tions that may here and there be found to cluster round them, —
these we may think it worth our while to collect and cherish.

Overlooking the harbour of the modern Toronto, far down in
the east, there stands at the present day, a large structure of grey
cut-stone. Its radiating wings, the turret placed at a central point
aloft, evidently for the ready oversight of the subjacent premises ;
the unornamented blank walls, pierced high up in each storey with a
row of circular-heading openings, suggestive of shadowy corridors
and cells within, all help to give to this pile an unmistakable pri-
son-aspect.

It was very nearly on the site of this rather hard-featured build-
ing that the first Houses of Parliament of Upper Canada were
placed — humble but commodious structures of wood, built before
the close of the eighteenth century, and destroyed by the incen-
diary hand of the invader in 1813. " They consisted," as a con-
temporary document sets forth, " of two elegant Halls, with con-
venient offices, for the accommodation of the Legislature and the
Courts of Justice." — " The Library, and all the papers and records
belonging to these institutions were consumed, and, at the same
time/' the dooument adds, " the Church was robbed, and the
Town Library totally pillaged." — The injuries thus inflicted were



§ i.] (Palace Street to the Market (Place. 27

a few months afterwards avenged by the destruction of the
Public Buildings at Washington, by a British force. " We consi-
der," said an Address of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada
to Sir George Prevost, " the destruction of the Public Buildings at
Washington as a just retribution for the outrages committed by an
American force at the seat of Government of Upper Canada."

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

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

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

The language of the early Provincial Gazetteer, published by au-
thority, is as follows : " The Don empties itself into the har-
bour, a little above the Town, running through a marsh, which when
drained, will afford most beautiful and fruitful meadows." In the
early manuscript Plans, the same sanguine opinion is recorded, in
regard to the morasses in this locality. On one, of 18 10, now before
us, we have the inscription : " Natural Meadow which may be
mown." On another, the legend runs: "Large Marsh, and will
in time make good Meadows." On a third it is: " Large Marsh and
Good Grass."

At all events, hereabout it was that York, capital of Upper Ca-
nada, began to rise. To the west and north of the site of the
Houses of Parliament, the officials of the Government, with mer-
chants and tradesmen in the usual variety, began to select lots and
put up convenient dwellings ; whilst close by, at Berkeley Street or
Parliament Street as the southern portion of the modern Berkeley



28 Toronto of Old. [§ i.

Street was then named, the chief thoroughfare of the town had its
commencing-point. Growing slowly westward from here, King
Street developed in its course, in the customary American way, its
hotel, its tavern, its boarding-house, its waggon-factory, its tin-
smith shop, its bakery, its general store, its lawyer's office, its print-
ing office, its places of worship.

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

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

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

Objectionable as the first site of the Legislative Buildings at
York may appear to ourselves, and alienated as it now is to lower
uses, we cannot but gaze upon it with a certain degree of emotion,
when we remember that here it was the first skirmishes took place
in the great war of principles which afterwards with such determi-
nation and effect was fought out in Canada. Here it was that first
loomed up before the minds of our early law-makers the ecclesias-
tical question, the educational question, the constitutional question.
Here it was that first was heard the open discussion, childlike, in-



§ i.] Palace Street to the Market (Place. 29

deed, and vague, but pregnant with very weighty consequences, of
topics, social and national, which, at the time, even in the parent
state itself, were mastered but by few.

Here it was, during a period of twenty-seven years (1 797-1824),
at each opening and closing of the annual session, amidst the firing
of cannon and the commotion of a crowd, the cavalcade drew up
that is wont, from the banks of the Thames to the remotest
colony of England, to mark the solemn progress of the sovereign
or the sovereign's representative, to and from the other Estates in
Parliament assembled. Here, amidst such fitting surroundings of
state, as the circumstances of the times and the place admitted,
came and went personages of eminence, whose names are now
familiar in Canadian story : never, indeed, the founder and organ-
iser of Upper Canada, Governor Simcoe himself, in this formal and
ceremonious manner; although often must he have visited the
spot otherwise, in his personal examinations of every portion of his
young capital and its environs. But here, immediately after him,
however, came and went repeatedly, in due succession, President
Russell, Governor Hunter, Governor Gore, General Brock, Gene-
ral Sheaffe, Sir Gordon Drummond, Sir Peregrine Maitland.

