Part 26 (1/2)
Immediately north, on the same property, the Roman Catholics had previously built their princ.i.p.al place of wors.h.i.+p and numerous appurtenances, attracted possibly to the spot by the expectation that McGill Square would continue for ever an open ornamental piece of ground.
A little farther to the north a cross-street, leading from Yonge Street eastward, bears the name of McGill. An intervening cross-street preserves the name of Mr. Crookshank, who was Mr. McGill's brother-in-law.
The name that appears on the original survey of York and its suburbs as first occupant of the park-lot westward of Mr. McGill's, is that of Mr.
George Playter. This is the Captain Playter, senior, of whom we have already spoken in our excursion up the valley of the Don. We have named him also among the forms of a past age whom we ourselves remember often seeing in the congregation a.s.sembled of old in the wooden St. James'.
Mr. Playter was an Englishman by birth, but had pa.s.sed many of his early years in Philadelphia, where for a time he attached himself to the Society of Friends, having selected as a wife a member of that body. But on the breaking out of the troubles that led to the independence of the United States, his patriotic attachment to old far-off England compelled him, in spite of the peaceful theories of the denomination to which he had united himself, promptly to join the Royalist forces.
He used to give a somewhat humorous account of his sudden return to the military creed of ordinary mundane men. ”Lie there, Quaker!” cried he to his cutaway, b.u.t.tonless, formal coat, as he stripped it off and flung it down, for the purpose of donning the soldier's habiliments. But some of the Quaker observances were never relinquished in his family. We well remember, in the old homestead on the Don, and afterwards at his residence on Caroline Street, a silent mental thanksgiving before meals, that always took place after every one had taken his seat at the table; a brief pause was made, and all bent for a moment slightly forwards. The act was solemn and impressive.
Old Mr. Playter was a man of sprightly and humorous temperament, and his society was accordingly much enjoyed by those who knew him. A precise attention to his dress and person rendered him an excellent type in which to study the costume and style of the ordinary unofficial citizen of a past generation. Colonel M. F. Whitehead, of Port Hope, in a letter kindly expressive of his interest in these reminiscences of York, incidentally furnished a little sketch that will not be out of place here. ”My visits to York, after I was articled to Mr. Ward, in 1819,”
Colonel Whitehead says, ”were frequent. I usually lodged at old Mr.
Playter's, Mrs. Ward's father. [This was when he was still living at the homestead on the Don.] The old gentleman often walked into town with me, by Castle Frank; his three-cornered hat, silver knee-buckles, broad-toed shoes and large buckles, were always carefully arranged.”--To the equipments, so well described by Colonel Whitehead, we add from our own boyish recollection of Sunday sights, white stockings and a gold-headed cane of a length unusual now.
According to a common custom prevalent at an early time, Mr. Playter set apart on his estate on the Don a family burial-plot, where his own remains and those of several members of his family and their descendants were deposited. Mr. George Playter, son of Captain George Playter, was some time Deputy Sheriff of the Home District; and Mr. Eli Playter, another son, represented for some sessions in the Provincial Parliament the North Riding of York. A daughter, who died unmarried in 1832, Miss Hannah Playter, ”Aunt Hannah,” as she was styled in the family, is pleasantly remembered as well for the genuine kindness of her character, as also for the persistency with which, like her father, she carried forward into a new and changed generation, and retained to the last, the costume and manners of the reign of King George the Third.
Immediately in front of the extreme westerly portion of the park lot which we are now pa.s.sing, and on the south side of the present Queen Street in that direction, was situated an early Court House of York, a.s.sociated in the memories of most of the early people with their first acquaintance with forensic pleadings and law proceedings.
This building was a notable object in its day. In an old plan of the town we observe it conspicuously delineated in the locality mentioned--the _other_ public buildings of the place, viz., the Commissariat Stores, the Government House, the Council Chamber (at the present north-west corner of York and Wellington Streets), the District School, St. James's Church, and the Parliament House (by the Little Don), being marked in the same distinguished manner. It was a plain two-storey frame building, erected in the first instance as an ordinary place of abode by Mr. Montgomery, father of the Montgomerys, once of the neighbourhood of Eglinton, on Yonge Street. It stood in a s.p.a.ce defined by the present line of Yonge Street on the west, by nearly the present line of Victoria Street on the east, by Queen Street on the north and by Richmond Street on the south. Though situated nearer Queen Street than Richmond Street, it faced the latter, and was approached from the latter.--It was Mr. Montgomery who obtained by legal process the opening of Queen Street in the rear of his property. In consequence of the ravine of which we have had occasion so often to speak, the allowance for this street as laid down in the first plans of York had been closed up by authority from Yonge Street to Caroline Street.
It was seriously proposed in 1800 to close up Queen Street to the westward also from Yonge Street ”so far as the Common,” that is, the Garrison Reserve, on the ground that such street was wholly unnecessary, there being in that direction already one highway into the town, namely, Richmond Street, situated only ten rods to the south. In 1800 the southern termination of Yonge Street was where we are now pa.s.sing, at the corner of Montgomery's lot. At this point the farmers' waggons from the north turned off to the eastward, proceeding as far as Toronto Street, down which they wended their way to Richmond Street, and so on to Church Street and King Street, finally reaching the Market Place.
