The nodding horror of whose shady brows Awed the forlorn and wandering passenger—
and traversed by irregular, ill-defined and very solitary paths, leading to widely-separated localities, seemed a vast and rather mysterious region, the place which immediately flashed on the mind, whenever in poem or fairy tale, a wild or wold or wilderness was named. As time rolled on, too, it actually became the haunt and hiding-place of lawless characters.
After passing, on our left, the burial-plot attached to the first Roman Catholic Church of York, and arriving where Parliament Street, at the present day, intersects, we reached the limit, in that direction, of the "Reserve for Government Buildings." Stretching from the point indicated, there was on the right side of the way, a range of "park lots," extending some two miles to the west, all bounded on the south by what at the present time is Queen Street, but which, from being the great thoroughfare along the front of this very range, was long known as "Lot Street." (In the plan above spoken of, it is marked, as already stated, "Dundas Street," it being a section of the great military way, bearing that name, projected by the first Governor of Upper Canada to traverse the whole province from west to east, as we shall have occasion hereafter to narrate.)
In the early plan of this part of York, the names of the first locatees of the range of park-lots are given. On the first or easternmost lot we read that of John Small. On the next, that of J. White.
In this collocation of names there is something touching, when we recall an event in which the first owners of these two contiguous lots were tragically concerned. Friends, and associates in the Public Service, the one as Clerk of the Crown, the other as Attorney-General for Upper Canada, from 1792-1800, their dream, doubtless, was to pass the evening of their days in pleasant suburban villas placed here side by side in the outskirts of the young capital. But there arose between them a difficulty, trivial enough probably at the beginning, but which, according to the barbaric conventionality of the hour, could only be finally settled by a "meeting," as the phrase was, in the field, where chance was to decide between them, for life or death, as between two armies—two armies reduced to the absurdity of each consisting of one man. The encounter took place in a pleasant grove at the back of the Parliament Building, immediately to the east of it, between what is now King Street and the water's edge. Mr. White was mortally wounded and soon expired. At his own request his remains were deposited in his garden on the park-lot, beneath a summer-house to which he had been accustomed to retire for purposes of study.
The Oracle of Saturday, January 4, 1800, records the duel in the following words:—"Yesterday morning a duel was fought back of the Government Buildings by John White, Esq., his Majesty's Attorney-General, and John Small, Esq., Clerk of the Executive Council, wherein the former received a wound above the right hip, which it is feared will prove mortal." In the issue of the following Saturday, January 11th, the announcement appears:—"It is with much regret that we express to the public, the death of John White, Esq." It is added: "His remains were on Tuesday evening interred in a small octagon building, erected on the rear of his Park lot." "The procession," the Oracle observes, "was solemn and pensive; and shewed that though death, 'all eloquent,' had seized upon him as his victim, yet it could not take from the public mind the lively sense of his virtues. Vivit post funera virtus."
The Constellation at Niagara, of the date January 11th, 1800, also records the event, and enjoying a greater liberty of expression than the Government organ at York, indulges in some just and sensible remarks on the irrational practice of duelling in general, and on the sadness of the special case which had just occurred. We give the Constellation article:
"Died at York, on the 3rd instant, John White, Esq., Attorney-General of this Province. His death was occasioned by a wound he received in a duel fought the day before with John Small, Esq., Clerk of the Executive Council, by whom he was challenged. We have not been able to obtain the particulars of the cause of the dispute; but be the origin what it may, we have to lament the toleration and prevalency of a custom falsely deemed honourable, or the criterion of true courage, innocency or guilt, a custom to gratify the passion of revenge in a single person, to the privation of the country and a family, of an ornament of society, and support: an outrage on humanity that is too often procured by the meanly malicious, who have preferment in office or friendship in view, without merit to gain it, and stupidly lacquey from family to family, or from person to person, some wonderful suspicion, the suggestions of a soft head and evil heart; and it is truly unfortunate for Society that the evil they bring on others should pass by their heads to light on those the world could illy spare. We are unwilling to attribute to either the Attorney-General or Mr. Small any improprieties of their own, or to say on whom the blame lies; but of this we feel assured, that an explanation might easily have been brought about by persons near to them, and a valuable life preserved to us. The loss is great; as a professional gentleman, the Attorney-General was eminent, as a friend, sincere; and in whatever relation he stood was highly esteemed; an honest and upright man, a friend to the poor; and dies universally lamented and we here cannot refuse to mention, at the particular request of some who have experienced his goodness, that he has refused taking fees, and discharged suits at law, by recommending to the parties, and assisting them with friendly advice, to an amicable adjustment of their differences: and this is the man whom we have lost!"
For his share in the duel Mr. Small was, on the 20th January, 1800, indicted and tried before Judge Allcock and a jury, of which Mr. Wm. Jarvis was the foreman. The verdict rendered was "Not Guilty." The seconds were—Mr. Sheriff Macdonell for Mr. Small, and the Baron DeHoen for Mr. White.
(In 1871, as some labourers were digging out sand, for building purposes, they came upon the grave of Attorney-General White. The remains were carefully removed under the inspection of Mr. Clarke Gamble, and deposited in St. James' Cemetery.)