Toronto of Old Part 29

And if to this day the University building, in its exterior aspect and accidents, is startling to those who knew its site when as yet in a state of nature, its interior also, when traversed and explored, tends in the same persons to produce a degree of confusion as between things new and old; as between Canada and elsewhere. Within its walls are to be seen appliances and conveniences and luxuries for the behoof and use of teacher and student, unknown a few years since in many an ancient seat of learning.

In a library of Old World aspect and arrangement, is a collection rich in the Greek and Latin Cla.s.sics, in Epigraphy and Archaeology, beyond anything of the kind in any other collection on this continent, and beyond what is to be met with in those departments in many a separate College within the precincts of the ancient Universities--a pre-eminence due to the tastes and special studies of the first president and other early professors of the Canadian Inst.i.tution.

Strange, it is, yet true that hither, as to a recognized source of certain aid in identification and decipherment, are duly transmitted, by cast, rubbing and photograph, the "finds" that from time to time create such excitement and delight among epigraphists, and ethnologists, and other minute historical investigators in the British Islands and elsewhere.

There used to be preserved in the Old Hospital a model in cork and card-board, of the great educational establishment to which, in the first instance, the Avenue was expected to form an approach. It was very curious. Had it been really followed, a large portion of the park provided for the reception of the University would have been covered with buildings. A mult.i.tude of edifices, isolated and varying in magnitude, were scattered about, with gardens and ornamental grounds interspersed. These were halls of science, lecture-rooms, laboratories, residences for president, vice-president, professors, officials and servants of every grade. On the widely extended premises occupied by the proposed inst.i.tution, a population was apparently expected to be found that would, of itself, have almost sufficed to justify representation in Parliament--a privilege the college was actually by its charter to enjoy. We should have had in fact realized before our eyes, on a considerable scale, a part of the dreams of Plato and More, a fragment of Atlantis and Utopia.

When the moment arrived, however, for calling into visible being the long contemplated seat of learning, it was found expedient to abandon the elaborate model which had been constructed. Mr. Young, a local architect, was directed to devise new plans. His ideas appear to have been wholly modern. Notwithstanding the tenor of the Royal Charter, which suggested the precedents of the old universities of "our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland," wherever it should be practicable to follow them, the architecture and arrangements customary in those places were ignored. Girard College, Philadelphia, seems to have inspired the new designs. However, only a minute fragment of one of the buildings of the new plan was destined ever to exist.

The formal commencement of the abortive work took place on the 23rd of April, 1842--a day indelibly impressed on the memory of those who partic.i.p.ated in the proceedings. It was one of the sunniest and brightest of days. In the year just named it happened that so early as St. George's day the leaves of the horse-chestnut were bursting their glossy sheaths, and vegetation generally was in a very advanced stage.

A procession, such as had never before been seen in these parts, slowly defiled up the Avenue to the spot where the corner-stone of the proposed University was to be laid.

A highly wrought contemporary description of the scene is given in a note in _Curiae Canadenses_: "The vast procession opened its ranks, and his Excellency the Chancellor, with the President, the Lord Bishop of Toronto, on his right, and the Senior Visitor, the Chief Justice, on his left, proceeded on foot through the College Avenue to the University grounds. The countless array moved forward to the sound of military music. The sun shone out with cloudless meridian splendour; one blaze of banners flushed upon the admiring eye.--The Governor's rich Lord-Lieutenant's dress, the Bishop's sacerdotal robes, the Judicial Ermine of the Chief Justice, the splendid Convocation robes of Dr.

