TORONTO: AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 



It was a professor of mathematics who led the way, 

 and certainly there is no better place to study hydro- 

 dynamics in its relation to geography. At the south- 

 ern extremity of this row of cottages stands the Lake- 

 side Summer Home for Sick Children, the gift of 

 Mr. John Ross Robertson, who also built the Hos- 

 pital for Sick Children on College Street, the most 

 appealing of Toronto's many charitable institutions. 

 Few sights are so touching as the annual moving in 

 May of the little patients and their nurses from the 

 city to the Lakeside Home. Turning to the left, we 

 pass the lighthouse which for years has guarded this 

 point and is the one building that knew the Island 

 as a peninsula. For it was not till 1853 that the 

 Eastern Gap, now the ordinary entrance for vessels 

 from the south and east, was broken through in a 

 violent storm. Beyond the lighthouse are the pump- 

 ing station and filtering basin of the water-works, 

 and in the offing we see the bell-buoy which marks 

 the end of the intake pipe and whose mournful 

 note suggests recollections of water famines and dis- 

 infected microbes, now happily matters of ancient 

 history. A pretty little church hard by is used by 

 different denominations in turn, recalling the fact 

 that Church Union has made more progress in 

 Canada than elsewhere and that there is a good pros- 

 pect of the Congregational, Methodist and Presby- 

 terian Churches uniting within the coming decade. 

 On May 22, 1913, an Anglican Church Unity Society 

 was organized in Toronto. As we go east little road- 

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