Earliest Toronto

Robert M. Macintosh

Description

Almost half the population of Toronto-immigrants and newcomers from elsewhere in Canada-has no cultural memory of our city's beginnings. In a bid to fill this gap, Earliest Toronto tells the city's story up to the War of 1812 and its aftermath.
Beginning with the dramatic conflicts in the aboriginal communities around Lake Ontario before the coming of the Europeans in the early seventeenth century, followed by two centuries of French exploration and settlement, the city's early history will surprise many Torontonians.
Simcoe, the founder of the village of York in 1793, is often presented as a great administrator and military leader. In fact he was a poor manager with no attachment to Canada, and a vigorous advocate of English snobbery and class distinction. His chief concern was to gain preferment in London and to transplant the values of the British class system to the forest frontier.
Earliest Toronto makes a plausible case that the real founder of Toronto was William Berczy, a remarkably cultured and determined man who led an expedition of German immigrants to Markham in 1794, and who contributed significantly to the early development of the new settlement.
Later chapters focus on the people and events that shaped the early years of a struggling frontier community. One of the stories is about the sinking of the Speedy on Lake Ontario, and how it led to the building of The Grange, today one of Toronto's oldest extant buildings and the birthplace of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Informations

• Publié par: Burnstown Publishing House
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781772570168
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

EARLIEST TORONTO

ROBERT M. MACINTOSH
BURNSTOWN PUBLISHING HOUSE
5 Leckie Lane, Burnstown, Ontario K0J 1G0
Telephone [phone]
http://www.burnstownpublishing.com
ISBN 978-1-77257-016-8
Copyright © Robert Macintosh 2015

Printed and bound in Canada
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Macintosh, Robert, 1923-
Earliest Toronto / Robert M. Macintosh.
Includes bibliographical references.

1. Toronto (Ont.)—History. I. Title.
FC3097.4.M33 2006 971.3’541 C2006-903860-0
COVER:
The Coat of Arms on the cover is that of the former City of Toronto, prior to amalgamation.
The Coat of Arms was registered with the College or Arms, London, England on December 20, 1961 and is a registered trademark, used with permission.
For my many grandchildren
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER ONE
TORONTO BEFORE HISTORY
CHAPTER TWO
FROM BRULÉ TO “THE TORONTO PURCHASE”
CHAPTER THREE
GOVERNMENT FROM A CANVAS TENT
CHAPTER FOUR
WILLIAM BERCZY: CO-FOUNDER OF TORONTO
CHAPTER FIVE
THE VILLAGE OF YORK
CHAPTER SIX
THE PRICE OF THINGS AT YORK IN 1810
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE GATEWAYS TO YORK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Without the help and encouragement of John Stevens, my editor, this book would not have emerged. I want to thank him and the publisher, Tim Gordon, for their advice and judgment. A shorter version of Chapter 4 on Berczy appeared in the December-January issue of 2002 of The Beaver magazine.
My wife had to endure long periods of writer’s drought with patience. Kevin Doyle gave me timely encouragement. And then there are the many authors who have written wonderful books about Toronto, going back almost two centuries. I have enjoyed learning from them and trying to bring a new perspective to a slice of our early history.
INTRODUCTION
Just about half the population of Greater Toronto was born outside Canada, and many others migrated here from within Canada. Something like one and a half million people have no cultural memory of the city, no family traditions passed down for generations. Their family traditions and cultural memory are of other places.
Cultural memory is the distillation of experiences lived and passed on to a younger generation, and so preserved unconsciously in daily living.
For one-half of our population, there is no way of connecting the daily news to what happened a decade ago or a generation ago. Contemporary knowledge of political and public life, of the arts and architecture, of everything going on in the city, begins on the day when a family walks out of the Pearson terminal to a new world and a new life.
Very few great cities in the world boast such diversity as Toronto, which has succeeded better than most in building a social democracy from a platform which was mostly homogeneous in race and colour only fifty years ago. But in such a deeply multicultural society, the collective memory of what came before is in danger of being lost.
This short history of Toronto’s beginnings is meant for the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from all over the world—and from elsewhere in Canada too—who may wonder what came before them here in their new homeland.
Earliest Toronto tells our city’s story until the War of 1812. There are scores of books about Toronto, some of which cover this early period, but most of which deal with more recent history. Focusing on this slice of history is intended to generate interest in our earliest years and to challenge conventional wisdom about the real founder of Toronto. It owes its existence to the fact that the author has been collecting books about Toronto for many years, and decided to distill some of them into this new perspective.
He has also examined the old sites, to put the earliest history into the context of today’s metropolis. Sadly, nearly all of the early buildings have been demolished. But sites don’t disappear – and just recently the site of the first Parliament buildings has been revealed and acquired by the Province. This is certainly a harbinger of renewed interest in our earliest beginnings.
ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CITATIONS
All 24 illustrations in this book have been reproduced from secondary sources. The Toronto Reference Library made digital images suitable for use by the publisher, either from books or from the extensive photo collections in the Baldwin Room. The author is grateful for the assistance of Alan Walker and Susan Schilbach at the TRL. Helpful advice was provided by Jean Dryden, former colleague at the Friends of the Archives of Ontario. Responsibility for the data rests with the author. Any errors or omissions are unintended and regretted, and will be corrected in any subsequent printing.
Abbreviations used are AGO for Art Gallery of Ontario; TRL for the Toronto Reference Library of the Public Library of Toronto; JRR for the John Ross Robertson Collection in TRL; LAC for the Library and Archives Canada (formerly PAC); MNR for the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario; NGC for the National Gallery of Canada; OA for the Archives of Ontario; YUA for the York University Archives. Books cited are cross-referenced in the Bibliography.

