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
It was Mr. Fothergill's misfortune to have lived too early in Upper
Canada. Many plans of his in the interests of literature and science
came to nothing for the want of a sufficient body of seconders. In
conjunction with Dr. Dunlop and Dr. Rees, it was the intention of Mr.
Fothergill to establish at York a Museum of Natural and Civil History,
with a Botanical and Zoological Garden attached; and a grant of land on
the Government Reserve between the Garrison and Farr's Brewery was
actually secured as a site for the buildings and grounds of the proposed
institution.
A prospectus now before us sets forth in detail a very comprehensive
scheme for this Museum or Lyceum, which embraced also a picture gallery,
"for subjects connected with Science and Portraits of individuals," and
did not omit "Indian antiquities, arms, dresses, utensils, and whatever
might illustrate and make permanent all that we can know of the
Aborigines of this great Continent, a people who are rapidly passing
away and becoming as though they had never been."
For several years Mr. Fothergill published "The York Almanac and Royal
Calendar," which gradually became a volume of between four and five
hundred duodecimo pages, filled with practical and official information
on the subject of Canada and the other British American Colonies. This
work is still often resorted to for information.
Hanging in his study we remember noticing a large engraved map of
"Cabotia." It was a delineation of the British Possessions in North
America--the present Dominion of Canada in fact. It had been his
purpose in 1823 to publish a "Canadian Annual Register;" but this he
never accomplished. While printing the _Upper Canada Gazette_, he edited
in conjunction with that periodical and on the same sheet, the "Weekly
Register," bearing the motto, "Our endeavour will be to stamp the very
body of the time--its its form and pressure: we shall extenuate nothing,
nor shall we set down aught in malice." From this publication may be
gathered much of the current history of the period. In it are given many
curious scientific excerpts from his Common Place Book. At a later
period, he published, at Toronto, a weekly paper in quarto shape, named
the "Palladium."
Among the non-official advertisements in the _Upper Canada Gazette_, in
the year 1823, we observe one signed "Charles Fothergill," offering a
reward "even to the full value of the volumes," for the recovery of
missing portions of several English standard works which had belonged
formerly, the advertisement stated, to the "Toronto Library," broken up
"by the Americans at the taking of York." It was suggested that probably
the missing books were still scattered about, up and down, in the town.
It is odd to see the name of "Toronto" cropping out in 1823, in
connection with a library. (In a much earlier York paper we notice the
"Toronto Coffee House" advertised.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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