Toronto of Old Part 9

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 Gourlay. 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 Canada, with a view to the promotion of emigration. To inform himself of the actual condition of the young colony, he addressed a series of questions to persons of experience and intelligence in every towns.h.i.+p 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 p.r.o.nounce ill-judged or irrelevant.

But here again it is easy to see that personal character and temperament marred the usefulness of a clever man. His inordinate self-esteem and pugnaciousness, insufficiently controlled, speedily rendered him offensive, especially in a community const.i.tuted 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, threatened that town with extinction; at all events, with the obliteration of its name, and the trans.m.u.tation 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 cla.s.ses 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, Dublin 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 pa.s.sing, we once saw him under circ.u.mstances that were deeply touching. Sentence of death had been p.r.o.nounced 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 Lieutenant-Governor. As he came out of the Sheriff's room, after receiving the final announcement that there could be no further delay, the white collars on each side of his face were wet through and through with the tears that were gus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociated in our memory with Court House Square, the recollection of another comes up, which once or twice a year used formerly to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 periodical, already quoted--Patrick Swift's Almanac: "The backwoodsman, while he lays the axe to the root of the oak in the forests of Canada, should never forget that a base ba.s.swood 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 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 sometimes, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 composing" 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 a.s.sembled on these occasions: and once a panic arose as preaching was going on in the public room of Lawrence'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 themselves under the temporal and spiritual charge of a high priest, who calls himself David. His real name is David Willson. The Temple (as the building appropriated to the celebration of 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; 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 long: but Mr. David seems to understand clearly, as far as the temporal concerns of his infatuated followers go, that the old-fas.h.i.+oned signification of _meum_ and _tuum_ are religiously centered in his own _sanctum_. It was natural that such a field should produce 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 princ.i.p.al speaker is David Willson, a.s.sisted by Murdoch McLeod, Samuel Hughes, and others. Their music, vocal and instrumental, is excellent, and their preachers seek no pay from the Governor out of the taxes."

On week-days, Willson was often to be seen, like any other industrious 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 without 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 occasion 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 s.p.a.ce; as also to those connected with the region to the north, formerly the play-ground of the District Grammar 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-fas.h.i.+oned watchmaker's place of business, was in some sort expressed by the name Clinkunbroomer. But in old local lists we observe the orthography of this name to have been Klinkenbrunner, which conveys another 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 observable.

Among jurymen and others, at an early period, we meet with Nicholas Klinkenbrunner, Gerhard Kuch, John Vanzantee, Barnabas Vanderburgh, Lodowick Weidemann, Francis Freder, Peter Hultz, Jacob Wintersteen, John Shunk, Leonard Klink, and so on.

So early as 1795 Liancourt speaks of a migration hither of German settlers from the other side of the Lake. He says a number of German settlers collected at Hamburg, an agent had brought out to settle on "Captain Williamson's Demesne" in the State of New York. After subsisting for some time there at the expense of Capt. Williamson, (who, it was stated, was really the representative of one of the Pulteneys in England), they decamped in a body to the north side of the Lake, and especially to York and its neighbourhood, at the instigation of one Berczy, and "gained over, if we may believe common fame," Liancourt says, "by the English;" gained over, rather, it is likely, by the prospect of acquiring freehold property for nothing, instead of holding under a patroon or American feudal lord.

Probably it was to the accounts of Capt. Williamson's proceedings, given by these refugees, that a message from Gov. Simcoe to that gentleman, in 1794, was due. Capt. Williamson, who appears to have acquired a supposed personal interest in a large portion of the State of New York, was opening settlements on the inlets on the south side of Lake Ontario, known as Ierondequat and Sodus Bay.

"Last year," Liancourt informs us, "General Simcoe, Governor of Upper Canada, who considered the Forts of Niagara and Oswego, . . . as English property, together with the banks of Lake Ontario, sent an English officer to the Captain, with an injunction, not to persist in his design of forming the settlements." To which message, "the Captain," we are then told, "returned a plain and spirited answer, yet nevertheless conducted himself with a prudence conformable to the circ.u.mstances. All these difficulties, however," it is added, "are now removed by the prospect of the continuance of peace, and still more so by the treaty newly concluded." (Of Mr. Berczy, and the German Settlement proper, we shall discourse at large in our section on Yonge Street.)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VII.

