Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

CHAPTER VIII

THE CITY OF CROWDS. TORONTO: ONTARIO

I

Toronto is a city of many names. You can call it "The Boston of Canada," because of its aspiration to literature, the theatre and the arts. You can call it "The Second City of Canada," because the fact is incontestable. You can call it "The Queen City," because others do, though, like the writer, you are unable to find the reason why you should. You can say of it, as the Westerners do, "Oh—Toronto!" with very much the same accent that the British dramatist reserves for the censor of plays. But though it already had its host of names, Toronto, to us, was the City of Crowds.

Toronto has interests and beauties. It has its big, natural High Park. It has its charming residential quarters in Rosedale and on The Hill. It has its beautiful lagoon on the lakeside. It has its Yonge Street, forty miles straight. It has the tallest building in the Empire, and some of the largest stores in the Empire. It is busy and bright and brisk. But we found we could not see it for crowds. Or, rather, at first we could not see it for crowds. Later a good Samaritan took us for a pell-mell tour in a motor-car, and we saw a chauffeur's eye view of it. Even then we saw much of it over the massed soft hats of Canada.

We had become inured to crowds. We had seen big, bustling, eager, hearty, good-humoured throngs from St. John's to Quebec. But even that hardening had not proofed us against the mass and enthusiastic violence of the crowd that Toronto turned out to greet the Prince, and continued to turn out to meet him during the days he was there.

On the early morning of Monday, August 25th, in that weather that was already being called "Prince of Wales' weather," the Prince stepped "ashore" at the Government House siding, outside Toronto. There was a skirmishing line of the waiting city flung out to this distant station—including some go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign. It was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility until he had been to Government House and started from there to drive inland to the city and its receptions.

A quick automobile rush—and, by the way, it will be noticed that the Continent of Hustle always uses the long word for the short, "automobile" for "car," "elevator" for "lift," and so on—to the Government House, placed the Prince on a legal footing, and he was ready to enter the city.

Government House is remarkable for the fact that it grew a garden in a single night. It is a comely building of rough-dressed stone, standing in the park-like surroundings of the Rosedale suburb, but in the absence of princes its forecourt is merely a desert of grey stone granules. When His Royal Highness arrived it was a garden of an almost brilliant abundance. There were green lawns, great beds packed wantonly with the brightest flowers, while trees, palms and flowering shrubs crowded the square in luxuriance. A marvel of a garden. A realist policeman, after his first gasp, bent down to examine the green of the lawn, and rose with a Kipps expression on his face and with the single word "Fake" on his lips.

The vivid lawn was green cocoanut matting, the beds were cunning arrangements of flowers in pots, and from pots the trees and shrubs flourished. It was a garden artificial and even more marvellous than we had thought.

The Prince rode through Rosedale to the town. The crowd began outside Government House gates. It was a polite and brightly dressed crowd, for it was drawn from the delightful houses that made islands in the uninterrupted lawns that, with the graceful trees, formed the borders of the winding roads through which he went. Rosedale was once forest on the shores of the old Ontario Lake; the lake has receded three miles and more, but the builders of the city have dealt kindly with the forest, and have touched it as little as they could, so that the old trees blend with the modern lawns to give the new homes an air of infinite charm.

As the Prince drove deeper into the city the crowds thickened, so that when he arrived in the virile, purposeful commercial streets, the sidewalks could no longer contain the mass. They are broad and efficient streets, striking through the town arrow-straight, and giving to the eye superb vistas. But broad though they were, they could not accommodate sightseeing Toronto, and the crowd encroached upon the driveway, much to the disgust of many little boys, who, with their race's contempt for death by automobile, were running or cycling beside the Royal car in their determination to get the maximum of Prince out of a short visit.

The crowd went upward from the roadway also. We had come into our first city of sky-climbing buildings. One of these shoots up some twenty stories, but though this is the tallest "yet," it is surrounded by some considerable neighbours that give the streets great ranges upwards as well as forward. The windows of these great buildings were packed with people, and through the canopy of flags that fluttered on all the route they sent down their cheers to join the welcome on the ground floor.

It was through such crowds that the Prince drove to a greater crowd that was gathered about the Parliament Buildings.

