Page:Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto.pdf/45

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LANDMARKS OF TORONTO.
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1817 The vehicles were called omnibuses, in contrast to the stages of the Thompson line, and only ran as far as Richmond Hill, 16 miles nort of Toronto. Mr. Shuttleworth was succeeded by Edward Shepherd, proprietor of the Half Way House, where the hores were changed on the route between Holland Landing and Toronto.

The fate of the stage line was sealed when, in 1853, the Northern railway was constructed. Up to that period all the passengers, baggage and mail between Toronto and Holland Landing had gone by stage. When the railway went through the line to the Landing was discontinued. Mail was still carried as far as Richmond Hill by the bus line, which passed successively Richmond Hill hotel keeper named Raymon, William Cook, of the Yorkshire house, Thornhill, and John Thompson. This gentleman bought the line early in the seventies, and did not discontinue it until 1896, when the introduction of electric cars killed the business.

Mr John Langstaff, proprietor of the Hawthorn Mineral Springs, Thornhill, tells an interesting anecdote of the stage line during the American war, when the line was in the hands of William Cook. A young man named William Smith, whom Mr. Langstaff had cared for as he would for a son, caught the war fever and could not be prevented from enlisting in the army of the North. So one summer morning he bade his guardian good-bye, and the rattling, lumbering stage hurried him out of sight. A letter was received some time afterward, stating that he was in New York, in the 25th New York Regiment. Another letter was received, in which he stated that he was in active service near New Orleans "and from that day to this," Mr. Langstaff says, with a sigh, "we have never heard the least rumour regarding him."

and rebuilt in 1816, after the war of 1812. The title shows that the "land occupied by John Small, Esq.," who was Clerk of the Executive Council from 1792 to 1831, was part of the reserve apprpriated for the Government House at York by his Excellency Lieut.-Governor Simcoe.

The street on the west is the present Princess street, at right angles to which ran "Palace street," and "King street." "Ontario street" was as it is to-day. "Of the town," is the end of a sentence off a large map which read "East end of the town."

The "road to Quebec" was King street over the Don and east along the present Kingston road.

Palace street is shown, and this plan indicates that its east end was at the line running north and south, indicated by the word "line."

The ground south of Palace street to the bay and east to the site of the Government Houses was the "reserve," and composed in part the old fair green west of the old Toronto jail, erected in 1841, and torn down in 1887.

Mr. Small's lot was one acre. The Small Homestead is on the southwest corner of King and Berkeley streets. The original lot was 166x165, but the easterly 50 feet at the corner of Berkeley street has since been sold.

Berkeley street was not laid out in 1794, but as the south line of Mr. Small's improvements was 130 feet from King street, the distance "rather more than 100 yards," to the site of the north Government House, south of the figures "100" in the plan, shows where the house stood on the present Front street.

A careful comparison of this plan with the latest plans of the same section shows that Berkeley street when it was opened ran down the east side of the dotted line shown as running south from King street and ending at the letter F., and that the west face of the Government Houses stood on a line distant 175 feet east from this line. Following out the distance given of 4 chains and 78 links in a south-easterly direction from the point C to the point of junction with the 175 foot line shows that the north Government Houses stood on the south side of Front street, 110 feet east of Berkeley street, on the site where now stands the office of the Economical Gas Apparatus Con-