KING STREET: DIGRESSION SOUTHWARDS AT CHURCH STREET: MARKET LANE.

Across Church Street from Clinkunbroomer's were the wooden buildings already referred to, as having remained long in a partially finished state, being the result of a premature speculation. From this point we are induced to turn aside from our direct route for a few moments, attracted by a street which we see a short distance to the south, namely, Market Lane, or Colborne Street, as the modern phraseology is.

In this pa.s.sage was, in the olden time, the Masonic Hall, a wooden building of two storeys. To the young imagination this edifice seemed to possess considerable dignity, from being surmounted by a cupola; the first structure in York that ever enjoyed such a distinction. This ornamental appendage supported above the western gable, by slender props, (intended in fact for the reception of a bell, which, so far as our recollection extends, was never supplied), would appear insignificant enough now; but it was the first budding of the architectural ambition of a young town, which leads at length to turrets, pinnacles, spires and domes.

A staircase on the outside led to the upper storey of the Masonic Hall.

In this place were held the first meetings of the first Mechanics'

Inst.i.tute, organized under the auspices of Moses Fish, a builder of York, and other lovers of knowledge of the olden time. Here were attempted the first popular lectures. Here we remember hearing--certainly some forty years ago--Mr. John Fenton read a paper on the manufacture of steel, using diagrams in ill.u.s.tration: one of them showed the magnified edge of a well-set razor, the serrations all sloping in one direction, by which it might be seen, the lecturer remarked, that unless a man, in shaving, imparted to the instrument in his hand a carefully-studied movement, he was likely "to get into a sc.r.a.pe."--The lower part of the Masonic Hall was for a considerable while used as a school, kept successively by Mr. Stewart and Mr.

Appleton, and afterwards by Mr. Caldicott.

At the corner of Market Lane, on the north side, towards the Market, was Frank's Hotel, an ordinary white frame building. The first theatre of York was extemporized in the ball-room of this house. When fitted up for dramatic purposes, that apartment was approached by a stairway on the outside.

Here companies performed, under the management, at one time, of Mr.

Archbold; at another, of Mr. Talbot; at another, of Mr. Vaughan. The last-named manager, while professionally at York, lost a son by drowning in the Bay. We well remember the poignant distress of the father at the grave, and that his head was bound round on the occasion with a white bandage or napkin. Mrs. Talbot was a great favourite. She performed the part of Cora in Pizarro, and that of Little Pickle, in a comedy of that name, if our memory serves us.

Pizarro, Barbarossa or the Siege of Algiers, Ali Baba or the Forty Thieves, the Lady of the Lake, the Miller and his Men, were among the pieces here represented. The body-guard of the Dey of Algiers, we remember, consisted of two men, who always came in with military precision just after the hero, and placed themselves in a formal manner at fixed distances behind him, like two sentries. They were in fact soldiers from the garrison, we think. All this appeared very effective.

The dramatic appliances and accessories at Frank's were of the humblest kind. The dimensions of the stage must have been very limited: the ceiling of the whole room, we know, was low. As for orchestra--in those days, the princ.i.p.al instrumental artist of the town was Mr. Maxwell, who, well-remembered for his quiet manner, for the shade over one eye, in which was some defect, and for his homely skill on the violin, was generally to be seen and heard, often alone, but sometimes with an a.s.sociate or two, here, as at all other entertainments of importance, public or private. Nevertheless, at that period, to an unsophisticated yet active imagination, innocent of acquaintance with more respectable arrangements, everything seemed charming; each scene, as the bell rang and the baize drew up, was invested with a magical glamour, similar in kind, if not equal in degree, to that which, in the days of our grandfathers, ere yet the modern pa.s.sion for real knowledge had been awakened, fascinated the young Londoner at Drury Lane.

And how curiously were the illusions of the mimic splendors sometimes in a moment broken, as if to admonish the inexperienced spectator of the facts of real life. In the performance of Pizarro, it will be remembered that an attempt is made to bribe a Spanish soldier at his post. He rejects and flings to the ground what is called "a wedge of ma.s.sive gold:"--we recollect the _sound_ produced on the boards of the stage in Frank's by the fall of this wedge of ma.s.sive gold: it instantly betrayed itself by this, as well as by its nimble rebound, to be, of course, a gilded bit of wood.