McCaul, the gorgeous uniforms of the suite, the accoutrements of the numerous Firemen, the national badges worn by the Office-bearers of the different Societies, and what on such a day (St. George's) must not be omitted, the Red Crosses on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of England's congregated sons, the grave habiliments of the Clergy and Lawyers, and the glancing lances and waving plumes of the First Incorporated Dragoons, all formed one moving picture of civic pomp, one glorious spectacle which can never be remembered but with satisfaction by those who had the good fortune to witness it. The following stanza from a Latin Ode," the note goes on to say, "recited by Master Draper, son of the late Attorney-General, after the ceremony, expresses in beautifully cla.s.sical language the proud occasion of all this joy and splendid pageantry:--

"Io! triumphe! flos Canadensium!

Est alma n.o.bis mater; aemula Britanniae haec sit nostra terra,-- Terra diu domibus negata!"

Another contemporary account adds: "As the procession drew nearer to the site where the stone was to be laid, the 43rd Regiment lined the way, with soldiers bearing arms, and placed on either side, at equal intervals. The 93rd Regiment was not on duty here, but in every direction the gallant Highlanders were scattered through the crowd, and added by their national garb and nodding plumes to the varied beauty of the animated scene. When the site was reached," this account says, "a new feature was added to the interest of the ceremony. Close to the spot, the north-east corner, where the foundation was to be deposited, a temporary building had been erected for the Chancellor, and there, accompanied by the officers of the University and his suite, he took his stand. Fronting this was a kind of amphitheatre of seats, constructed for the occasion, tier rising above tier, densely filled with ladies, who thus commanded a view of the whole ceremony. Between this amphitheatre and the place where the Chancellor stood, the procession ranged itself."

The Chancellor above spoken of was the Governor General of the day, Sir Charles Bagot, a man of n.o.ble bearing and genial, pleasant aspect. He entered with all the more spirit into the ceremonies described, from being himself a graduate of one of the old universities. Memories of far-off Oxford and Christ Church would be sure to be roused amidst the proceedings that rendered the 23rd of April, 1842, so memorable amongst us. A brother of Sir Charles' was at the time Bishop of Oxford. In his suite, as one of his Secretaries, was Captain Henry Bagot, of the Royal Navy, his own son. Preceding him in the procession, bearing a large gilded mace, was an "Esquire Bedell," like the Chancellor himself, a Christ Church man, Mr. William Cayley, subsequently a member of the Canadian Government.

Although breaking ground for the University building had been long delayed, the commencement now made proved to be premature. The edifice begun was never completed, as we have already intimated; and even in its imperfect, fragmentary condition, it was not fated to be for any great length of time a scene of learned labours. In 1856 its fortune was to be converted into a Female Department for the over-crowded Provincial Lunatic Asylum.

The educational system inaugurated in the new building in 1843 was, as the plate enclosed in the foundation-stone finely expressed it, "praestantissimum ad exemplar Britannicarum Universitatum." But the "exemplar" was not, in practice, found to be, as a whole, adapted to the genius of the Western Canadian people.

The revision of the University scheme with a view to the necessities of Western Canada, was signalized by the erection in 1857 of a new building on an entirely different site, and a migration to it bodily, of president, professors and students, without departing however from the bounds of the s.p.a.cious park originally provided for the inst.i.tution; and it is remarkable that, while deviating, educationally and otherwise, in some points, from the pattern of the ancient universities, as they were in 1842, a nearer approach, architecturally, was made to the mediaeval English College than any that had been thought of before. Mr.

c.u.mberland, the designer of the really fine and most appropriate building in which the University at length found a resting place, was, as is evident, a man after the heart of Wykeham and Wayneflete.

The story of our University is a part of the history of Upper Canada.

From the first foundation of the colony the idea of some such seat of learning entered into the scheme of its organization. In 1791, before he had yet left England for the unbroken wilderness in which his Government was to be set up, we have General Simcoe speaking to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, of "a college of a higher cla.s.s," as desirable in the community which he was about to create. "A college of a higher cla.s.s," he says, "would be eminently useful, and would give a tone of principles and of manners that would be of infinite support to Government." In the same letter he remarks to Sir Joseph, "My friend the Marquis of Buckingham has suggested that Government might allow me a sum of money to be laid out for a Public Library, to be composed of such books as might be useful in the colony. He instanced the Encyclopaedia, extracts from which might occasionally be published in the newspapers.

