We have been able to find no very minute account of it; but
it must have been large, as he not only used it as his general private
and official residence, but dispensed vice-regal hospitalities within his
canvas walls. It seems to have been a migratory institution, and to have
occupied a least half-a-dozen different sites during its owner's stay at
York. At one time it was placed on the edge, and near the mouth, of the
little stream subsequently known as Garrison Creek. At another time it
occupied a plot of ground on or near the present site of Gooderham's
distillery. In short, it seems to have been moved about from place to place
in accordance with the convenience or caprice of the owner and his family.
But there is one spot so intimately associated with Governor Simcoe's
residence here that it is time to give some account of it. Every citizen of
Toronto has heard the name of Castle Frank, and most have some general idea
of its whereabouts. It is presumable that the Governor found his canvas
house an insufficient protection against the cold during the winter of
1793-4. Perhaps, too, (observe please, this is a joke), the idea may have
intruded itself upon his mind that there was a sort of vagabondism in
having no fixed place of abode. At any rate, during the early spring of
1794 he erected a rustic, nondescript sort of log chateau on the steep
acclivity overlooking the valley of the Don, rather more than a mile from
the river's mouth. The situation is one of the most picturesque in the
neighbourhood, even at the present day, and there must have been a wild
semi-savagery about it in Governor Simcoe's time that would render it
specially attractive to one accustomed, he had been, to the trim hedges and
green lanes of Devonshire.
It must at least have possessed the charm of novelty. When finished, the
edifice was a very comfortable place of abode. From Dr. Scadding's "Toronto
of Old" we learn that it was of considerable dimensions, and of oblong
shape. Its walls were composed of "a number of rather small, carefully hewn
logs, of short lengths. The whole wore the hue which unpainted timber,
exposed to the weather, speedily assumes. At the gable end, in the
direction of the roadway from the nascent capital, was the principal
entrance, over which a rather imposing portico was formed by the projection
of the whole roof, supported by four upright columns, reaching the whole
height of the building, and consisting of the stems of four good-sized,
well-matched pines, with their deeply-chapped, corrugated bark unremoved.
The doors and shutters to the windows were all of double thickness, made of
stout plank, running up and down on one side, and crosswise on the other,
and thickly studded over with the heads of stout nails. From the middle of
the building rose a solitary, massive chimney-stack."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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