And it is not alone at obscure village performances that such disclosures occur. At an opera in London, where all appearances were elaborately perfect, we recollect the accidental fall of a goblet which was supposed to be of heavy chased silver, and also filled with wine--a contretemps occasioned by the giddiness of the lad who personated a page: two things were at once clear: the goblet was not of metal, and nothing liquid was contained within it: which recalls a mishap a.s.sociated in our memory with a visit to the Argentina at Rome some years ago: this was the coming off of a wheel from the chariot of a Roman general, at a critical moment: the descent on this occasion from the vehicle to the stage was a true step from the sublime to the ridiculous; for the audience observed the accident, and persisted in their laugh in spite of the heroics which the great commander proceeded to address, in operatic style, to his a.s.sembled army.

It was in the a.s.sembly-room at Frank's, dismantled of its theatrical furniture, that a celebrated fancy ball was given, on the last day of the year 1827, conjointly by Mr. Galt, Commissioner of the Canada Company, and Lady Mary Willis, wife of Mr. Justice Willis. On that occasion the general interests of the Company were to some extent studied in the ornamentation of the room, its floor being decorated with an immense representation, in chalks or water-colour, of the arms of the a.s.sociation. The supporters of the s.h.i.+eld were of colossal dimensions: two lions, rampant, bearing flags turning opposite ways: below, on the riband, in characters proportionably large, was the motto of the Company, "Non mutat genus solum." The sides and ceiling of the room, with the pa.s.sages leading from the front door to it, were covered throughout with branchlets of the hemlock-spruce: nestling in the greenery of this perfect bower were innumerable little coloured lamps, each containing a floating light.

Here, for once, the potent, grave and reverend signiors of York, along with their sons and daughters, indulged in a little insanity. Lady Mary Willis appeared as Mary, Queen of Scots; the Judge himself, during a part of the evening, was in the costume of a gay old lady, the Countess of Desmond, aged one hundred years; Miss Willis, the clever amateur equestrienne, was Folly, with cap and bells; Dr. W. W. Baldwin was a Roman senator; his two sons William and St. George, were the Dioscuri, "Fratres Helenae, lucida Sidera;" his nephew, Augustus Sullivan, was Puss in Boots; Dr. Grant Powell was Dr. Pangloss; Mr. Kerr, a real Otchipway chief, at the time a member of the Legislature, made a magnificent Kentucky backwoodsman, named and ent.i.tled Captain Jedediah Skinner. Mr.

Gregg, of the Commissariat, was Oth.e.l.lo. The Kentuckian (Kerr), professing to be struck with the many fine points of the Moor, as regarded from his point of view, persisted, throughout the evening, in exhibiting an inclination to purchase--an idea naturally much resented by Oth.e.l.lo. Col. Givins, his son Adolphus, Raymond Baby, and others, were Indian chiefs of different tribes, who more than once indulged in the war-dance. Mr. Buchanan, son of the British Consul at New York, was Darnley; Mr. Thomson, of the Canada Company's office, was Rizzio; Mr. G.

A. Barber was a wounded sailor recently from Navarino (that untoward event had lately taken place); his arm was in a sling; he had suffered in reality a mutilation of the right hand by an explosion of gunpowder, on the preceding 5th of November.

Mr. Galt was only about three years in Canada, but this short s.p.a.ce of time sufficed to enable him to lay the foundation of the Canada Company wisely and well, as is shewn by its duration and prosperity. The feat was not accomplished without some antagonism springing up between himself and the local governmental authorities, whom he was inclined to treat rather haughtily.

It is a study to observe how frequently, at an early stage of Upper Canadian society, a mutual antipathy manifested itself between visitors from the transatlantic world, tourists and settlers (intending and actual), and the first occupants of such places of trust and emolument as then existed. It was a feeling that grew partly out of personal considerations, and partly out of difference of opinion in regard to public policy. A gulf thus began at an early period to open between two sections of the community, which widened painfully for a time in after years;--a fissure, which, at its first appearance, a little philosophy on both sides would have closed up. Men of intelligence, who had risen to position and acquired all their experience in a remote, diminutive settlement, might have been quite sure that their grasp of great imperial and human questions, when they arose, would be very imperfect; they might, therefore, rationally have rejoiced at the accession of new minds and additional light to help them in the day of necessity. And on the other hand, the fresh immigrant or casual visitor, trained to maturity amidst the combinations of an old society, and possessing a knowledge of its past, might have comprehended thoroughly the exact condition of thought and feeling in a community such as that which he was approaching, and so might have regarded its ideas with charity, and spoken of them in a tone conciliatory and delicate. On both sides, the maxim _Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner_ would have had a salutary and composing effect, "for," as the author of Realmah well says, "in truth, one would never be angry with anybody, if one understood him or her thoroughly."

