The foundry, after supplying the country for a series of years with ploughs, stoves and other necessary articles of heavy hardware, is memorable as having been the first in Upper Canada to turn out real railway locomotives. When novelties, these highly finished ponderous machines, seen slowly and very laboriously urged through the streets from the foundry to their destination, were startling phenomena. We have in the Canadian Journal (vol. ii. p. 76), an account of the first engine manufactured by Mr. Good at the Toronto Locomotive Works, with a lithographic illustration. "We have much pleasure," the editor of the Canadian Journal says "in presenting our readers with a drawing of the first locomotive engine constructed in Canada, and indeed, we believe, in any British Colony. The 'Toronto' is certainly no beauty, nor is she distinguished for any peculiarity in the construction, but she affords a very striking illustration of our progress in the mechanical arts, and of the growing wants of the country. The 'Toronto' was built at the Toronto Locomotive Works, which were established by Mr. Good, in October, 1852. The order for the 'Toronto' was received in February, 1853, for the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railroad. The engine was completed on the 16th of April, and put on the track the 26th of the same month. Her dimensions are as follows: cylinder 16 inches diameter, stroke 22 inches, driving wheel 5 feet 6 inches in diameter, length of internal fire box 4 feet 6 inches, weight of engine 25 tons, number of tubes 150, diameter of tubes 2 inches."
With property a little to the north on the east side, the name of McIntosh was early associated, and—Canadian persistency again—is still associated. Of Captains John, Robert and Charles McIntosh, we shall have occasion to speak in our paper on the early Marine of York harbour. It was opposite the residence of Captain John McIntosh that the small riot took place, which signalized the return home of William Lyon Mackenzie, in 1849, after the civil tumults of 1837. Mr. Mackenzie was at the time the guest of Captain McIntosh, who was related to him through a marriage connexion.
Albert Street, which enters Yonge Street opposite the McIntosh property, was in 1833 still known as Macaulay Lane, and was described by Walton as "fronting the Fields." From this point a long stretch of fine forest-land extended to Yorkville. On the left side it was the property partly of Dr. Macaulay and partly of Chief Justice Elmsley. The fields which Macaulay Lane fronted were the improvements around Dr. Macaulay's abode. The white entrance gate to his house was near where now a street leads into Trinity Square. Wykham Lodge, the residence of Sir James Macaulay after the removal from Front Street, and Elmsley Villa, the residence of Captain J. S. Macaulay, (Government House in Lord Elgin's day, and subsequently Knox College,) were late erections on portions of these spacious suburban estates.
The first Dr. Macaulay and Chief Justice Elmsley selected two adjoining park lots, both of them fronting, of course, on Lot Street. They then effected an exchange of properties with each other. Dividing these two lots transversely into equal portions, the Chief Justice chose the upper or northern halves, and Dr. Macaulay the lower or southern. Dr. Macaulay thus acquired a large frontage on Lot Street, and the Chief Justice a like advantage on Yonge Street. Captain Macaulay acquired his interest in the southern portion of the Elmsley halves by marriage with a daughter of the Chief Justice. The northern portion of these halves descended to the heir of the Chief Justice, Capt. John Elmsley, who having become a convert to the Church of Rome, gave facilities for the establishment of St. Basil's college and other Roman Catholic Institutions on his estate. Of Chief Justice Elmsley and his son we have previously spoken.
Dr. Macaulay's clearing on the north side of Macaulay lane was, in relation to the first town plot of York, long considered a locality particularly remote; a spot to be discovered by strangers not without difficulty. In attempting to reach it we have distinct accounts of persons bewildered and lost for long hours in the intervening marshes and woods. Mr. Justice Boulton, travelling from Prescott in his own vehicle, and bound for Dr. Macaulay's domicile, was dissuaded, on reaching Mr. Small's house at the eastern extremity of York, from attempting to push on to his destination, although it was by no means late, on account of the inconveniences and perils to be encountered; and half of the following day was taken up in accomplishing the residue of the journey.
Dr. Macaulay's cottage might still have been existent and in good order; but while it was being removed bodily by Mr. Alexander Hamilton, from its original site to a position on the entrance to Trinity Square, a few yards to the eastward, it was burnt, either accidentally or by the act of an incendiary. Mr. Hamilton, who was intending to convert the building into a home for himself and his family, gave the name of Teraulay Cottage—the name by which the destroyed building had been known—to the house which he put up in its stead.
A quarter of a century sufficed to transform Dr. Macaulay's garden and grounds into a well-peopled city district. The "fields," of which Walton spoke, have undergone the change which St. George's Fields and other similar spaces have undergone in London:
St. George's Fields are fields no more; The trowel supersedes the plough; Huge inundated swamps of yore Are changed to civic villas now. The builder's plank, the mason's hod, Wide and more wide extending still, Usurp the violated sod.
The area which Dr. Macaulay's homestead immediately occupied now constitutes Trinity Square—a little bay by the side of a great stream of busy human traffic, ever ebbing and flowing, not without rumble and other resonances; a quiet close, resembling, it is pleasant to think, one of the Inns of Court in London, so tranquil despite the turmoil of Fleet Street adjoining.
Trinity Square is now completely surrounded with buildings; nevertheless an aspiring attic therein, in which many of these collections and recollections have been reduced to shape, has the advantage of commanding to this day a view still showing within its range some of the primitive features of the site of York. To the north an extended portion of the rising land above Yorkville is pleasantly visible, looking in the distance as it anciently looked, albeit beheld now with spires intervening, and ornamental turrets of public buildings, and lofty factory flues: while to the south, seen also between chimney stacks and steeples and long solid architectural ranges, a glimpse of Lake Ontario itself is procurable—a glimpse especially precious so long as it is to be had, for not only recalling, as it does, the olden time when "the Lake" was an element in so much of the talk of the early settlers—its sound, its aspect, its condition being matters of hourly observation to them—but also suggesting the thought of the far-off outer ocean stream—the silver moat that guards the fatherland, and that forms the horizon in so many of its landscapes.