Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

CHAPTER VIII

THE CITY OF CROWDS. TORONTO: ONTARIO

I

Toronto is a city of many names. You can call it "The Boston of Canada," because of its aspiration to literature, the theatre and the arts. You can call it "The Second City of Canada," because the fact is incontestable. You can call it "The Queen City," because others do, though, like the writer, you are unable to find the reason why you should. You can say of it, as the Westerners do, "Oh—Toronto!" with very much the same accent that the British dramatist reserves for the censor of plays. But though it already had its host of names, Toronto, to us, was the City of Crowds.

Toronto has interests and beauties. It has its big, natural High Park. It has its charming residential quarters in Rosedale and on The Hill. It has its beautiful lagoon on the lakeside. It has its Yonge Street, forty miles straight. It has the tallest building in the Empire, and some of the largest stores in the Empire. It is busy and bright and brisk. But we found we could not see it for crowds. Or, rather, at first we could not see it for crowds. Later a good Samaritan took us for a pell-mell tour in a motor-car, and we saw a chauffeur's eye view of it. Even then we saw much of it over the massed soft hats of Canada.

We had become inured to crowds. We had seen big, bustling, eager, hearty, good-humoured throngs from St. John's to Quebec. But even that hardening had not proofed us against the mass and enthusiastic violence of the crowd that Toronto turned out to greet the Prince, and continued to turn out to meet him during the days he was there.

On the early morning of Monday, August 25th, in that weather that was already being called "Prince of Wales' weather," the Prince stepped "ashore" at the Government House siding, outside Toronto. There was a skirmishing line of the waiting city flung out to this distant station—including some go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign. It was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility until he had been to Government House and started from there to drive inland to the city and its receptions.

A quick automobile rush—and, by the way, it will be noticed that the Continent of Hustle always uses the long word for the short, "automobile" for "car," "elevator" for "lift," and so on—to the Government House, placed the Prince on a legal footing, and he was ready to enter the city.

Government House is remarkable for the fact that it grew a garden in a single night. It is a comely building of rough-dressed stone, standing in the park-like surroundings of the Rosedale suburb, but in the absence of princes its forecourt is merely a desert of grey stone granules. When His Royal Highness arrived it was a garden of an almost brilliant abundance. There were green lawns, great beds packed wantonly with the brightest flowers, while trees, palms and flowering shrubs crowded the square in luxuriance. A marvel of a garden. A realist policeman, after his first gasp, bent down to examine the green of the lawn, and rose with a Kipps expression on his face and with the single word "Fake" on his lips.

The vivid lawn was green cocoanut matting, the beds were cunning arrangements of flowers in pots, and from pots the trees and shrubs flourished. It was a garden artificial and even more marvellous than we had thought.