TORONTO OP OLD. 151 



Eastward of Berkeley Street, King Street became the Kingston Road, trending sliglitly to the 

 north, and then proceeding in a straight line to a bridge over the Don. This divergency in the 

 highway caused a number of the lots adjacent on the northern side to be awkwardly bounded at 

 their southern ends by lines that formed, with the sides, alternately obtuse and acute angles, 

 productive of corresponding inconveniences in the shape of buildings afterwards erected, and 

 in the position of some of them, which appeared as if they had disagreed and separated at minute 

 angles, or been jostled slightly out of place by an earthquake-shock. 



At the Bridge, the lower Kingston Road, if produced westward in a right line, would have 

 been Queen Street, or Lot Street, as that route would have been named, from the Park-lots pro- 

 jected at an early period on its northern side, had it been deemed proper to clear a passage in 

 that direction through the forest. But some way westward on this line, a ravine was encoun- 

 tered lengthwise, which was held to present great engineering difficulties. A road out diago- 

 nally from the Bridge to the opening of King Street at once avoided this natural impediment, 

 and also led to a point where an easy connection was made with the track for wheels that ran 

 along the shore of the harbour to the Garrison. But for the ravine referred to, which now 

 appears to the south of Moss Park, Lot Street, or, which is the same thing. Queen Street, would 

 at an early period have begun to dispute with King Street its claim to be the chief thoroughfare 

 of York. 



But to come back to our original unpromising stand-point. Objectionable as the first site of 

 the Legislative Buildings at York may appear to ourselves, and alienated as it now is to lower 

 uses, we cannot but gaze upon it with a certain degree of emotion when we remember that here 

 it was that the first skii-mishes took place in the great war of principles which afterwards with 

 such determination and effect was fought out in Canada. Here it was that first loomed up 

 before the minds of our early lawmakers the ecclesiastical question, the educational question, 

 the constitutional question. Here it was that first was heard the open discussion, infantile, 

 indeed, and vague, but pregnant with very weighty results, of topics, social and' national, 

 wliich, at the time, even in the parent state itself, were mastered but by few. Here it was, 

 during a period of twenty-seven years (1797-1824), at each opening and closing of the annual 

 session, amidst the firing of cannon and the commotion of a crowd, the cavalcade drew up that 

 is wont, from the banks of the Thames to the remotest colony of England, to mark the solemn 

 progress of the sovereign or the sovereign's representative, to and from the other Estates assem- 

 bled in Parliament. Here, amidst such fitting surroundings of state, as the circumstances of 

 the times and the place admitted, came and went personages of eminence, whose names are now 

 familiar in Canadian story: never, indeed, the founder and organizer of Upper Canada, Governor 

 Simcoe himself, in this formal and ceremonious manner ; although often must he have visited 

 the spot otherwise, in his personal examinations of every portion of his young capital and its 

 envii'ons. Here, immediately after him, came and went repeatedly, in due succession, President 

 Russell, Governor Hunter, Governor Gore, General Brock, General SheaflTe, Sir Gordon Drum- 

 mond. Sir Peregrine Maitland. And, while contemplating the scene of our earliest political 

 conflicts ; the scene of our earliest known state pageants in these parts, with their modest 

 appliances and accommodations, our minds intuitively recur to a period farther removed stUl, 

 when under more primitive conditions the Parliament of Upper Canada assembled at Newark, 

 across the Lake. We picture to ourselves the group of seven crown-appointed Councillors and 

 five representatives of the commons, assembled there, with the first Speaker, McDonell of Glen- 

 garry ; all plain, unassuming, prosaic men, listening, at their first session, to the opening speech 

 of their frank and honoured Governor. We see them adjourning to the open air from their 

 straitened chamber at Navy HiU, and conducting the business of the young Province under the 

 shade of a sjareading tree, introducing the English Code and Trial by Jury, decreeing Roads 

 and prohibiting the spread of Slavery ; while a boulder of the drift, lifting itself through the 

 natural turf, serves as a desk for the recording clerk. Below them, ui the magnificent estuary 

 of the river Niagara, the waters of aU the Upper Lakes are swirling by, not yet recovered from 

 the agonies of the long gorge above, and the leap at Table Rock. — Even here, at the opening and 

 close of this primeeval Legislature, some of the decent ceremonial was observed with which, as 

 we have seen, the sadly-inferior site of the west bank of the river Don became afterwards 

 familiar. We learn this from the narrative of the French duke de Liancourt, who affords us 