It is possible," he adds, "private donations might be obtained, and that it would become an object of Royal munificence."

It was naturally long before the community of Upper Canada was ripe for a college of the character contemplated; but provision for its ultimate existence and sustenance was made, almost from the beginning, in the a.s.signment to that object of a fixed and liberal portion of the public lands of the country.

In 1819-20, Gourlay spoke of the unpreparedness of Upper Canada as yet for a seat of learning of a high grade. Meanwhile, as a temporary expedient, he suggested a romantic scheme. "It has been proposed," he says, "to have a college in Upper Canada; and no doubt in time colleges will grow up there. At present, and for a considerable period to come, any effort to found a college would prove abortive. There could neither be got masters nor scholars to ensure a tolerable commencement for ten years to come; and a feeble beginning might beget a feeble race of teachers and pupils. In the United States," he continued, "academies and colleges, though fast improving, are yet but raw; and greatly inferior to those in Britain, generally speaking. Twenty-five lads sent annually at public charge from Upper Canada to British Universities, would draw after them many more. The youths themselves, generally, would become desirous of making a voyage in quest of learning.--Crossing the ocean on such an errand would elevate their ideas, and stir them up to extraordinary exertions. They would become finished preachers, lawyers, physicians, merchants; and, returning to their native country, would repay in wisdom what was expended in goodness and liberality. What more especially invites the adoption of such a scheme is the amiable and affectionate connection which it would tend to establish between Canada and Britain. But it will not do at present to follow out the idea."

Gourlay's prediction that "in time colleges will grow up there" has been speedily verified. The town especially, of which in its infant state he spoke in such terms of contempt, has been so prolific of colleges that it is now become a kind of Salamanca for the country at large; a place of resort for students from all parts. It is well probably for Canada that the scheme of drafting a batch of young students periodically to the old country, was not adopted. Canada would thereby possibly, on the one hand, have lost the services of some of the cleverest of her sons, who, on obtaining academic distinction would have preferred to remain in the mother country, entering on one or other of the public careers to which academic distinction there opens the ready path; and, on the other hand, she should, in many an instance, it is to be feared, have received back her sons just unfitted, in temper and habit, for life under matter-of-fact colonial conditions.

In the original planting of the Avenue, up whose fine vista we have been gazing, the mistake was committed of imitating nature too closely.

Numerous trees and shrubs of different kinds and habits were mingled together as they are usually to be seen in a wild primitive wood; and thus the growth and fair development of all were hindered. The horse-chestnuts alone should have been relied on to give character to the Avenue; and of these there should have been on each side a double row, with a promenade for pedestrians underneath, after the manner of the great walks in the public parks of the old towns of Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXII.

QUEEN STREET--FROM THE COLLEGE AVENUE TO BROCK STREET AND SPADINA AVENUE.

Pursuing our way now westward from the Avenue leading to the University, we pa.s.s the Powell park-lot, on which was, up to recent times, the family vault of the Powells, descendants of the Chief Justice. The whole property was named by the fancy of the first possessor, Caer-Howell, Castle Howell, in allusion to the mythic Hoel, to whom all ap-Hoels trace their origin. Dummer Street, which opens northward a little further on, retains, as we have said, the second baptismal name of Chief Justice Powell.

Beverley House and its surroundings, on the side opposite Caer Howell estate, recall one whose name and memory must repeatedly recur in every narrative of our later Canadian history, Sir John Robinson.--This was the residence temporarily of Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, while present in Toronto as Governor-General of the Canadas in 1839-40.