II

The site of the Provincial Parliament Buildings is, as with all these Western cities, very beautifully planned. It is set in the gracious Queen's Park, that forms an avenue of green in the very heart of the town. About the park are the buildings of Toronto University, and the avenue leads down to the dignified old law schools at Osgoode Hall. The Canadians show a sense of appropriate artistry always in the grouping of their public buildings—although, of course, they have had the advantage of beginning before ground-rents and other interests grew too strong for public endeavour.

The Parliament Buildings are of a ruddy sandstone, in a style slightly railway-station Renaissance. They were draped with flags down to the vivid striped platform before the building upon which the reception was held. Great masses of people and many ranks of soldiers filled the lawns before the platform, while to the right was a great flower-bed of infants. A grand-stand was brimming over with school-kiddies ready to cheer at the slightest hint, to sing at command, and to wave flags at all times.

It was a bustling reception from Toronto as parliamentary capital of Ontario, and from Toronto the town. It was packed full of speeches and singing from the children and from a Welsh choir—and Canada flowers Welsh choirs—and presentations from many societies, whose members, wearing the long silk buttonhole tabs stamped with the gold title of the guild or committee to which they belonged, came forward to augment the press on the platform.

These silk tabs are an insignia of Canadian life. The Canadians have an infinite capacity for forming themselves into committees, and clubs, and orders of stout fellows, and all manner of gregarious associations. And when any association shows itself in the sunlight, it distinguishes itself by tagging its members with long, coloured silk tabs. We never went out of sight of tabs on the whole of our trip.

From the Parliament Buildings the Prince drove through the packed town to the Exhibition ground. We passed practically through the whole of the city in these two journeys, travelling miles of streets, yet all the way the mass of people was dense to a remarkable degree. Toronto, we knew, was supposed to have a population of 500,000 people, but long before we reached the end of the drive we began to wonder how the city could possibly keep up the strength on the pavements without running out of inhabitants. It not only kept it up, but it sprang upon us the amazing sight of the Exhibition ground.

In this long and wonderful drive there was but one stop. This was at the City Hall, a big, rough stone building with a soaring campanile. On the broad steps of the hall a host of wounded men in blue were grouped, as though in a grand-stand. The string of cars swerved aside so that the Prince could stop for a few minutes and chat with the men.

His reception here was of overwhelming warmth; men with all manner of hurts, men on crutches and in chairs stood up, or tried to stand up, to cheer him. It was in the truest sense a meeting of comrades, and when a one-legged soldier asked the Prince to pose for a photograph, he did it not merely willingly, but with a jolly and personal friendliness.

The long road to the Exhibition passed through the busy manufacturing centre that has made Toronto famous and rich as a trading city, particularly as a trading city from which agricultural machinery is produced. The Exhibition itself is part of its great commercial enterprise. It is the focus for the whole of Ontario, and perhaps for the whole of Eastern Canada, of all that is up-to-date in the science of production. In the beautiful grounds that lie along the fringe of the inland sea that men have, for convenience' sake, called Lake Ontario, and in fine buildings in those grounds are gathered together exhibits of machinery, textiles, timber, seeds, cattle, and in fact everything concerned with the work of men in cities or on prairies, in offices or factories, farms or orchards.

The Exhibition was breaking records for its visitors already, and the presence of the Prince enabled it to break more. The vastness of the crowd in the grounds was aweing. The gathering of people simply obliterated the grass of the lawns and clogged the roads.

When His Royal Highness had lunched with the administrators of the Exhibition, he came out to a bandstand and publicly declared the grounds opened. The crowd was not merely thick about the stand, but its more venturesome members climbed up among the committee and the camera-men, the latter working so strenuously and in such numbers that they gave the impression that they not only photographed every movement, but also every word the Prince uttered.

The density of the crowd made retreat a problem. Police and Staff had to resolve themselves into human Tanks, and press a way by inches through the enthusiastic throng to the car. The car itself was surrounded, and could only move at a crawl along the roads, and so slow was the going and so lively was the friendliness of the people, that His Royal Highness once and for all threw saluting overboard as a gesture entirely inadequate, and gave his response with a waving hand. The infection of goodwill, too, had caught hold of him, and not satisfied with his attitude, he sprang up in the car and waved standing. In this manner, and with one of his Staff holding him by the belt, he drove through and out of the grounds.

