Toronto is a notable educational centre. The university is one of the best equipped in America. The first step towards its establishment was taken as early as 1797, but the university was not founded until 1827, chartered and endowed somewhat later, and opened for students in 1843. Until then it had rather a sectarian character, but nowadays it embraces, besides the four principal faculties, the following institutions: Ontario Agricultural College, Royal College of Dental Surgeons, the College of Pharmacy, the Toronto College of Music, the School of Practical Science, and the Ontario Veterinary College. The students in 1905-06 numbered 2547. The University buildings, it is said, are the best specimen of Norman architecture in America. The most beautiful other public buildings of Toronto are: the new Parliament buildings, the new City Hall, Osgood Hall, the Seat of the Provincial Courts and Law School, Trinity University, McMaster University, the Normal School, Upper Canada College, and the Provincial Asylum.
Toronto is pre-eminently a city of homes. It claims to have a larger proportion of good homes and a much smaller proportion of saloons than any city of its size in America. One of the gratifying features of Toronto that distinguishes it from most large cities is the fact that there is no part of the city that can be fairly regarded as a "slum" district.
The city covers a very large area so that there is no overcrowding. Working men have no difficulty in obtaining homes with separate gardens, and it is a common practice to use these gardens in growing both flowers and vegetables.
The Park System is extensive and beautiful, possessing about 1350 acres, the chief being Queen's Park, adjoining the university, and the extensive High Park on the west of the city. But the most popular is probably Island Park, on Hiawatha Island, which lies immediately in front of the city in the form of a crescent about three miles in length.
The following great Canadians were born in Toronto: Professor Egerton Ryerson; Sir John MacDonald; Sir Daniel Wilson; Reverend Wm. Morley Puncheon; Hon. George Brown; Sir Oliver Mowat; but the most widely known Toronto citizen is probably Goldwin Smith, the great historian and economist. Toronto has ever shown itself fervently British in sentiment. Its later history has been purely civic without other interest than that attaching to prosperous growth. A pleasant society and an attractive situation make it a favourite place of residence.
In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, there was a certain Mr. Hetherington in Toronto, one of the clerks of St. James. Now the music of those primitive times seems to have been managed altogether after the old country village choirs. Mr. Hetherington was wont, after giving out the Psalm, to play the air on a bassoon; and then to accompany with fantasias on the same instrument, when any vocalist could be found to take the singing in hand. By-and-by the first symptoms of progress are apparent in the addition of a bass-viol and clarinet to help Mr. Hetherington's bassoon—"the harbinger and foreshadow," as Dr. Scadding says, "of the magnificent organ presented in after-times to the congregation of the 'Second Temple of St. James' by Mr. Dunn, but destroyed by fire, together with the whole church, in 1839, after only two years of existence."
Incidents of a different character no less strongly mark the changes which a period of only ninety years has witnessed. In 1811, namely, we find William Jarvis, Esq., His Excellency's Secretary, lodging a complaint in open court against a negro boy and girl, his slaves. The Parliament at Newark had, indeed, enacted in 1793—in those patriarchal days already described, when they could settle the affairs of the young province under the shade of an umbrageous tree—that no more slaves should be introduced into Upper Canada, and that all slave children born after the 9th of July of that year should be free on attaining the age of twenty-five.
But even by this creditable enactment slavery had a lease of life of fully a quarter of a century longer, and the Gazette Public Advertiser, and other journals, continue for years thereafter to exhibit such announcements as this of the Hon. Peter Russell, President of the Legislative Council, of date, February 19, 1806: "To be sold: a black woman, named Peggy, aged forty years, and a black boy, her son, named Jupiter, aged about fifteen years." The advertisement goes on to describe the virtues of Peggy and Jupiter. Peggy is a tolerable cook and washerwoman, perfectly understands making soap and candles, and may be had for one hundred and fifty dollars, payable in three years, with interest, from the day of sale. Jupiter, having various acquirements besides his specialty as a good house servant, is offered for two hundred dollars, but a fourth less will be taken for ready money. So recently as 1871, John Baker, who had been brought to Canada as the slave of Solicitor-General Gray, died at Cornwall, Ontario, in extreme old age. But before that the very memory of slavery had died out in Canada; and it long formed the refuge which the fugitive slave made for, with no other guide than the pole-star of our northern sky.
The history of Toronto, as already noted, is necessarily to a great extent that of the province, and of the whole region of Canada.
Upper Canada [says Dr. Scadding], in miniature, and in the space of a century, curiously passed through conditions and processes, physical and social, which old countries on a large scale, and in the course of long ages passed through. Upper Canada had its primeval and barbaric, but heroic age, its mediæval and high prerogative era; and then, after a revolutionary period of a few weeks, its modern, defeudalised, democratic era.