And, while contemplating the scene of our earliest political con-
flicts, the scene of our earliest known state pageants in these parts,
with their modest means and appliances, our minds intuitively recur
to a period farther removed still, when under even yet more primitive
conditions the Parliament of Upper Canada assembled at Newark,
just across the Lake. We picture to ourselves the group of seven
crown-appointed Councillors and five representatives of the Com-
mons, assembled there, with the first Speaker, McDonell, of Glen-
gary; all plain, unassuming, prosaic. men, listening, at their first
session, to the opening speech of their frank and honoured Gover-
nor. We see them adjourning to the open air from their straight-
ened chamber at Navy Hall, and conducting the business of the
young Province under the shade of a spreading tree, introducing
the English Code and Trial by Jury, decreeing Roads, and pro-
hibiting the spread of Slavery ; while a boulder of the drift, lifting
itself up through the natural turf, serves as a desk for the recording
clerk. Below them, in the magnificent estuary of the river
Niagara, the waters of all the Upper Lakes are swirling by, not yet
recovered from the agonies of the long gorge above, and the leap
at Table Rock. — Even here, at the opening and close of this pri-



30 Toronto of Old. [_§ i.

maeval Legislature, some of the decent ceremonial was observed
with which, as we have just said, the sadly inferior site at the em-
bouchure of the Don became afterwards familiar. We learn this from
the narrative of the French Duke de Liancourt, who affords us a
glimpse of the scene at Newark on the occasion of a Parliament
therein 1795. " The whole retinue of the Governor," he says,
4t consisted in a guard of fifty men of the garrison of the fort.
Draped in silk, he entered the Hall with his hat on his head,
attended by his adjutant and two secretaries. The two members
of the Legislative Council gave, by their speaker, notice of it to the
Assembly. Five members of the latter having appeared at the bar,
the Governor delivered a speech, modelled after that of the King, on
the political affairs of Europe, on the treaty concluded with the
United States (Jay's treaty of 1794), which he mentioned in expres-
sions very favourable to the Union ; and on the peculiar concerns
of Canada." (Travels, i. 258.)

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



§ i.] (Palace Street to the Market (Place. 31

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

On our first visit to Southampton, many years ago, we remem-
ber observing a resemblance between the walk to the river Itchen,
shaded by trees and commanding a wide water- view on the south,
and the margin of the harbour of York.

In the interval between the points where now Princes Street and
Caroline Street descend to the water's edge, was a favourite land-
ing-place for the small craft of the bay — a wide and clean gravelly
beach, with a convenient ascent to the cliff above. Here, on fine
mornings, at the proper season, skiffs and canoes, log and birch-
bark, were to be seen putting in, weighed heavily down with fish,
speared or otherwise taken during the preceding night, in the lake,
bay, or neighbouring river. Occasionally a huge sturgeon would
be landed, one struggle of which might suffice to upset a small
boat. Here were to be purchased in quantities, salmon, pickerel,
masquelonge, whitefish and herrings j with the smaller fry of
perch, bass and sunfish. Here, too, would be displayed unsightly
catfish, suckers, lampreys, and other eels ; and sometimes lizards,
young alligators for size. Specimens, also, of the curious steel-
clad, inflexible, vicious-looking pipe-fish were not uncommon.
About the submerged timbers of the wharves this creature was
often to be seen — at one moment stationary and still, like the
dragon-fly or humming-bird poised on the wing, then, like those
nervous denizens of the air, giving a sudden dart off to the right
or left, without curving its body.

Across the bay, from this landing-place, a little to the eastward,
was the narrowest part of the peninsula, a neck of sand, destitute



32 Toronto of Old. [§ i.

of trees, known as the portage or carrying-place, where, from time
immemorial, canoes and small boats were wont to be transferred
to and from the lake.

Along the bank, above the landing-place, Indian encampments
were occasionally set up. Here, in comfortless wigwams, we have
seen Dr. Lee, a medical man attached to the Indian department,
administering from an ordinary tin cup, nauseous but salutary
draughts to sick and convalescent squaws. It was the duty of
Dr. Lee to visit Indian settlements and prescribe for the sick. In
the discharge of his duty he performed long journeys, on horse-
back, to Penetanguishene and other distant posts, carrying with
him his drugs and apparatus in saddle-bags. When advanced in
years, and somewhat disabled in regard to activity of movement.
Dr. Lee was attached to the Parliamentary staff as Usher of the
Black Rod. — The locality at which we are glancing suggests the
name of another never-to-be-forgotten medical man, whose home
and property were close at hand. This is the eminent surgeon
and physician, Christopher Widmer.