We regret that we cannot recover two small "paper pellets of the brain,"

of this period, arising out of the discussions connected with the appointment of an outsider (Mr. Justice Willis) to the Bench of Upper Canada. They would have been ill.u.s.trative of the times. They were in the shape of two advertis.e.m.e.nts, one in reply to the other, in a local Paper: one was the elaborate t.i.tle-page of a pamphlet "shortly to appear," on the existing system of Jurisprudence in Upper Canada; with the motto "Meliora sperans;" the other was an exact counterpart of the first, only in reversed terms, and bearing the motto "Deteriora timens."

In the early stages of all the colonies it is obviously inevitable that appointments _ab extra_ to public office must occasionally, and even frequently, be made. Local aspirants are thus subject to disappointments; and men of considerable ability may now and then feel themselves overshadowed, and imagine themselves depressed, through the introduction of talent transcending their own. Some manifestations of discontent and impatience may thus always be expected to appear. But in a few years this state of things comes naturally to an end. In no public exigency is there any longer a necessity to look to external sources for help. A home supply of persons "duly qualified to serve G.o.d in Church and State" is legitimately developed, as we see in the United States, among ourselves, and in all the other larger settlements from the British Islands.

The _denouement_ of the Willis-trouble may be gathered from the following notice in the _Gazette_ of Thursday, July 17th, 1828, now lying before us: "His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor has been pleased to appoint, by Commission under the Great Seal, Christopher Alexander Hagerman, Esq., to be a Judge in the Court of King's Bench for this Province, in the room of the Hon. John Walpole Willis, _amoved_, until the King's pleasure shall be signified."

Lady Mary Willis, a.s.sociated with Mr. Galt in the Fancy Ball just spoken of, was a daughter of the Earl of Strathmore. A trial of a painful nature known as Willis v. Bernard in the annals of the Common Pleas, arising out of circ.u.mstances connected with Judge Willis's brief residence in Canada, took place in 1832 before the Chief Justice of England and a special jury, at Westminster, Mr. Sergeant Wilde acting for the plaintiff; Mr. Sergeant Spankie, Mr. Sergeant Storks and Mr.

Thesiger, for the defendant: when a thousand pounds were awarded as damages to the plaintiff. On this occasion Mr. Galt was examined as a witness. Judge Willis was afterwards appointed Chief Justice of Demerara.

In the _Canadian Literary Magazine_ for April, 1833, there is a notice of Mr. Galt, with a full-length pen-and-ink portrait, similar to those which used formerly to appear in _Fraser_. In front of the figure is a bust of Lord Byron; behind, on a wall, is a Map shewing the Canadian Lakes, with York marked conspicuously. From the accompanying memoir we learn that "Mr. Galt always conducted himself as a man of the strictest probity and honour. He was warm in his friends.h.i.+ps, and extremely hospitable in his Log Priory at Guelph, and thoroughly esteemed by those who had an opportunity of mingling with him in close and daily intimacy.

He was the first to adopt the plan of opening roads before making a settlement, instead of leaving them to be cut, as heretofore, by the settlers themselves--a plan which, under the irregular and patchwork system of settling the country then prevailing, has r.e.t.a.r.ded the improvement of the Province more, perhaps, than any other cause."

In his Autobiography Mr. Galt refers to this notice of himself in the _Canadian Literary Magazine_, especially in respect to an intimation given therein that contemporaries at York accused him of playing "Captain Grand" occasionally, and "looking down on the inhabitants of Upper Canada." He does not affect to say that it was not so; he even rather unamiably adds: "The fact is, I never thought about them [_i. e._, these inhabitants], unless to notice some ludicrous peculiarity of individuals."