Over other depressions or ravines, close by here, were long to be seen some platforms or floored areas of stout plank. These were said to be spaces occupied by different portions of the renowned canvas-house of the first Governor, a structure manufactured in London and imported. The convenience of its plan, and the hospitality for which it afforded room, were favourite topics among the early people of the country. We have it in Bouchette's British North America a reference to this famous canvas house. "In the spring (i. e. of 1793)," that writer says, "the Lieutenant-Governor moved to the site of the new capital (York), attended by the regiment of the Queen's Rangers, and commenced at once the realization of his favourite project. His Excellency inhabited, during the summer, and through the winter, a canvas-house, which he imported expressly for the occasion; but, frail as was its substance, it was rendered exceedingly comfortable, and soon became as distinguished for the social and urbane hospitality of its venerable and gracious host, as for the peculiarity of its structure," vol. i. 80. After this allusion to the home Canadian life of the first Governor, the following remarks of de Liancourt, on the same subject, will not appear out of place:—"In his private life," the Duke says, "Gov. Simcoe is simple, plain and obliging. He inhabits [the reference now is to Newark or Niagara] a small, miserable wooden house, which formerly was occupied by the Commissaries, who resided here on account of the navigation of the Lake. His guard consist of four soldiers, who every morning come from the fort [across the river], and return thither in the evening. He lives in a noble and hospitable manner, without pride; his mind is enlightened, his character mild and obliging; he discourses with much good sense on all subjects; but his favourite topics are his projects, and war, which seem to be the objects of his leading passions. He is acquainted with the military history of all countries: no hillock catches his eye without exciting in his mind the idea of a fort which might be constructed on the spot; and with the construction of this fort he associates the plan of operations for a campaign, especially of that which is to lead him to Philadelphia. [Gen. Simcoe appears to have been strongly of the opinion that the United States were not going to be a permanency.] On hearing his professions of an earnest desire of peace, you cannot but suppose, either that his reason must hold an absolute sway over his passion, or that he deceives himself." Travels, i. 241.
Other traits, which doubtless at this time gave a charm to the home-life of the accomplished Governor, may be gathered from a passage in the correspondence, at a later period, of Polwhele, the historian of Cornwall, who says, in a letter addressed to the General himself, dated Manaccan, Nov. 5th, 1803:—"I have been sorely disappointed, once or twice, in missing you, whilst you were inspecting Cornwall. It was not long after your visit at my friend Mr. Hoblyn's, but I slept also at Nanswhydden. Had I met you there, the Noctes Atticæ, the Coenæ Deorum, would have been renewed, if peradventure the chess-board intervened not; for rooks and pawns, I think, would have frightened away the Muses, familiar as rooks and pawns might have been to the suitors of Penelope." Polwhele, 544.
The canvas-house above spoken of, had been the property of Capt. Cook the circumnavigator. On its being offered for sale in London, Gov. Simcoe, seeing its possible usefulness to himself as a moveable government-house purchased it.
Some way to the east of the Commissariat store-houses was the site of the Naval Building Yard, where an unfinished ship-of-war and the materials collected for the construction of others, were destroyed, when the United States forces took possession of York in 1813.
It appears that Col. Joseph Bouchette had just been pointing out to the Government the exposed condition of the public property here. In a note at p. 89 of his British North America that officer remarks: "The defenceless situation of York, the mode of its capture, and the destruction of the large ship then on the stocks, were but too prophetically demonstrated in my report to headquarters in Lower Canada, on my return from a responsible mission to the capital of the Upper Province, in the early part of April. Indeed the communication of the result of my reconnoitering operations, and the intelligence of the successful invasion of York, and the firing of the new ship by the enemy, were received almost simultaneously."
The Governor-in-Chief, Sir George Prevost, was blamed for having permitted a frigate to be laid down in an unprotected position. There was a "striking impropriety," as the Third Letter of Veritas, a celebrated correspondent of the Montreal Herald in 1815, points out, "in building at York, without providing the means of security there, as the works of defence, projected by General Brock, (when he contemplated, before the war, the removal of the naval depot from Kingston to York, by reason of the proximity of the former to the States in water by the ice), were discontinued by orders from below, [from Sir George Prevost, that is], and never resumed. The position intended to have been fortified by General Brock, near York, was," Veritas continues, "capable of being made very strong, had his plan been executed; but as it was not, nor any other plan of defence adopted, a ship-yard without protection became an allurement to the enemy, as was felt to the cost of the inhabitants of York."
In the year 1832, the interior of the Commissariat-store, decorated with flags, was the scene of the first charitable bazaar held in these parts. It was for the relief of distress occasioned by a recent visitation of cholera. The enterprise appears to have been remarkably successful. We have a notice of it in Sibbald's Canadian Magazine of January, 1833, in the following terms: "All the fashionable and well-disposed attended; the band of the gallant 79th played, at each table stood a lady; and in a very short time all the articles were sold to gentlemen,—who will keep 'as the apple of their eye' the things made and presented by such hands." The sum collected on the occasion, it is added, was three hundred and eleven pounds.
Where Windsor Street now appears—with its grand iron gates at either end, inviting or forbidding the entrance of the stranger to the prim, quaint, self-contained little village of villas inside—formerly stood the abode of Mr. John Beikie, whose tall, upright, staidly-moving form, generally enveloped in a long snuff-coloured overcoat, was one of the dramatis personæ of York. He had been, at an early period, sheriff of the Home District; at a later time his signature was familiar to every eye, attached in the Gazette to notices put forth by the Executive Council of the day, of which rather aristocratic body he was the Clerk.
Passing westward, we had on the right the spacious home of Mr. Crookshank, a benevolent and excellent man, sometime Receiver-General of the Province, of whom we shall again have occasion to speak; and on the left, on a promontory suddenly jutting out into the harbour, "Captain Bonnycastle's cottage," with garden and picturesque grove attached; all Ordnance property in reality, and once occupied by Col. Coffin. The whole has now been literally eaten away by the ruthless tooth of the steam excavator. On the beach to the west of this promontory was a much frequented bathing-place. Captain Bonnycastle, just named, was afterwards Sir Richard, and the author of "Canada as it was, is, and may be," and "Canada and the Canadians in 1846."