A kitchen on a large scale which he caused to be built on the premises of Beverley House, is supposed to have been an auxiliary, indirectly, in getting the Union measure through the Upper Canada Parliament. In a letter to a friend, written at Montreal in 1840, he gives a sketch of his every-day life: it describes equally well the daily distribution of his time here in Toronto. "Work in my room," he says, "till three o'clock; a ride with my aide-de-camp till five; work again till dinner; at dinner till nine; and work again till early next morning. This is my daily routine. My dinners last till ten, when I have company, which is about three times a week; except one night in the week, when I receive about 150 people."

His policy was, as we know, very successful. Of the state of things at Toronto, and in Upper Canada generally, after the Union measure had been pushed through, he writes to a friend thus: "I have prorogued my Parliament," he says, "and I send you my Speech. Never was such unanimity! When the Speaker read it in the Commons, after the prorogation, they gave me three cheers, in which even the ultras united.

In fact, as the matter stands now, the Province is in a state of peace and harmony which, three months ago, I thought was utterly hopeless."

In a private letter of the following year (1841), he alludes to his influence in these terms: "I am in the midst," he says, "of the bustle attending the opening of the Session, and have, besides, a ministerial 'crisis' on my hands. The latter I shall get through triumphantly, unless my _wand_, as they call it here, has lost all power over the members, which I do not believe to be the case." This was written at Kingston, where, it will be remembered, the seat of Government was established for a short time after the union of Upper and Lower Canada.

Through Poulett Thomson, Toronto for a few months and to the extent of one-half, was the seat of a modern feudal barony. On being elevated to the peerage, the Governor-General, who had carried the Union, was created Baron Sydenham of Sydenham in Kent and Toronto in Canada.

At one time it was expected that Toronto would be the capital of the United Province, but its liege lord p.r.o.nounced it to be "too far and out of the way;" though at the same time he gives it as his opinion that "Kingston or Bytown would do." Thus in 1840, and in July, 1841, he writes: "I have every reason to be satisfied with having selected this place (Kingston) as the new Capital. There is no situation in the Province so well adapted for the seat of Government from its central position; and certainly we are as near England as we should be anywhere else in the whole of Canada. My last letters reached me," he says, "in fifteen days from London! So much for steam and railways." Being in very delicate health, it had been Lord Sydenham's intention to return to England in September, 1841. On the 5th of June he writes at Kingston to a friend: "I long for September, beyond which I will not stay if they were to make me Duke of Canada and Prince of Regiopolis, as this place is called." But he was never more to see England. On the 4th of the September in which he had hoped to leave Canada, he suffered a fracture of the right leg and other injury by a fall from his horse. He never rallied from the shock. His age was only 42.

The Park lot which follows that occupied by Chief Justice Powell was selected by Solicitor-General Gray, of whom fully already. It afterwards became the property of Mr. D'Arcy Boulton, eldest son of Mr. Justice Boulton, and was known as the Grange estate. The house which bears the name of the "Grange," was built at the beginning of the brick era of York, and is a favourable specimen of the edifices of that period.

(Beverley House, just noted, was, it may be added, also built by Mr.

D'Arcy Boulton.)

The Grange-gate, now thrust far back by the progress of improvement, was long a familiar landmark on the line of Lot-street. It was just within this gate that the fight already recorded took place between Mr. Justice Boulton's horses, _Bonaparte_ and _Jefferson_, and the bears. A memorandum of Mr. G. S. Jarvis, of Cornwall, in our possession, affirms that Mr. Justice Boulton drove a phaeton of some pretensions, and that his horses, _Bonaparte_ and _Jefferson_, were the crack pair of the day at York. As to some other equipages he says: "The Lieut. Governor's carriage was considered a splendid affair, but some of the Toronto cabs would now throw it into the shade. The carriage of Chief Justice Powell, he adds, was a rough sort of omnibus, and would compare with the jail van used now." (We remember Bishop Strachan's account of a carriage sent up for his own use from Albany or New York; it was constructed on the model of the ordinary oval stage coach, with a kind of hemispherical top.)

