In the minds of the present generation, with John Street will be specially associated the memorable landing of the Prince of Wales at Toronto in 1860. At the foot of John Street, for that occasion, there was built a vast semi-colosseum of wood, opening out upon the waters of the Bay; a pile whose capacious concavity was densely filled again and again, during the Prince's visit, with the inhabitants of the town and the population of the surrounding country. And on the brow of the bank, immediately above the so-called amphitheatre, and exactly in the line of John Street, was erected a finely designed triumphal arch, recalling those of Septimus Severus and Titus.
This architectural object, while it stood, gave a peculiarly fine finish to the vista, looking southward along John Street. The usually monotonous water-view presented by the bay and lake, and even the common-place straight line of the Island, seen through the frame-work of three lofty vaulted passages, acquired for the moment a genuine picturesqueness. An ephemeral monument; but as long as it stood its effect was delightfully classic and beautiful. The whole group—the arch and the huge amphitheatre below, furnished around its upper rim at equal intervals with tall masts, each bearing a graceful gonfalon, and each helping to sustain on high a luxuriant festoon of evergreen which alternately drooped and rose again round the whole structure and along the two sides of the grand roadway up to the arch—all seen under a sky of pure azure, and bathed in cheery sunlight, surrounded too and thronged with a pleased multitude—constituted a spectacle not likely to be forgotten.
Turning down John Street a few chains, the curious observer may see on his left a particle of the old area of York retaining several of its original natural features. In the portion of the Macdonell-block not yet divided into building-slips we have a fragment of one of the many shallow ravines which meandered capriciously, every here and there, across the broad site of the intended town. To the passer-by it now presents a refreshing bit of bowery meadow, out of which towers up one of the grand elm-trees of the country, with stem of great height and girth, and head of very graceful form, whose healthy and undecayed limbs and long trailing branchlets, clearly show that the human regard which has led to the preservation hitherto of this solitary survivor of the forest has not been thrown away. This elm and the surrounding grove are still favourite stations or resting-places for our migratory birds. Here, for one place, in the spring, are sure to be heard the first notes of the robin.
At the south-west angle of the Macdonell block still stands in a good state of preservation the mansion put up by the Hon. Alexander Macdonell. We have from time to time spoken of the brick era of York. Mr. Macdonell's imposing old homestead may be described as belonging to an immediately preceding era—the age of framed timber and weather-board, which followed the primitive or hewn-log period. It is a building of two full storeys, each of considerable elevation. A central portico with columns of the whole height of the house, gives it an air of dignity.
Mr. Macdonell was one more in that large group of military men who served in the American Revolutionary war, under Col. Simcoe, and who were attracted to Upper Canada by the prospects held out by that officer when appointed Governor of the new colony. Mr. Macdonell was the first Sheriff of the Home District. He represented in successive parliaments the Highland constituency of Glengary, and was chosen Speaker of the House. He was afterwards summoned to the Upper House. He was a friend and correspondent of the Earl of Selkirk, and was desired by that zealous emigrational theorist to undertake the superintendence of the settlement at Kildonan on the Red River. Though he declined this task, he undertook the management of one of the other Highland settlements included in the Earl of Selkirk's scheme, namely, that of Baldoon, on Lake St. Clair; Mr. Douglas undertaking the care of that established at Moulton, at the mouth of the Grand River.
Mr. Macdonell, in person rather tall and thin, of thoughtful aspect, and in manner quiet and reserved, is one of the company of our early worthies whom we personally well remember. An interesting portrait of him exists in the possession of his descendants: it presents him with his hair in powder, and otherwise in the costume of "sixty years since." He died in 1842, "amid the regrets of a community who," to adopt the language of a contemporary obituary, "loved him for the mild excellence of his domestic and private character, no less than they esteemed him as a public man."
Mr. Miles Macdonell, the first Governor of Assiniboia, under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Alexander Macdonell, the chief representative in 1816 of the rival and even hostile Company of the North-West Traders of Montreal, were both near relations of Mr. Macdonell of York, as also was the barrister, lost in the Speedy, and the well-known R. C. Bishop Macdonell of Kingston. Col. Macdonell, slain at Queenston, with General Brock, and whose remains are deposited beneath the column there, was his brother. His son, Mr. Allan Macdonell, has on several occasions stood forward as the friend and spirited advocate of the Indian Tribes, especially of the Lake Superior region, on occasions when their interests, as native lords of the soil, seemed in danger of being overlooked by the Government of the day.
On Richmond Street a little to the west of the Macdonell block, was the town residence of Col. Smith, some time President of the Province of Upper Canada. He was also allied to the family of Mr. Macdonell. Col. Smith's original homestead was on the Lake Shore to the west, in the neighbourhood of the river Etobicoke. Gourlay in his "Statistical Account of Upper Canada," has chanced to speak of it. "I shall describe the residence and neighbourhood of the President of Upper Canada from remembrance," he says, "journeying past it on my way to York from the westward, by what is called the Lake Road through Etobicoke. For many miles," he says, "not a house had appeared, when I came to that of Colonel Smith, lonely and desolate. It had once been genteel and comfortable; but was now going to decay. A vista had been opened through the woods towards Lake Ontario; but the riotous and dangling undergrowth seemed threatening to retake possession from the Colonel of all that had once been cleared, which was of narrow compass. How could a solitary half-pay officer help himself," candidly asks Gourlay, "settled down upon a block of land, whose very extent barred out the assistance and convenience of neighbours? Not a living thing was to be seen around. How different might it be, thought I, were a hundred industrious families compactly settled here out of the redundant population of England!"
"The road was miserable," he continues; "a little way beyond the President's house it was lost on a bank of loose gravel flung up between the contending waters of the lake and the Etobicoke stream." He here went astray. "It was my anxious wish," he says, "to get through the woods before dusk; but the light was nearly gone before the gravel bank was cleared. There seemed but one path, which took to the left. It led me astray: I was lost: and there was nothing for it but to let my little horse take his own way. Abundant time was afforded for reflection on the wretched state of property flung away on half-pay officers. Here was the head man of the Province, 'born to blush unseen,' without even a tolerable bridle-way between him and the capital city, after more than twenty years' possession of his domain. The very gravel-bed which caused me such turmoil might have made a turnpike, but what can be done by a single hand? The President could do little with the axe or wheelbarrow himself; and half-pay could employ but few labourers at 3s. 6d. per day with victuals and drink." He recovers the road at length, and then concludes: "after many a weary twist and turn I found myself," he says, "on the banks of the Humber, where there was a house and a boat."
Col. Smith did something, in his day, to improve the breed of horses in Upper Canada. He expended considerable sums of money in the importation of choice animals of that species from the United States.