriages, drawn of course, by horse power, with
the inscription on the sides of the carriages — " Do you not wish
you may get it ?" — the allusion being to the Grand Trunk, which
was then only a thing in posse.

And still referring to processions associated in our memory with
Court House Square, the recollection of another comes up, which
once or twice a year used formerly to pass down King Street on a
Sunday. The townspeople were familiar enough with the march
of the troops of the garrison to and from Church, to the sound of
military music, on Sundays. But on the occasions now referred to,
the public eye was drawn to a spectacle professedly of an opposite
character : — to the procession of the "Children of Peace," so-called.

These were a local off-shoot of the Society of Friends, the
followers of Mr. David Willson, who had his headquarters at Sharon,
in Whitchurch, where he had built a " Temple," a large wooden
structure, painted white, and resembling a high-piled house of cards.
Periodically he deemed it proper to make a demonstration in town.
His disciples and friends, dressed in their best, mounted their
waggons and solemnly passed down Yonge Street, and then on
through some frequented thoroughfare of York to a place previously
announced, where the prophet would preach. His topic was
usually " Public Affairs : their Total Depravity."

The text of all of Willson's homilies might, in effect, be the
following mystic sentence, extracted from the popular periodi-
cal, already quoted — Patrick Swift's Almanac : " The backwoods-
man, while he lays the axe to the root of the oak in the forests of
Canada, should never forget that a base basswood is growing in
this his native land, which, if not speedily girdled, will throw its
dark shadows over the country, and blast his best exertions. Look
up, reader, and you will see the branches — the Robinson branch,
the Powell branch, the Jones branch, the Strachan branch, the



106 Toronto of Old. [§ 6.

Boulton twig, &c. The farmer toils, the merchant toils, the labourer
toils, and the Family Compact reap the fruit of their exertions."
{Almanac for 1834.)

Into all the points here suggested Mr. Willson would enter with
great zest. When waxing warm in his discourse, he would some-
times, without interrupting the flow of his words, suddenly throw
off his coat and suspend it on a nail or pin in the wall, waving
about with freedom, during the residue of his oration, a pair of
sturdy arms, arrayed, not indeed in the dainty lawn of a bishop,
but in stout, well-bleached American Factory. His address was
divided into sections, between which " hymns of his own compos-
ing" were sung by a company of females dressed in white, sitting
on one side, accompanied by a band of musical instruments on
the other.

Considerable crowds assembled on these occasions : and once
a panic arose as preaching was going on in the public room of Law-
rence's hotel: the joists of the floor were heard" to crack; a rush
was made to the door, and several leaped out of the windows. — A
-small brick school-house on Berkeley Street was also a place where
Willson sometimes sought to get the ear of the general public. —
Captain Bonnycastle, in " Canada as it Was, Is, and May Be," i.
285, thus discourses of David Willson, in a strain somewhat too
severe and satirical ; but his words serve to show opinions which
widely prevailed at the time he wrote : " At a short distance from
Newmarket," the Captain says, " which is about three miles to the
right of Yonge Street, near its termination at the Holland
Landing, on a river of that name running into Lake Simcoe,
is a settlement of religious enthusiasts, who have chosen
the most fertile part of Upper Canada, the country near
and for miles round Newmarket, for the seat of their earthly
tabernacle. Here numbers of deluded people have placed them-
selves under the temporal and spiritual charge of a high priest, who
calls himself David. His real name is David Willso n. The Tem-
ple (as the building appropriated to the celebration o f their rites is
called,) is served by this man, who affects a primitive dress, and
has a train of virgin-ministrants clothed in white. He travels about
occasionally to preach at towns and villages, in a waggon, followed
by others, covered with white tilt-cloths j but what his peculiar
tenets are beyond that of dancing and singing, and imitating David
the King, I really cannot tell, for it is altogether too farcical to last



§ 6.] King Street, from Yonge to Church Streets. 107

long : but Mr. David seems to understand clearly, as far as the
temporal concerns of his infatuated followers go, that the old-
fashioned signification of meum and tuum are religiously centered
in his own sanctum. It was natural that such a field should pro-
duce tares in abundance."

The following notice of the "Children of Peace" occurs in
Patrick Swift's Almanac for 1834, penned, probably, with an eye
to votes in the neighbourhood of Sharon, or Hope, as the place is
here called. " This society," the Almanac reports, " numbers
about 280 members in Hope, east of Newmarket. They have also
stated places of preaching, at the Old Court House, York, on
Yonge Street, and at Markham. Their principal speaker is David
Willson, assisted by Murdoch McLeod, Samuel Hughes, and others.
Their music, vocal and instrumental, is excellent, and their preach-
ers seek no pay from the Governor out of the taxes. H

On week-days, Willson was often to be seen, like any other in-
dustrious yeoman, driving into town his own waggon, loaded with
the produce of his farm ; dressed in home-spun, as the " borel folk"
of Yonge Street generally were : in the axis of one eye there was a
slight divergency. — The expression " Family Compact" occurring
above, borrowed from French and Spanish History, appears also
in the General Report of Grievances, in 1835, where this sentence is
to be read : " The whole system [of conducting Government with-
out a responsible Executive] has so long continued virtually in the
same hands, that it is little better than a family compact." p. 43.
{In our proposed perambulation of Yonge Street we shall have occa
sion to speak again of David Willson.)

After the Court House Square came the large area attached to
St. James' Church, to the memories connected with which we shall
presently devote some space ; as also to those connected with the
region to the north, formerly the play-ground of the District Gram-
mar School, and afterwards transformed into March Street and its
purlieus.

At the corner on the south side of King Street, just opposite the
Court House, was the clock-and-watch-repairing establishment of
Mr. Charles Clinkenbroomer. To our youthful fancy, the general
click and tick usually to be heard in an old-fashioned watchmaker's
place of business, was in some sort expressed by the name Clin-
kunbroomer. But in old local lists we observe the orthography of
this name to have been Klinkenbrunner, which conveys another



108 Toronto of Old. [§ 6.

idea. Mr. Clinkenbroomer's father, we believe, was attached to
the army of General Wolfe, at the taking of Quebec.

In the early annals of York numerous Teutonic names are ob-
servable. Among jurymen and others, at an early period, we meet