Of the opening of Yonge Street through a range of building lots which in 1800 blocked the way from Queen Street southwards, we shall speak hereafter in the excursion which we propose to make through Yonge Street from south to north, the moment we have finished recording our collections and recollections in relation to Queen Street.
Memories of the Old Court House.
In the old Court House, situated as we have described, we received our first boyish impressions of the solemnities and forms observed in Courts of Law. In paying a visit of curiosity subsequently to the singular series of Law Courts which are to be found ranged along one side of Westminster Hall in London—each one of them in succession entered through the heavy folds of lofty mysterious-looking curtains, each one of them crowded with earnest pleaders and anxious suitors, each one of them provided with a judge elevated in solitary majesty on high, each one of them seeming to the passing stranger more like a scene in a drama than a prosaic reality—we could not but revert in memory to the old upper chamber at York where the remote shadows of such things were for the first time encountered.
It was startling to remember of a sudden that our early Upper Canadian Judges, our early Upper Canadian Barristers, came fresh from these Westminster Hall Courts! What a contrast must have been presented to these men in the rude wilds to which they found themselves transported. Riding the Circuit in the Home, Midland, Eastern and Western Districts at the beginning of the present century was no trivial undertaking. Accommodation for man and horse was for the most part scant and comfortless. Locomotion by land and water was perilous and slow, and racking to the frame. The apartments procurable for the purposes of the Court were of the humblest kind.
Our pioneer jurisconsults in their several degrees, however, like our pioneers generally, unofficial as well as official, did their duty. They quietly initiated in the country, customs of gravity and order which have now become traditional; and we see the result in the decent dignity which surrounds, at the present day, the administration of justice in Canada in the Courts of every grade.
Prior to the occupation of Mr. Montgomery's house as the Court House at York, the Court of King's Bench held its sessions in a portion of the Government Buildings at the east end of the town, destroyed in the war of 1813. On June 25, 1812, the Sheriff, John Beikie, advertises in the Gazette that "a Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the Home District will be holden at the Government Buildings in the town of York on Tuesday, the fourteenth day of July now next ensuing, at the hour of ten o'clock in the forenoon, of which all Justices of the Peace, Coroners, Gaolers, High Constables, Constables and Bailiffs are desired to take notice, and that they be then and there present with their Rolls, Records, and other Memoranda to do and perform those things which by reason of their respective offices shall be to be done."
It is with the Court Room in the Government Buildings that the Judge, Sheriff and Crown Counsel were familiar, who were engulfed in Lake Ontario in 1805. The story of the total loss of the government schooner Speedy, Captain Thomas Paxton, is widely known. In that ill-fated vessel suddenly went down in a gale in the dead of night, along with its commander and crew, Judge Cochrane, Solicitor-General Gray, Mr. Angus McDonell, Sheriff of York, Mr. Fishe, the High Bailiff, an Indian prisoner about to be tried at Presqu'Isle for murder, two interpreters, Cowan and Ruggles, several witnesses, and Mr. Herchmer, a merchant of York; in all thirty-nine persons, of whom no trace was ever afterwards discovered.
The weather was threatening, the season of the year stormy (7th October), and the schooner was suspected not to be sea-worthy. But the orders of the Governor, General Peter Hunter, were peremptory. Mr. Weekes, of whom we have heard before, escaped the fate that befel so many connected with his profession, by deciding to make the journey to Presqu'Isle on horseback. (For the seat in the House rendered vacant by the sudden removal of Mr. McDonell, Mr. Weekes was the successful candidate.)
The name of the Indian who was on his way to be tried was Ogetonicut. His brother, Whistling Duck, had been killed by a white man, and he took his revenge on John Sharp, another white man. The deed was done at Ball Point on Lake Scugog, where John Sharp was in charge of a trading-post for furs belonging to the Messrs. Farewell. The Governor had promised, so it was alleged, that the slayer of Whistling Duck should be punished. But a twelvemonth had elapsed and nothing had been done. The whole tribe, the Muskrat branch of the Chippewas, with their Chief Wabbekisheco at their head, came up in canoes to York on this occasion, starting from the mouth of Annis's creek, near Port Oshawa, and encamping at Gibraltar Point on the peninsula in front of York. A guard of soldiers went over to assist in the arrest of Ogetonicut, who, it appears, had arrived with the rest. The Chief Wabbekisheco, took the culprit by the shoulder and delivered him up. He was lodged in the jail at York.
During the summer it was proved by means of a survey that the spot where Sharp had been killed was within the District of Newcastle. It was held necessary, therefore, that the trial should take place in that District. Sellick's, at the Carrying Place, was to have been the scene of the investigation, and thither the Speedy was bound when she foundered. Mr. Justice Cochrane was a most estimable character personally, and a man of distinguished ability. He was only in his 28th year, and had been Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island before his arrival in Upper Canada. He was a native of Halifax, in Nova Scotia, but had studied law in Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar in England.