It is to be regretted that Dr. Widmer left behind him no written
memorials of his long and varied experience. Before his settle-
ment in York, he had been a staff cavalry surgeon, on active ser-
vice during the campaigns in the Peninsula. A personal narrative
of his public life would have been full of interest. But his ambi-
tion was content with the homage of his contemporaries, rich and
poor, rendered with sincerity to his pre-eminent abilities and inex-
tinguishable zeal as a surgeon and physician. Long after his retire-
ment from general practice, he was every day to be seen passing
to and from the old Hospital on King Street, conveyed in his well-
known cabriolet, and guiding with his own hand the reins con-
ducted in through the front window of the vehicle. He had now
attained a great age ; but his slender form continued erect ; the
hat was worn jauntily, as in other days, and the dress was ever
scrupulously exact ; the expression of the face in repose was some-
what abstracted and sad, but a quick smile appeared at the recog-
nition of friends. The ordinary engravings of Harvey, the dis-
coverer of the circulation of the blood, recall in some degree the
countenance of Dr. Widmer. Within the General Hospital, a por-
trait of him is appropriately preserved. One of the earliest, and
at the same time one of the most graceful lady-equestrians ever
seen in York was this gentleman's accomplished wife. At a later



$ i.] (Palace Street to the Market (Place. 33

period a sister of Mr. Justice Willis was also conspicuous as a skil-
ful and fearless horse-woman. The description in the Percy Anec-
dotes of the Princess Amelia, youngest daughter of George I\.\ is
curiously applicable to the last-named lady, who united to the
amiable peculiarities indicated, talents and virtues of the highest
order. " She," the brothers Sholto and Reuben say, " was of a
masculine turn of mind, and evinced this strikingly enough in her
dress and manners : she generally wore a riding-habit in the Ger-
man fashion with a round hat; and delighted very much in
attending her stables, particularly when any of the horses were out
of order." At a phenomenon such as this, suddenly appearing in
their midst, the staid and simple-minded society of York stood for
a while aghast.

In the Loyalist of Nov. 15, 1828, we have the announcement of
a Medical partnership entered into between Dr. Widmer and Dr.
Diehl. It reads thus : " Doctor Widmer, finding his professional
engagements much extended of late, and occasionally too arduous
for one person, has been induced to enter into partnership with
Doctor Diehl, a respectable practitioner, late of Montreal. It is
expected that their united exertions will prevent in future any dis-
appointment to Dr. Widmer's friends, both in Town and Country.
Dr. Diehl's residence is at present at Mr. Hayes' Boarding-house.
York, Oct. 28, 1828." Dr. Diehl died at Toronto, March 5, 1868.

At the south-west corner of Princes Street, near where we are
now supposing ourselves to be, was a building popularly known as
Russell Abbey. It was the house of the Hon. Peter Russell, and,
after his decease, of his maiden sister, Miss Elizabeth Russell, a
lady of great refinement, who survived her brother many years.
The edifice, like most of the early homes of York, was of one storey
only ; but it exhibited in its design a degree of elegance and some
peculiarities. To a central building were attached wings with
gables to the south : the windows had each an architectural deco-
ration or pediment over it. It was this feature, we believe, that
was supposed to give to the place something of a monastic air ;
to entitle it even to the name of " Abbey." In front, a dwarf stone
wall with a light wooden paling surrounded a lawn, on which grew
tall acacias or locusts. Mr. Russell was a remote scion of the
Bedford Russells. He apparently desired to lay the foundation of
a solid landed estate in Upper Canada. His position as Admi-
nistrator, on the departure of the first Governor of the Province,
c



