Toronto is one of the most accessible centres of the North American continent, being only three hours from Buffalo, one night from New York and Boston, and fourteen hours from Chicago.
Does all this enumeration of her charms only have to do with getting away from them? The citizen of this beautiful city on the lake will assert that there is another equally spellbinding range of charms to be enjoyed without wandering far away from Toronto itself.
The harbour of Toronto is one of the most beautiful of any of the water-front cities. It has a rather curious configuration formed by a picturesque island of more than two thousand acres that forms a species of breakwater. In the summer the waters near the island are alive with craft. Every kind of sailing boat, canoes, and yachts, as well as motor and steam launches, may be seen riding the waves. The island itself is utilised in much the same fashion as Coney Island in the New York harbour, as a resort for popular amusement. With this inland sea of Lake Ontario at its doors, with its fine architecture, its development and culture of the arts, professions, and industries; with such picturesque treasure as that of the Rosedale ravines, the Humber valley, the Don River, and the gentle hills, Toronto is well calculated to be one of the embodied inspirations of the Dominion.
It is claimed that there are more homes, each with its green lawn and its garden—homes owned by their occupants—within the thirty-six square miles that comprise Toronto than in any other city on the American continent. Toronto is truly a thing of life in its expansion. The construction of streets and buildings is in constant progress and the residential limits are being carried many miles into the country. Within the past decade the city has crossed two rivers, marched up a hill, and clambered over two ravines, all of which give the residential region an aspect of romantic beauty. The architectural charm of the city impresses the stranger; especially the cathedrals of St. James and St. Michael and the University of Toronto, that great Norman pile, dignified and with its old-world atmosphere. Surrounding it are the colleges—Victoria, with its Gothic dining-hall and residences; St. Michael's, Knox, and Wycliffe. Soon Trinity will join the ranks of college settlements. McMaster, the Baptist University, is at the northern edge of the campus, and not far away are the great medical schools, the School of Science, the Conservatory of Music, the University Library, the Dental College, and the many college residences. The University of Toronto is perhaps the largest English-speaking University in the British Empire, and the year 1916 found two thousand five hundred of her sons fighting for the Empire. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its Oriental and Indian collection, lies to the north of the campus, and the great General Hospital as well as a special hospital for children are adjacent. Many of the churches are of real beauty—St. Paul's Anglican, a structure which cost one and a half million dollars; the Eaton Memorial on the hill; the Metropolitan Methodist, owning ground estimated as worth over two millions; and the parish church of St. James, with its tower over three hundred feet in height. The Margaret Eaton School of Literature and Expression is an institution of great value, attracting students from all parts of the Dominion. As a theatrical and a musical city, Toronto shares with New York, Boston, and Montreal many of the most noted dramas and musical entertainments. As a musical centre herself, Toronto ranks fourth among the large cities of the continent; and she has an annual average of four thousand musical students. Her own Mendelssohn Choir is not only conceded to be the finest in America, but one of the best in the world.
Nor are the graphic arts neglected in Toronto. There are already two leading organisations, the Ontario Society of Artists and the Canadian Art Club. A College of Art was founded in 1912; there is a Women's Art Association, an Arts and Letters Club, which has issued a very creditable Year Book of Canadian Art, as well as a Heliconian Club, composed of women engaged in artistic and literary work, and who, presumably, quaff the living waters of Helicon to reinforce their energies.
In her Public School System, with an enrolment of thirty-five thousand pupils, Toronto employs many of the most advanced educational methods of the day.
If the visitor in Toronto were to ask for what is perhaps the most really significant factor in the city's life, and one which is likely to be missed by the surface observer, the answer would be that this factor would be found in the Public Library System, so splendidly administered by the Chief Librarian, George H. Locke. A Canadian, a native of Toronto, Mr. Locke was allured for a few years by Harvard University and the University of Chicago; but fortunately for his own city, he has chosen to devote himself to her development and culture through the medium of library work, in a manner whose original genius for relating literature to the needs of the people, and more especially to the youth and the children, is making itself felt in the Dominion as well as in the city.
In many aspects of his manifold and remarkably adjustable system, Mr. Locke creates his own precedents. In any survey of the processes in many of the noted libraries of the past, the chief aim, if not regarded as the chief duty, of the keeper of books has seemed to be that of protecting them from popular contact. The books were to be safeguarded from too familiar approach as are the works of art in the great galleries and museums. In every case they did not, it is true, imitate the methods of the Laurentian Library in Florence and chain the books to the desks, but something of the spirit of the stern custodian was in them all. Mr. Locke at once outlined his policy on the basis of his conviction that books were made for the people, and not the people for books, and that opportunities for more knowledge and greater intelligence should be provided. More especially he held that books had indispensable messages for the youth of a great city. The adult readers were welcomed and accorded every possible opportunity and privilege; but the children were not to be merely welcomed, they were to be enticed by the very attractiveness of the surroundings to come in from the highways and the byways to the feast of literature provided so lavishly for them.
Assisted by a staff of one hundred young women whose enthusiasm leapt up to meet his own, young women with wit and initiative of their own as well, all of which their chief especially encouraged on their parts, the work went forward. "If you think you have a good plan," Mr. Locke says, in effect, to his staff, "try it. Don't come to me about it. If it is successful, then let us talk it over. If it is not, bury it quietly and don't put up any monument to it."
The Central Library, with its fourteen branches, works as a unit; yet not as the unit of a machine, but in a unity of spirit and purpose inclusive of many individual variations. One feature of the system of the highest value is that of the open shelves. Nothing so educates the child, in all that most essential development of what Matthew Arnold so well terms the humanities, as the habit of browsing at will among books. From the official report made by Mr. Locke for the year 1915 the following extract is taken, as it illustrates clearly one novel and invaluable feature of the work—