To our former notes of Mr. Justice Boulton, we add, that he was the author of a work in quarto published in London in 1806, ent.i.tled a "Sketch of the Province of Upper Canada."

John Street, pa.s.sing south just here, is, as was noted previously, a memorial, so far as its name is concerned, of the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. On the plan of the "new town," as the first expansion westward, of York, was termed,--while this street is marked "John," the next parallel thoroughfare eastward is named "Graves," and the open square included between the two, southward on Front Street, is "Simcoe-place." The three names of the founder of York were thus commemorated. The expression "Simcoe-place" has fallen into disuse. It indicated, of course, the site of the present Parliament Buildings of the Province of Ontario. Graves Street has become Simcoe Street, a name, as we have seen, recently extended to the thoroughfare northward, with which it is nearly in a right line, viz., William Street, which previously recorded, as we have said, the first Christian name of Chief Justice Powell. The name "John Street" has escaped change. The name sounds trivial enough; but it has an interest.

In the minds of the present generation, with John Street will be specially a.s.sociated the memorable landing of the Prince of Wales at Toronto in 1860. At the foot of John Street, for that occasion, there was built a vast semi-colosseum of wood, opening out upon the waters of the Bay; a pile whose capacious concavity was densely filled again and again, during the Prince's visit, with the inhabitants of the town and the population of the surrounding country. And on the brow of the bank, immediately above the so-called amphitheatre, and exactly in the line of John Street, was erected a finely designed triumphal arch, recalling those of Septimus Severus and t.i.tus.

This architectural object, while it stood, gave a peculiarly fine finish to the vista, looking southward along John Street. The usually monotonous water-view presented by the bay and lake, and even the common-place straight line of the Island, seen through the frame-work of three lofty vaulted pa.s.sages, acquired for the moment a genuine picturesqueness. An ephemeral monument; but as long as it stood its effect was delightfully cla.s.sic and beautiful. The whole group--the arch and the huge amphitheatre below, furnished around its upper rim at equal intervals with tall masts, each bearing a graceful gonfalon, and each helping to sustain on high a luxuriant festoon of evergreen which alternately drooped and rose again round the whole structure and along the two sides of the grand roadway up to the arch--all seen under a sky of pure azure, and bathed in cheery sunlight, surrounded too and thronged with a pleased mult.i.tude--const.i.tuted a spectacle not likely to be forgotten.

Turning down John Street a few chains, the curious observer may see on his left a particle of the old area of York retaining several of its original natural features. In the portion of the Macdonell-block not yet divided into building-slips we have a fragment of one of the many shallow ravines which meandered capriciously, every here and there, across the broad site of the intended town. To the pa.s.ser-by it now presents a refres.h.i.+ng bit of bowery meadow, out of which towers up one of the grand elm-trees of the country, with stem of great height and girth, and head of very graceful form, whose healthy and undecayed limbs and long trailing branchlets, clearly show that the human regard which has led to the preservation hitherto of this solitary survivor of the forest has not been thrown away. This elm and the surrounding grove are still favourite stations or resting-places for our migratory birds.

Here, for one place, in the spring, are sure to be heard the first notes of the robin.

At the south-west angle of the Macdonell block still stands in a good state of preservation the mansion put up by the Hon. Alexander Macdonell. We have from time to time spoken of the brick era of York.

Mr. Macdonell's imposing old homestead may be described as belonging to an immediately preceding era--the age of framed timber and weather-board, which followed the primitive or hewn-log period. It is a building of two full storeys, each of considerable elevation. A central portico with columns of the whole height of the house, gives it an air of dignity.