Of the opening of Yonge Street through a range of building lots which in 1800 blocked the way from Queen Street southwards, we shall speak hereafter in the excursion which we propose to make through Yonge Street from south to north, the moment we have finished recording our collections and recollections in relation to Queen Street.
_Memories of the Old Court House._
In the old Court House, situated as we have described, we received our first boyish impressions of the solemnities and forms observed in Courts of Law. In paying a visit of curiosity subsequently to the singular series of Law Courts which are to be found ranged along one side of Westminster Hall in London--each one of them in succession entered through the heavy folds of lofty mysterious-looking curtains, each one of them crowded with earnest pleaders and anxious suitors, each one of them provided with a judge elevated in solitary majesty on high, each one of them seeming to the pa.s.sing stranger more like a scene in a drama than a prosaic reality--we could not but revert in memory to the old upper chamber at York where the remote shadows of such things were for the first time encountered.
It was startling to remember of a sudden that our early Upper Canadian Judges, our early Upper Canadian Barristers, came fresh from these Westminster Hall Courts! What a contrast must have been presented to these men in the rude wilds to which they found themselves transported.
Riding the Circuit in the Home, Midland, Eastern and Western Districts at the beginning of the present century was no trivial undertaking.
Accommodation for man and horse was for the most part scant and comfortless. Locomotion by land and water was perilous and slow, and racking to the frame. The apartments procurable for the purposes of the Court were of the humblest kind.
Our pioneer jurisconsults in their several degrees, however, like our pioneers generally, unofficial as well as official, did their duty. They quietly initiated in the country, customs of gravity and order which have now become traditional; and we see the result in the decent dignity which surrounds, at the present day, the administration of justice in Canada in the Courts of every grade.
Prior to the occupation of Mr. Montgomery's house as the Court House at York, the Court of King's Bench held its sessions in a portion of the Government Buildings at the east end of the town, destroyed in the war of 1813. On June 25, 1812, the Sheriff, John Beikie, advertises in the _Gazette_ that ”a Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the Home District will be holden at the Government Buildings in the town of York on Tuesday, the fourteenth day of July now next ensuing, at the hour of ten o'clock in the forenoon, of which all Justices of the Peace, Coroners, Gaolers, High Constables, Constables and Bailiffs are desired to take notice, and that they be then and there present with their Rolls, Records, and other Memoranda to do and perform those things which by reason of their respective offices shall be to be done.”
It is with the Court Room in the Government Buildings that the Judge, Sheriff and Crown Counsel were familiar, who were engulfed in Lake Ontario in 1805. The story of the total loss of the government schooner Speedy, Captain Thomas Paxton, is widely known. In that ill-fated vessel suddenly went down in a gale in the dead of night, along with its commander and crew, Judge Cochrane, Solicitor-General Gray, Mr. Angus McDonell, Sheriff of York, Mr. Fishe, the High Bailiff, an Indian prisoner about to be tried at Presqu'Isle for murder, two interpreters, Cowan and Ruggles, several witnesses, and Mr. Herchmer, a merchant of York; in all thirty-nine persons, of whom no trace was ever afterwards discovered.
The weather was threatening, the season of the year stormy (7th October), and the schooner was suspected not to be sea-worthy. But the orders of the Governor, General Peter Hunter, were peremptory. Mr.
Weekes, of whom we have heard before, escaped the fate that befel so many connected with his profession, by deciding to make the journey to Presqu'Isle on horseback. (For the seat in the House rendered vacant by the sudden removal of Mr. McDonell, Mr. Weekes was the successful candidate.)
The name of the Indian who was on his way to be tried was Ogetonicut.
His brother, Whistling Duck, had been killed by a white man, and he took his revenge on John Sharp, another white man. The deed was done at Ball Point on Lake Scugog, where John Sharp was in charge of a trading-post for furs belonging to the Messrs. Farewell. The Governor had promised, so it was alleged, that the slayer of Whistling Duck should be punished.
But a twelvemonth had elapsed and nothing had been done. The whole tribe, the Muskrat branch of the Chippewas, with their Chief Wabbekisheco at their head, came up in canoes to York on this occasion, starting from the mouth of Annis's creek, near Port Oshawa, and encamping at Gibraltar Point on the peninsula in front of York. A guard of soldiers went over to a.s.sist in the arrest of Ogetonicut, who, it appears, had arrived with the rest. The Chief Wabbekisheco, took the culprit by the shoulder and delivered him up. He was lodged in the jail at York.
During the summer it was proved by means of a survey that the spot where Sharp had been killed was within the District of Newcastle. It was held necessary, therefore, that the trial should take place in that District.
Sellick's, at the Carrying Place, was to have been the scene of the investigation, and thither the _Speedy_ was bound when she foundered.
Mr. Justice Cochrane was a most estimable character personally, and a man of distinguished ability. He was only in his 28th year, and had been Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island before his arrival in Upper Canada. He was a native of Halifax, in Nova Scotia, but had studied law in Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar in England.