It was a day so packed with extraordinary crowds, that we correspondents grew hopeless before them. We despaired of being able to convey adequately a sense of what was happening; "enthusiasm" was a hard-driven word that day and during the next two, and we would have given the world to find another for a change.

Since I returned I have heard sceptical people say that the stories of these "great receptions" were vamped-up affairs, mere newspaper manufacture. I would like to have had some of those sceptics in Toronto with us on August 25th, 26th and 27th. It would have taught them a very convincing and stirring lesson.

The crowds of the Exhibition ground were followed by crowds at the Public Reception, an "extra" which the Prince himself had added to his program. This was held at the City Hall. It had all the characteristics of these democratic and popular receptions, only it was bigger. Policemen had been drawn about the City Hall, but when the people decided to go in, the police mattered very little. They were submerged by a sea of men and women that swept over them, swept up the big flight of steps and engulfed the Prince in a torrent, every individual particle of which was bent on shaking hands. It was a splendidly-tempered crowd, but it was determined upon that handshake. And it had it. It was at Toronto that, as the Prince phrased it, "My right hand was 'done in.'" This was how Toronto did it in.

III

The visit was not all strenuous affection. There were quiet backwaters in which His Royal Highness obtained some rest, golfing and dancing. One such moment was when on this day he crossed to the Yacht Club, an idyllic place, on the sandspit that encloses the lagoon.

This club, set in the vividly blue waters of the great lake, is a little gem of beauty with its smooth lawns, pretty buildings and fine trees. It is even something more, for every handful of loam on which the lawns and trees grow was transported from the mainland to make fruitful the arid sand of the spit. The Prince had tea on the lawn, while he watched the scores of brisk little boats that had followed him out and hung about awaiting his return like a genial guard of honour.

There was always dancing in honour of the Prince, and always a great deal of expectation as to who would be the lucky partners. His partners, as I have said, had their photographs published in the papers the next day. Even those who were not so lucky urged their cavaliers to keep as close to him as possible on the ball-room floor, so every inflexion of the Prince could be watched, though not all were so far gone as an adoring young thing in one town (NOT Toronto), who hung on every movement, and who cried to her partner in accents of awe:

"I've heard him speak! I've heard him speak! He says 'Yes' just like an ordinary man. Isn't it wonderful!"

On Tuesday, the 25th, the Yacht Club was the scene of one of the brightest of dances, following a very happy reunion between the Prince and his comrades of the war. Some hundreds of officers of all grades were gathered together by General Gunn, the C.O. of the District, from the many thousands in Ontario, and these entertained the Prince at dinner at the Club. It was a gathering both significant and impressive. Every one of the officers wore not merely the medals of Overseas service, but every one wore a distinction gained on the field.

It was an epitome of Canada's effort in the war. It was a collection of virile young men drawn from the lawyer's office and the farm, from the desk indoors and avocations in the open, from the very law schools and even the University campus. In the big dining-hall, hung with scores of boards in German lettering, trench-signs, directing posts to billets, drinking water and the like, that had been captured by the very men who were then dining, one got a sense of the vivid capacity and alertness that made Canada's contribution to the Empire fighting forces so notable, and more, that will make Canada's contribution to the future of the world so notable.

There was no doubt, too, that, though these self-assured young men are perfectly competent to stand on their own feet in all circumstances, their visit to the Old Country—or, as even the Canadian-born call it, "Home"—has, even apart from the lessons of fighting, been useful to them, and, through them, will be useful to Canada.

"Leaves in England were worth while," one said. "I've come back here with a new sense of values. Canada's a great country, but we are a little in the rough. We can teach you people a good many things, but there are a good many we can learn from you. We haven't any tradition. Oh, not all your traditions are good ones, but many are worth while. You have a more dignified social sense than we have, and a political sense too. And you have a culture we haven't attained yet. You've given us not a standard—we could read that up—but a liking for social life, bigger politics, books and pictures and music, and all that sort of thing that we had missed here—and been quite unaware that we had missed."

