Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of OntarioScadding, Henry
History
Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario
Scadding, Henry
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
The plan before us also incidentally shows where the Town of York was
supposed to terminate:--an inscription--"Front Line of the Town"--runs
along the following route: up what is now the lane through Dr. Widmer's
property: and then, at a right angle eastward along what is now the
north boundary of King Street opposite the block which it was necessary
to get into shape round Mr. Small's first "Improvements." King Street
proper, in this plan, terminates at "Ontario Street:" from the eastern
limit of Ontario Street, the continuation of the highway is marked "Road
to Quebec,"--with an arrow shewing the direction in which the traveller
must keep his horse's head, if he would reach that ancient city.--The
arrow at the end of the inscription just given points slightly upwards,
indicating the fact that the said "Road to Quebec" trends slightly to
the north after leaving Mr. Small's clearing.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XVI.
FROM BERKELEY STREET TO THE BRIDGE AND ACROSS IT.
We now propose to pass rapidly down "the road to Quebec" as far as the
Bridge. First we cross, in the hollow, Goodwin's creek, the stream which
enters the Bay by the cut-stone Jail. Lieutenant Givins (afterwards
Colonel Givins), on the occasion of his first visit to Toronto in 1793,
forced his way in a canoe with a friend up several of the meanderings of
this stream, under the impression that he was exploring the Don. He had
heard that a river leading to the North-West entered the Bay of Toronto,
somewhere near its head; and he mistook the lesser for the greater
stream: thus on a small scale performing the exploit accomplished by
several of the explorers of the North American coast, who, under the
firm persuasion that a water highway to Japan and China existed
somewhere across this continent, lighted upon Baffin's Bay, Davis
Strait, the Hudson River, and the St. Lawrence itself, in the course of
their investigations.
On the knoll to the right, after crossing Goodwin's creek, was Isaac
Pilkington's lowly abode, a little group of white buildings in a grove
of pines and acacias.
Parliament Street, which enters near here from the north, is a memorial
of the olden time, when, as we have seen, the Parliament Buildings of
Upper Canada were situated in this neighbourhood. In an early section of
these Recollections we observed that what is now called Berkeley Street
was originally Parliament Street, a name which, like that borne by a
well-known thoroughfare in Westminster, for a similar reason, indicated
the fact that it led down to the Houses of Parliament.
The road that at present bears the name of Parliament Street shews the
direction of the track through the primitive woods opened by Governor
Simcoe to his summer house on the Don, called Castle-Frank, of which
fully, in its place hereafter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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