Plate 1.
Playter’s Bride over the Don
Robertson: Diary, page 336. TRL.JRR 3285, T12838; Playter’s Bridge near York, June 6 [ca. 1796], AO: F 47; p.204, TRL T11502; Castle Frank [1796]; OA F 47.

Plate 2.
Huron Long House
Heidenreich: Huronia, part of Fig.4. MNR.

Plate 3.
Dispersions of the Hurons
Cole: Atlas, Plate 35. Heidenreich. UTP.

THE GREAT DISPERSIONS, 1648-1653
Co-ordinated planning and the effective use of muskets enabled the Iroquois confederacy to disperse the Huron tribes in 1647-9, the Petun in 1649-50, the Nipissing in 1649-51, and the Neutral in 1651-2. Fearing a similar fate, most of the eastern Great Lakes native groups, together with some Huron, Petun, and Nipissing refugees, fled west and north. Other refugees, mainly Christian converts, settled near Quebec (Huron) and Trois-Rivières (Algonquin and. Nipissing). The bulk of the surviving Huron, Petun, and Neutral joined the Iroquois and were gradually absorbed.

Plate 4.
Map of Toronto Carrying Place
After Arthur Plate 1.1. UTP. From Robinson. LAC Amicus 5361285.

Plate 5.
Fort Rouillé
TRL. T32184.

Plate 6.
Map of Toronto Purchase
Gentilcore: Atlas. UTP. Part of Map 4.3 and Part Map 3.14.UTP.

Plate 7.
Mrs. Simcoe
Robertson: Diary, P. 10. TRL, JRR 4042, T16542, LAC. 10/Amicus No. 4606898.

Plate 8.
Plan of York Harbour
Robertson: Landmarks, Vol.1. YUA and LAC NMC 21768; and TRL T10080, YUA.

Plate 9
Barracks of Queen’s Rangers
After Benn: Historic Fort York, p.38, a reproduction of Lt. Stretton’s York Barracks of the Queen’s Rangers; and Benn, op.cit. p, 27, a reproduction of Elizabeth Francis Hale’s View of York, 1804, LAC (C-14905); and p. 27. LAC Coverdale Collection C’034334.

Plate 10.
Castle Frank
Robertson: Diary, page 336. TRL.JRR 3285, T12838; Playter’s Bridge near York, June 6 [ca. 1796], AO: F 47; p.204, TRL T11502; Castle Frank [1796]; OA F 47.

Plate 11.
Berczy self portrait
Allodi: Berczy. NGC, Plate V111, p.120. Original at AGO.

Plate 12.
Brant
Allodi: Berczy. NGC Plate X111, p.125. Original at NGC.

Plate 13.
Simcoe
Mosnier Portrait. TRL. T 30592.

Plate 14.
Peter Russell
Andre: Berczy p. 88. Watercolour copy by Berthon. TRL. JRR 407.

Plate 15.
Russell Abbey
TRL. T11480.

Plate 16
View of York 1804
After Benn: Historic Fort York, p.38, a reproduction of Lt. Stretton’s York Barracks of the Queen’s Rangers; and Benn, op.cit. p, 27, a reproduction of Elizabeth Francis Hale’s View of York, 1804, LAC (C-14905); and p. 27. LAC Coverdale Collection C’034334.

Plate 17.
Parliament Buildings
After Dieterman Plate 1.1. Part of LAC C-034334.

Plate 18.
Don Blockhouse
TRL. T 10336.

Plate 19.
Quetton St. George House
Robertson: Landmarks, Vol.1. YUA and LAC NMC 21768; and TRL T10080, YUA.

Plate 20.
The Grange
TRL. T11140.

Plate 21.
The Speedy
TRL. JRR 1199.

Plate 22.
The Sir Issac Brock
After Gibson p. 27. TRL. 15211.

Plate 23.
Cooper’s Wharf
Bartlett, Vol. 2. TRL JRR 1840 T32137.

Plate 24.
Map of Upper Canada
Gentilcore: Atlas. UTP. Part of Map 4.3 and Part Map 3.14.UTP.
CHAPTER ONE
TORONTO BEFORE HISTORY
In the late summer of 1794, an extraordinary scene unfolded at the mouth of the Don River. 1 A procession of bateaux —flat-bottomed boats— worked its way up the west side of the river to approximately the location of the Queen Stree