And another chimed in:

"That's what we miss in Canada, the theatres and the concerts and the lectures, and the whole boiling of a good time we had in London—the big sense of being Metropolitan that you get in England, and not here. Well, not yet. We were rather prone to the parish-pump attitude before the war, but going over there has given us a bigger outlook. We can see the whole world now, you know. London's a great place—it's an education in the citizenship of the universe."

That's a point, too. London and Britain have been revealed to them as friendly places and the homes of good friends—though I must make an exception of one seaport town in England which is a byword among Canadians for bad treatment. England was the place where a multitude of people conspired to give the Canadians a good time, and they have returned with a practical knowledge of the good feeling of the English, and that is bound to make for mutual understanding.

It must not be thought that Toronto,—or other cities in Canada—is without theatres or places of recreation. There are several good theatres and music-halls in Toronto—more in this city than in any other. These theatres are served by American companies of the No. 1 touring kind. English actors touring America usually pay the city a visit, while quite frequently new plays are "tried out" here before opening in New York.

But apart from a repertory company, which plays drawing-room comedies with an occasional dash of high-brow, Toronto and Canada depend on outside, that is American, sources for the theatre, and though the standard of touring companies may be high in the big Eastern towns, it is not as high as it should be, and in towns further West the shows are of that rather streaky nature that one connects with theatrical entertainment at the British seaside resorts.

The immense distances are against theatrical enterprises, of course, but in spite of them one has a feeling that the potentialities of the theatre, as with everything in the Dominion, are great for the right man.

Toronto is better off musically than other cities, but even Toronto depends very much for its symphony and its vocal concerts, as for its opera, on America. Music is intensely popular, and gramophones, pianos and mechanical piano-players have a great sale.

The "movie" show is the great industry of amusement all over the Dominion. Even the smallest town has its picture palace, the larger towns have theatres which are palaces indeed in their appointments, and a multitude of them. In many the "movie" show is judiciously blended with vaudeville turns, a mixture which seems popular.

Book shops are rarities. In a great town such as Toronto I was only able to find one definite book shop, and that not within easy walk of my hotel. Even that shop dealt in stationery and the like to help things along, though its books were very much up to date, many of them (by both English and American authors) published by the excellent Toronto publishing houses. All the recognized leaders among English and American writers, and even Admirals and Generals turned writers, were on sale, though the popular market is the Zane Grey type of book.

The reason there are few book shops is that the great stores—like Eaton's and Simpson's—have book departments, and very fine ones too, and that for general reading the Canadians are addicted to newspapers and magazines, practically all the latter American, which are on sale everywhere, in tobacconists, drug stores, hotel loggias, and on special street stands generally run by a returned soldier. English papers of any sort are rarely seen on sale, though all the big American dailies are commonplace, while only occasionally the Windsor, Strand, London, and the new Hutchinson's Magazines shyly rear British heads over their clamorous American brothers.

IV

Tuesday, August 26th, was a day dedicated to quieter functions. The Prince's first visits were to the hospitals.

Toronto, which likes to do things with a big gesture, has attacked the problem of hospital building in a spacious manner. The great General Hospital is planned throughout to give an air of roominess and breadth.

The Canadians certainly show a sense of architecture, and in building the General Hospital they refused to follow the Morgue School, which seems to be responsible for so many hospital and primary school designs. The Toronto Hospital is a fine building of many blocks set about green lawns, and with lawns and trees in the quadrangles. The appointments are as nearly perfect as men can make them, and every scientific novelty is employed in the fight against wounds and sickness. Hospitals appear most generally used in Canada, people of all classes being treated there for illnesses that in Britain are treated at home.

His Royal Highness visited and explored the whole of the great General Hospital, stopping and chatting with as many of the wounded soldiers who were then housed in it, as time allowed. He also paid a visit to the Children's Hospital close by. This was an item on the program entirely his own. Hearing of the hospital, he determined to visit it, having first paved the way for his visit by sending the kiddies a large assortment of toys. This hospital, with its essentially modern clinic, was thoroughly explored before the Prince left in a mist of cheers from the kiddies, whose enormous awe had melted during the acquaintance.

