Toronto is “the Queen City of Canada,” but it was not always thus. Long before my time it was called either “Little York,” or “Muddy York,” and the latter designation was as well deserved as the former, for the town or city—(it became a city with William Lyon Mackenzie as Mayor in 1834)—had much the experience of Winnipeg in its pioneer days owing to the generosity with which mud was lavished upon it. There was an oozy, slippery and sticky quality about the mud of the town of York that made it famous all over Upper Canada.
If, by reason of this pecularity, the town was none too comfortable under foot, neither was it at all times as agreeable overhead. One hundred and eight years ago the Yankees captured the place and the Stars and Stripes decorated what was left of it when the burning of the public buildings and the looting had been stopped.
Nemesis, however, soon overtook the invaders. The British retaliated by taking Washington. Our neighbors have not yet ceased exulting over the defeat of the little garrison at York, and bewailing the barbarity of the attack upon Washington. I wonder if all this would have happened had Tommy Church ruled in those days.
When the Union Jack returned, as it did the following year, rebuilding proceeded briskly. Our forefathers were not restrained by union rules or the eight-hour day. But the Toronto of that time is not the Toronto of 1921. As a matter of fact there have been three Torontos on the present site. The first, known as Little York possibly to distinguish it from its namesake New York, was crowded into half a dozen squares, just east of Sherbourne Street. Then came the second, with King Street up to York Street as its principal thoroughfare, and with nothing much north of Queen Street. Following this we have the Toronto of to-day, covering a large area and boasting a population of more than half a million.
It was while the city was passing from its second to its third stage that I first knew it. You landed from the Grand Trunk at a little brick building in the centre of a long platform at the foot of York Street. This was the predecessor of the new Union Station that is to be opened in the sweet by and by. You at once knew you were in a great metropolis for at the slip running into the Bay, which at that time had not been filled in, and came up nearly to Front street, were the carts loading with barrels of water for distribution among the citizens. It was a sort of primitive water works system, with the wells and distilleries to supplement it for drinking purposes.
Up York Street and along Front were some of the old-fashioned villas. York to Spadina on Front and Wellington Streets had been the fashionable section of the second city of Toronto, with the Parliament Buildings half way along. Here, Sandfield Macdonald, the first premier, ruled the new Province of Ontario. Sandfield’s Government was noted for its unconventionality—from the physical point of view. The Prime Minister was said to have but one lung. The Provincial Treasurer, E. B. Wood, had but one arm, and the Provincial Secretary, M. C. Cameron, had but one foot. No wonder the first Ontario administration did not make a good run.
TORONTO EIGHTY YEARS AGO.
Above, Waterfront; below, Fish-market.