Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

The Prince rode through Rosedale to the town. The crowd began outside Government House gates. It was a polite and brightly dressed crowd, for it was drawn from the delightful houses that made islands in the uninterrupted lawns that, with the graceful trees, formed the borders of the winding roads through which he went. Rosedale was once forest on the shores of the old Ontario Lake; the lake has receded three miles and more, but the builders of the city have dealt kindly with the forest, and have touched it as little as they could, so that the old trees blend with the modern lawns to give the new homes an air of infinite charm.

As the Prince drove deeper into the city the crowds thickened, so that when he arrived in the virile, purposeful commercial streets, the sidewalks could no longer contain the mass. They are broad and efficient streets, striking through the town arrow-straight, and giving to the eye superb vistas. But broad though they were, they could not accommodate sightseeing Toronto, and the crowd encroached upon the driveway, much to the disgust of many little boys, who, with their race's contempt for death by automobile, were running or cycling beside the Royal car in their determination to get the maximum of Prince out of a short visit.

The crowd went upward from the roadway also. We had come into our first city of sky-climbing buildings. One of these shoots up some twenty stories, but though this is the tallest "yet," it is surrounded by some considerable neighbours that give the streets great ranges upwards as well as forward. The windows of these great buildings were packed with people, and through the canopy of flags that fluttered on all the route they sent down their cheers to join the welcome on the ground floor.

It was through such crowds that the Prince drove to a greater crowd that was gathered about the Parliament Buildings.

II

The site of the Provincial Parliament Buildings is, as with all these Western cities, very beautifully planned. It is set in the gracious Queen's Park, that forms an avenue of green in the very heart of the town. About the park are the buildings of Toronto University, and the avenue leads down to the dignified old law schools at Osgoode Hall. The Canadians show a sense of appropriate artistry always in the grouping of their public buildings—although, of course, they have had the advantage of beginning before ground-rents and other interests grew too strong for public endeavour.

The Parliament Buildings are of a ruddy sandstone, in a style slightly railway-station Renaissance. They were draped with flags down to the vivid striped platform before the building upon which the reception was held. Great masses of people and many ranks of soldiers filled the lawns before the platform, while to the right was a great flower-bed of infants. A grand-stand was brimming over with school-kiddies ready to cheer at the slightest hint, to sing at command, and to wave flags at all times.

It was a bustling reception from Toronto as parliamentary capital of Ontario, and from Toronto the town. It was packed full of speeches and singing from the children and from a Welsh choir—and Canada flowers Welsh choirs—and presentations from many societies, whose members, wearing the long silk buttonhole tabs stamped with the gold title of the guild or committee to which they belonged, came forward to augment the press on the platform.

These silk tabs are an insignia of Canadian life. The Canadians have an infinite capacity for forming themselves into committees, and clubs, and orders of stout fellows, and all manner of gregarious associations. And when any association shows itself in the sunlight, it distinguishes itself by tagging its members with long, coloured silk tabs. We never went out of sight of tabs on the whole of our trip.

From the Parliament Buildings the Prince drove through the packed town to the Exhibition ground. We passed practically through the whole of the city in these two journeys, travelling miles of streets, yet all the way the mass of people was dense to a remarkable degree. Toronto, we knew, was supposed to have a population of 500,000 people, but long before we reached the end of the drive we began to wonder how the city could possibly keep up the strength on the pavements without running out of inhabitants. It not only kept it up, but it sprang upon us the amazing sight of the Exhibition ground.