XVIII.
QUEEN STREET, FROM THE DON BRIDGE TO CAROLINE STREET.
e return once more to the Don Bridge; and from that point commence a journey westward along the thoroughfare now known as Queen Street, but which at the period at present occupying our attention, was non-existent. The region through which we at first pass was long known as the Park. It was a portion of Government property not divided into lots and sold, until recent times.
Originally a great space extending from the first Parliament houses, bounded southward and eastward by the water of the Bay and Don, and northward by the Castle Frank lot, was set apart as a "Reserve for Government Buildings," to be, it may be, according to the idea of the day, a small domain of woods and forest in connection with them; or else to be converted in the course of time into a source of ways and means for their erection and maintenance. The latter appears to have been the view taken of this property in 1811. We have seen a plan of that date, signed "T. Ridout, S. G.," shewing this reserve divided into a number of moderate sized lots, each marked with "the estimated yearly rent, in dollars, as reported by the Deputy Surveyor [Samuel S. Wilmot]." The survey is therein stated to have been made "by order of His Excellency Francis Gore, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor."
The number of the lots is eighty-three. None of them bear a larger amount than twenty dollars. Some of them consisting of minute bits of marsh, were expected to yield not more than one dollar. The revenue from the whole if realised would have been eleven hundred and thirty-three dollars. In this plan, what is now Queen street is duly laid down, in direct continuation of the Kingston Road westward, without regard to the engineering difficulties presented by ravines; but it is entitled in large letters, "Dundas Street." On its north side lie forty-six, and on its south, thirty-seven of the small lots into which the whole reserve is divided The scheme was never carried into effect.
The Park, as we remember it, was a tract of land in a state of nature, densely covered, towards the north, with massive pines; and towards the south, with a thick secondary growth of the same forest tree. Through these woods ran a devious and rather obscure track, originating in the bridle-road cut out, before the close of the preceding century, to Castle Frank; one branch led off from it to the Playter-estate, passing down and up two very steep and difficult precipices; and another, trending to the west and north, conducted the wayfarer to a point on Yonge Street about where Yorkville is now to be seen.
To the youthful imagination, the Park, thus clothed with veritable forest—