34 Toronto of Old. [§ u

gave him facilities for the selection and acquisition of wild lands.
The duality necessarily assumed in the wording of the Patents by
which the Administrator made grants to himself, seems to have
been regarded by some as having a touch of the comic in it. Hence
among the early people of these parts the name of Peter Russell
was occasionally to be heard quoted good-humouredly, not mal-
ignantly, as an example of "the man who would do well unto him-
self." On the death of Mr. Russell, his property passed into the
hands of his sister, who bequeathed the whole to Dr. William
Warren Baldwin, into whose possession also came the valuable
family plate, elaborately embossed with the armorial bearings of
the Russells. Russell Hill, long the residence of Admiral Augus-
tus Baldwin, had its name from Mr. Russell , and in one of the
elder branches of the Baldwin family, Russell is continued as a
baptismal name. In the same family is also preserved an interest-
ing portrait of Mr. Peter Russell himself, from which we can see
that he was a gentleman of portly presence, of strongly marked
features, of the Thomas Jefferson type. We shall have occasion
hereafter to speak frequently of Mr'. Russell.

Russell Abbey became afterwards the residence of Bishop Mac-
donell, a universally-respected Scottish Roman Catholic ecclesias-
tic, whose episcopal title was at first derived from Rhesina in par-
tibus, but afterwards from our Canadian Kingston, where his home
usually was. His civil duties, as a member of the Legislative
Council of Upper Canada, required his presence in York during
the Parliamentary sessions. We have in our possession a fine mez-
zotint of Sir M. A. Shee's portrait of Bishop Macdonell. It used
to be supposed by some that the occupancy of Russell Abbey by
the Bishop caused the portion of Front Street which lies eastward
of the Market-place, to be denominated Palace Street. But the
name appears in plans of York of a date many years anterior to
that occupancy.

In connection with this mention of Bishop Macdonell, it may
be of some interest to add that, in 1826, Thomas Weld, of Lul-
worth Castle, Dorsetshire, was consecrated as his coadjutor, in
England, under the title of Bishop of Amylae. But it does not
appear that he ever came out to Canada. (This was afterwards
the well-known English Cardinal.) He had been a layman, and
married, up to the year 1825 ; when, on the death of his wife, he
took orders ; and in one year he was, as just stated, made a
Bishop.



§ i.] (Palace Street to the Market (Place. 35

Russell Abbey may indeed have been styled the " Palace" ; but
it was probably from being the residence of one who for three
years administered the Government ; or the name " Palac? Street''
itself may have suggested the appellation. " Palace Street" was
no doubt intended to indicate the fact that it led directly to the
Government reservation at the end of the Town on which the Par-
liament houses were erected, and where it was supposed the " Pa-
lais du Gouvernement," the official residence of the representative
of the Sovereign in the Province would eventually be. On an
Official Plan of this region, of the year 18 10, the Parliament
Buildings themselves are styled " Government House."

At the laying out of York, however, we find, from the plans,
that the name given in the first instance to the Front street of the
town was, not Palace Street, but King Street. Modern King
Street was then Duke Street, and modern Duke Street, Duchess
Street. These street names were intended as loyal compliments
to members of the reigning family ; to George the Third ; to his
son the popular Duke of York, from whom, as we shall learn here-
after, the town itself was named ; to the Duchess of York, the
eldest daughter of the King of Prussia. In the cross streets the
same chivalrous devotion to the Hanoverian dynasty was exhibited.
George street, the boundary westward of the first nucleus of York,
bore the name of the heir-apparent, George, Prince of Wales.
The next street eastward was honoured with the name of his next
brother, Frederick, the Duke of York himself. And the succeeding
street eastward, Caroline Street, had imposed upon it that of the
Princess of Wales, afterwards so unhappily famous as George the
Fourth's Queen Caroline. Whilst in Princes Street (for such is the
correct orthography, as the old plans show, and not Princess
Street, as is generally seen now,) the rest of the male members of
the royal family were collectively commemorated, namely, the
Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Kent, the Duke of Cumberland,
the Duke of Sussex, and the Duke of Cambridge.

When the Canadian town of York was first projected, the mar-
riage of the Duke of York with the daughter of the King of Prus-
sia, Frederica Charlotta Ulrica, had only recently been celebrated
at Berlin. It was considered at the time an event of importance,
and the ceremonies on the occasion are given with some minute-
ness in the Annual Register for 1 791. We are there informed that
" the supper was served at six tables; that the first was placed



36 Toronto of Old. [§ 1.

under a canopy of crimson velvet, and the victuals (as the record
terms them) served on gold dishes and plates j that Lieutenant-
General Bornstedt and Count Bruhl had the honour to carve,