Part 18 (1/2)
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XVI.
FROM BERKELEY STREET TO THE BRIDGE AND ACROSS IT.
We now propose to pa.s.s 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 j.a.pan 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociation,” 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 ill.u.s.tration of Indian character and life his specialty. By talent exhibited in this cla.s.s of pictorial delineation, he acquired a distinguished reputation throughout the North American continent; and by his volume of beautifully ill.u.s.trated travels, published in London, and ent.i.tled ”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 weatherc.o.c.k, 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 wors.h.i.+p; 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s and repa.s.s for years before the indifferent gaze of mult.i.tudes 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 ma.s.sive, 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.sist in pus.h.i.+ng forward one stage further the civilizing, humanizing, beautifying, processes already, in a variety of directions, initiated.