While the work of destruction was going fiercely and irrepressibly on, the Public Clock in the belfry, Mr. Draper's gift to the town, was heard to strike the hour as usual, and the quarters thrice—exercising its functions and having its appointed say, amidst the sympathies, not loud but deep, of those who watched its doom; bearing its testimony, like a martyr at the stake, in calm and unimpassioned strain, up to the very moment of time when the deadly element touched its vitals.
Opposite the southern portal of St. James' Church was to be seen, at a very early period, the conspicuous trade-sign of a well-known furrier of York, Mr. Joseph Rogers. It was the figure of an Indian Trapper holding a gun, and accompanied by a dog, all depicted in their proper colours on a high, upright tablet set over the doorway of the store below. Besides being an appropriate symbol of the business carried on, it was always an interesting reminder of the time, then not so very remote, when all of York, or Toronto, and its commerce that existed, was the old French trading-post on the common to the west, and a few native hunters of the woods congregating with their packs of "beaver" once or twice a-year about the entrance to its picketted enclosure. Other rather early dealers in furs in York were Mr. Jared Stocking and Mr. John Bastedo.
In the Gazette for April 25, 1822, we notice a somewhat pretentious advertisement, headed "Muskrats," which announces that the highest market price will be given in cash for "good seasonable muskrat skins and other furs at the store of Robert Coleman, Esquire, Market Place, York."
Mr. Rogers' descendants continue to occupy the identical site on King Street indicated above, and the Indian Trapper, renovated, is still to be seen—a pleasant instance of Canadian persistence and stability.
In Great Britain and Europe generally, the thoroughfares of ancient towns had, as we know, character and variety given them by the trade-symbols displayed up and down their misty vistas. Charles the First gave, by letters patent, express permission to the citizens of London "to expose and hang in and over the streets, and ways, and alleys of the said city and suburbs of the same, signs and posts of signs, affixed to their houses and shops, for the better finding out such citizens' dwellings, shops, arts, and occupations, without impediment, molestation or interruption of his heirs or successors." And the practice was in vogue long before the time of Charles. It preceded the custom of distinguishing houses by numbers. At periods when the population generally were unable to read, such rude appeals to the eye had, of course, their use. But as education spread, and architecture of a modern style came to be preferred, this mode of indicating "arts and occupations" grew out of fashion.
Of late, however, the pressure of competition in business has been driving men back again upon the customs of by-gone illiterate generations. For the purpose of establishing a distinct individuality in the public mind the most capricious freaks are played. The streets of the modern Toronto exhibit, we believe, two leonine specimens of auro-ligneous zoology, between which the sex is announced to constitute the difference. The lack of such clear distinction between a pair of glittering symbols of this genus and species, in our Canadian London, was the occasion of much grave consideration in 1867, on the part of the highest authority in our Court of Chancery. Although in that cause célèbre, after a careful physiognomical study by means of photographs transmitted, it was allowed that there were points of difference between the two specimens in question, as, for example, that "one looked older than the other;" that "one, from the sorrowful expression of its countenance, seemed more resigned to its position than the other"—still the decree was issued for the removal of one of them from the scene—very properly the later-carved of the two.
Of the ordinary trade-signs that were to be seen along the thoroughfare of King Street no particular notice need be taken. The Pestle and Mortar, the Pole twined round with the black strap, the Crowned Boot, the Tea-chest, the Axe, the Broad-axe, the Saw, (mill, cross-cut and circular), the colossal Fowling-piece, the Cooking-stove, the Plough, the Golden Fleece, the Anvil and Sledge-Hammer, the magnified Horse-Shoe, each told its own story, as indicating indispensable wares or occupations.
Passing eastward from the painted effigy of the Indian Trapper, we soon came in front of the Market Place, which, so long as only a low wooden building occupied its centre, had an open, airy appearance. We have already dwelt upon some of the occurrences, and associations connected with this spot.
On King street, about here, the ordinary trade and traffic of the place came, after a few years, to be concentrated. Here business and bustle were every day, more or less, created by the usual wants of the inhabitants, and by the wants of the country farmers whose waggons in summer, and sleighs in winter, thronged in from the north, east and west. And hereabout at one moment or another, every lawful day, would be surely seen, coming and going, the oddities and street-characters of the town and neighbourhood. Having devoted some space to the leading and prominent personages of our drama, it will be only proper to bestow a few words on the subordinates, the Calibans and Gobbos, the Nyms and Touchstones, of the piece.
From the various nationalities and races of which the community was a mixture, these were drawn. There was James O'Hara, for example, a poor humourous Irishman, a perfect representative of his class in costume, style and manner, employed as bellman at auctions, and so on. When the town was visited by the Papyrotomia—travelling cutters-out of likenesses in black paper (some years ago such things created a sensation),—a full-length of O'Hara was suspended at the entrance to the rooms, recognized at once by every eye, even without the aid of the "Shoot easy" inscribed on a label issuing from the mouth. (In the Loyalist of Nov. 24, 1827, we have O'Hara's death noted. "Died on Friday the 16th instant, James O'Hara, long an inhabitant of this Town, and formerly a soldier in His Majesty's service.")—There was Jock Murray, the Scotch carter; and after him, William Pettit, the English one; and the carter who drove the horse with the "spring-halt;" (every school-lad in the place was familiar with the peculiar twitch upwards of the near hind leg in the gait of this nag.)