Mr. Macdonell was one more in that large group of military men who served in the American Revolutionary war, under Col. Simcoe, and who were attracted to Upper Canada by the prospects held out by that officer when appointed Governor of the new colony. Mr. Macdonell was the first Sheriff of the Home District. He represented in successive parliaments the Highland const.i.tuency of Glengary, and was chosen Speaker of the House. He was afterwards summoned to the Upper House. He was a friend and correspondent of the Earl of Selkirk, and was desired by that zealous emigrational theorist to undertake the superintendence of the settlement at Kildonan on the Red River. Though he declined this task, he undertook the management of one of the other Highland settlements included in the Earl of Selkirk's scheme, namely, that of Baldoon, on Lake St. Clair; Mr. Douglas undertaking the care of that established at Moulton, at the mouth of the Grand River.

Mr. Macdonell, in person rather tall and thin, of thoughtful aspect, and in manner quiet and reserved, is one of the company of our early worthies whom we personally well remember. An interesting portrait of him exists in the possession of his descendants: it presents him with his hair in powder, and otherwise in the costume of "sixty years since."

He died in 1842, "amid the regrets of a community who," to adopt the language of a contemporary obituary, "loved him for the mild excellence of his domestic and private character, no less than they esteemed him as a public man."

Mr. Miles Macdonell, the first Governor of a.s.siniboia, under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Alexander Macdonell, the chief representative in 1816 of the rival and even hostile Company of the North-West Traders of Montreal, were both near relations of Mr.

Macdonell of York, as also was the barrister, lost in the _Speedy_, and the well-known R. C. Bishop Macdonell of Kingston. Col. Macdonell, slain at Queenston, with General Brock, and whose remains are deposited beneath the column there, was his brother. His son, Mr. Allan Macdonell, has on several occasions stood forward as the friend and spirited advocate of the Indian Tribes, especially of the Lake Superior region, on occasions when their interests, as native lords of the soil, seemed in danger of being overlooked by the Government of the day.

On Richmond Street a little to the west of the Macdonell block, was the town residence of Col. Smith, some time President of the Province of Upper Canada. He was also allied to the family of Mr. Macdonell. Col.

Smith's original homestead was on the Lake Sh.o.r.e to the west, in the neighbourhood of the river Etobic.o.ke. Gourlay in his "Statistical Account of Upper Canada," has chanced to speak of it. "I shall describe the residence and neighbourhood of the President of Upper Canada from remembrance," he says, "journeying past it on my way to York from the westward, by what is called the Lake Road through Etobic.o.ke. For many miles," he says, "not a house had appeared, when I came to that of Colonel Smith, lonely and desolate. It had once been genteel and comfortable; but was now going to decay. A vista had been opened through the woods towards Lake Ontario; but the riotous and dangling undergrowth seemed threatening to retake possession from the Colonel of all that had once been cleared, which was of narrow compa.s.s. How could a solitary half-pay officer help himself," candidly asks Gourlay, "settled down upon a block of land, whose very extent barred out the a.s.sistance and convenience of neighbours? Not a living thing was to be seen around. How different might it be, thought I, were a hundred industrious families compactly settled here out of the redundant population of England!"

"The road was miserable," he continues; "a little way beyond the President's house it was lost on a bank of loose gravel flung up between the contending waters of the lake and the Etobic.o.ke stream." He here went astray. "It was my anxious wish," he says, "to get through the woods before dusk; but the light was nearly gone before the gravel bank was cleared. There seemed but one path, which took to the left. It led me astray: I was lost: and there was nothing for it but to let my little horse take his own way. Abundant time was afforded for reflection on the wretched state of property flung away on half-pay officers. Here was the head man of the Province, 'born to blush unseen,' without even a tolerable bridle-way between him and the capital city, after more than twenty years' possession of his domain. The very gravel-bed which caused me such turmoil might have made a turnpike, but what can be done by a single hand? The President could do little with the axe or wheelbarrow himself; and half-pay could employ but few labourers at 3s. 6d. per day with victuals and drink." He recovers the road at length, and then concludes: "after many a weary twist and turn I found myself," he says, "on the banks of the Humber, where there was a house and a boat."