The afternoon was given over to the colourful ceremony in the University Hall, when the LL.D. degree of the University was bestowed upon His Royal Highness. In a great, grey-stone hall that stands on the edge of the delightful Queen's Park, where was gathered an audience of dons in robes, and ladies in bright dresses, with naval men and khaki men to bring up the glowing scheme, the Prince in rose-coloured robes received the degree and signed the roll of the University. Under the clear light of the glass roof the scene had a dignity and charm that placed it high among the striking pictures of the tour.

It was a quieter day, but, nevertheless, it was a day of crowds also, the people thronging all the routes in their unabatable numbers, showing that crescendo of friendliness which was to reach its greatest strength on the next day.

V

The crowds of Toronto, already astonishing, went beyond mere describing on Wednesday, August 27th.

There were several functions set down for this day; only two matter: the review of the War Veterans in the Exhibition grounds, and the long drive through the residential areas of the city.

Some hint of what the crowd in the Exhibition grounds was like was given to us as we endeavoured to wriggle our car through the masses of other automobiles, mobile or parked, that crowded the way to the grounds. We had already been impressed by the almost inordinate number of motor-cars in Canada: the number of cars in Toronto terrified us.

When we looked on the thousands of cars in the city we knew why the streets had to be broad and straight and long. In no other way could they accommodate all that rushing traffic of the swift cars and the lean, torpedo-like trams that with a splendid service link up the heart of the town with the far outlying suburbs. And even though the streets are broad the automobile is becoming too much for them. The habit of parking cars on the slant and by scores on both sides of the roadway (as well as down side roads and on vacant "lots") is already restricting the carriage-way in certain areas.

From the cars themselves there is less danger than in the London streets, for the rules of the road are strict, and the citizens keep them strictly. No car is allowed to pass a standing tram on the same side, for example, and that rule with others is obeyed by all drivers.

The multitude of cars, mainly open touring cars of the Buick and Overland type, though there are many Fords, or "flivvers," and an occasional Rolls-Royce, Napier or Panhard, thickened as we neared the Exhibition gates; and about them, in the side streets outside and in the avenues inside, they were parked by thousands.

They gave the meanest indication of the numbers of people in the grounds. The lawns were covered with people. The halls of exhibits were full of people. The Joy City, where one can adventure into strange thrills from Coney Island, was full; the booths selling buttered corn cob, toasted pea-nuts, ice cream soda, and the rest, had hundreds of customers—and all these, we found, were the overflow. They had been crowded out from the real show, and were waiting outside in the hope of catching sight of the Prince as he made his round of the Exhibition.

The show ground of the Exhibition is a huge arena. It is faced by a mighty grandstand, seating ten thousand people. Ten thousand people were sitting: the imagination boggles at the computation of the number of those standing; they filled every foothold and clung to every step and projection. There were some—men in khaki, of course—who were risking their necks high up on the iron roof of the stand.

In front of the stand is a great open space, backed by patriotic scenery, that acts as the stage for performances of the pageant kind. It was packed so tightly with people that the movement of individuals was impossible. On this ground the war veterans should have been drawn up in ranks. In the beginning they were drawn up in ranks, but civilians, having filled up every gangway and passage, overflowed on to the field and filled that also. They were even clinging to the scenery and perched in the trees. The minimum figure for that crowd was given as fifty thousand.

The reception given to the Prince was overwhelming; that is the soberest word one can use. As he rode into the arena he was immediately surrounded by a cheering and cheery mass of people, who cut him off completely from his Staff. From the big stand there came an outburst of non-stop Canadian cheering, an affair of whistles, rattles, cheering and extempore noises, with the occasional bang of a firework, that was kept alive during the whole of the ceremony, one section of people taking it up when the first had tired itself out.

With the crowd thick about him, His Royal Highness strove to force his way to the platform on which he was to speak and to give medals, but movement could only be accomplished at a slow pace. As he neared the platform, indeed, movement ceased altogether, and Prince and crowd were wedged tight in a solid mass. The pressure of the crowd seems to have been too much for him, for there was a moment when it seemed he would be thrown from his horse. A "movie" man on the platform came to his rescue, and catching him round the shoulders pulled him into safety over the heads of the crowd.

On this platform and in a setting of enthusiasm that cannot be described adequately, he spoke and gave medals to what seemed an endless stream of brave Canadians.

