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
In the hollow, a short distance westward of Mr. Coates's, was one of the
first buildings of any size ever erected in these parts wholly of stone.
It was put up by Mr. Hutchinson. It was a large square family house of
three storeys. It still exists, but its material is hidden under a
coating of stucco. Another building, wholly of stone, was Mr. Hunter's
house, on the west side of Church Street. A portion of Hugill's Brewery
likewise exhibited walls of the same solid, English-looking substance.
We now resume our route.
We immediately approach another road entering from the north, which
again draws us aside. This opening led up to the only Roman Catholic
church in York, an edifice of red-brick, substantially built. Mr. Ewart
was the contractor. The material of the north and south walls was worked
into a kind of tesselated pattern, which was considered something very
extraordinary. The spire was originally surmounted by a large and
spirited effigy of the bird that admonished St. Peter, and not by a
cross. It was not a flat, moveable weathercock, but a fixed, solid
figure, covered with tin.
In this building officiated for some time an ecclesiastic named O'Grady.
Mingling with a crowd, in the over-curious spirit of boyhood, we here,
at funerals and on other occasions, first witnessed the ceremonial forms
observed by Roman Catholics in their worship; and once we remember being
startled at receiving, by design or accident, from an overcharged
_aspergillum_ in the hands of a zealous ministrant of some grade passing
down the aisle, a copious splash of holy water in the eye.
Functionaries of this denomination are generally remarkable for their
quiet discharge of duty and for their apparent submissiveness to
authority. They sometimes pass and repass for years before the
indifferent gaze of multitudes holding another creed, without exciting
any curiosity even as to their personal names. But Mr. O'Grady was an
exception to the general run of his order. He acquired a distinctive
reputation among outsiders. He was understood to be an unruly presbyter;
and through his instrumentality, letters of his bishop, evidently never
intended to meet the public eye, got into general circulation. He was
required to give an account of himself, subsequently, at the feet of the
"Supreme Pontiff."
Power Street, the name now applied to the road which led up to the Roman
Catholic church, preserves the name of the Bishop of this communion, who
sacrificed his life in attending to the sick emigrants in 1847.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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