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
Mr. Doel arrived in York in 1818, occupying a month in the journey from
Philadelphia to Oswego, and a week in that from Oswego to Niagara, being
obliged from stress of weather to put in at Sodus Bay. At Niagara he
waited three days for a passage to York. He and his venerable helpmeet
were surviving in 1870, at the ages respectively, of 80 and 82.--Not
without reason, as the event proved, they lived for many years in a
state of apprehension in regard to the stability of the lofty spire of a
place of worship close to their residence. In 1862, that spire actually
fell, eastward as it happened, and not westward, doing considerable
damage. Mr. Doel died in 1871.
By the name of the short street passing from Adelaide Street to Richmond
Street, a few chains to the west of Mr. Doel's corner, we are reminded
of Harvey Shepard, a famous worker in iron of the former time, whose
imprint on axe, broad axe or adze, was a guarantee to the practical
backwoodsman of its temper and serviceable quality. Harvey Shepard's axe
factory was on the west side of this short street. Before his
establishment here he worked in a smithy of the customary village type,
on King Street, on the property of Jordan Post. Like Jordan Post
himself, Harvey Shepard was of the old fashioned New England mould,
elongated and wiry. After a brief suspension of business, a placard hung
up in the country inns characteristically announced to his friends and
the public that he had resumed his former occupation and that he would,
"by the aid of Divine Providence," undertake to turn out as good axes as
any that he had ever made; which acknowledgement of the source of his
skill is commendable surely, if unusual. So also, there is no one who
will refuse to applaud an epigrammatic observation of his, when
responding to an appeal of charity. "Though dealing usually in iron
only, I keep," he said, "a little stock of silver and gold for such a
call as this." The factory on Shepard Street was afterwards worked by
Mr. J. Armstrong, and subsequently by Mr. Thomas Champion, formerly of
Sheffield, who, in 1838, advertised that he had "a large stock of
Champion's warranted cast steel axes, made at the factory originally
built by the late Harvey Shepard, and afterwards occupied by John
Armstrong. As Shepard's and Armstrong's axes have been decidedly
preferred before any others in the Province," the advertisement
continues, "it is only necessary to state that Champion's are made by
the same workmen, and from the very best material, to ensure for them
the same continued preference."--We now return from our digression
southward at Bay Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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