It was in the evening that he drove through the streets of the town, and I believe I am right in saying that he gave up other more restful engagements in order to undertake this ride that took several hours and was not less than twenty miles in length.

Toronto is a city in which the civic ideal is very strong, and the concern not merely of the municipality but of all the citizens. It believes in beautiful and up-to-date town planning, and the elimination of slums, of which it now has not a single example. On his ride the Prince saw every facet of the city's activity.

He drove through the beautiful avenues of Rosedale, and through the not so beautiful but more eclectic area of The Hill. He went through the suburbs of charming, well-designed houses where the professional classes have their homes, and into the big, comely residential areas where the working people live. These areas are places of attractive homes. The instinct for good building which is the gift of the whole of America makes each house distinctive. There is never the hint of slum ugliness or slum congestion about them. The houses merely differ from the houses of the better-to-do in size, but, though they are smaller, they have the same pleasant features, neat colonial-style architecture, broad porches, unrailed lawns, and the rest. Inside they have central heating, electric light (the Niagara hydro-power makes lighting ridiculously cheap), baths, hardwood floors, and the other labour-saving devices of modern construction. Most of the houses are owned by the people who live in them, for the impulse towards purchase by deferred payments is very strong in the Canadian.

One of the brightest of the suburbs was built up almost entirely through the energy of the British emigrant. These men working in the city did not mind the "long hike" out into the country, to an area where the street cars were not known. From farming lots they built up a charming district where, now that street cars are more reasonable, the Canadian is also anxious to live—when he can find a householder willing to sell.

The Prince's route also lay through the big shopping streets such as Yonge ("street" is dropped in the West) and King. Here are the great and brilliant stores, and here the thrusting, purposeful Canadian crowd does its trading. There is a touch of determination in the Canadian on the sidewalk which seems ruthlessness to the more easy-going Britisher, yet it is not rudeness, and the Canadian is an extraordinarily orderly person, with a discipline that springs from self rather than from obedience to by-laws. It may be this that makes a Canadian crowd so decorous, even at the moment when it seems defying the policemen.

The Prince began his ride in the wonderful High Park, where Nature has had very little coddling from man, and the results of such non-interference are admirable, and in that park he at once entered into the avenue of people that was to border the way for twenty miles.

Again this crowd thickened at certain focal points. At the entrances of different districts, in the streets of heavily populated areas, about the cemetery where he planted a tree, it gathered in astonishing mass, but the amazing thing was that no place on that twenty-mile run was without a crowd.

The whole of the city appeared to have come in to the street to cheer and wave flags or handkerchiefs as he passed, just as the whole of the little boy population appeared to have made up its mind to run or cycle beside him for the whole of the journey despite all risks of cars behind.

The automobileocracy of the wealthy districts made grandstands of their cars at every cross-road (and the Correspondents don't thank them for this, for they tried to cut into the procession of cars after the Prince had passed). The suburbans made their lawns into vantage points, and grouped themselves on the curb edge, and the working classes simply overflowed the road in solid masses of attractively dressed women and children and Canadianly-dressed men. "Attractively dressed" is a phrase to note; there are no rags or dowdiness in Canada.

There was a carnival air in the greeting of that multitude on that long ride, and the laughing and cheering affection of the crowds would have called forth a like response even in a personality less sympathetic than the Prince. It captured him completely. The formal salute never had a chance. First his answer to the cheering was an affectionate flag-waving, then the flag was not good enough and his hat came into play, then he was standing up and waving, and finally he again climbed on to the seat, and half standing, half sitting on the folded hood, rode through the delighted crowds. With members of his Staff holding on to him, he did practically the whole of the journey in this manner, sitting reasonably only at quiet spots, only changing his hat from right to left hand when one arm had become utterly exhausted. And all the way the crowds lined the route and cheered.

It was an astonishing spectacle, an amazing experience. It was the just culmination of the three full days of profound and moving emotion in which Toronto had shown how intense was its affection.

The effect of such a demonstration on the Prince himself was equally profound. One of the Canadian Generals who had been driving with His Royal Highness on one of these occasions, told us that in the midst of such a scene as this the Prince had turned to him and said, "Can you wonder that my heart is full?"