TORONTO OF OLD. 163 



are his projects, and war, wMch seem to be the objects of his leading passions. He is acquainted 

 with the military history of all countries : no hUlock catches his eye without excitmg in his 

 mind the idea of a fort which might be constructed on the spot ; and with the constraction of 

 this fort he associates the plan of operations for a campaign, especially of that which is to lead 

 him to Philadelphia. [Gen. Suncoe appears to have been strongly of the opinion that the United 

 States were not going to be a permanency.] On hearing his professions of an earnest desu-e of 

 peace, you cannot but suppose, either that his reason must liold an absolute sway over his 

 passion, or that he deceives himself." Travels, i. 241. Other traits, which doubtless at this 

 time gave a charm to the home-life of the accomplished Governor, may be gathered from a pass- 

 age in the correspondence, at a later period, of Polwhele, the historian of Cornwall, who says, in 

 a letter addressed to the General himself, dated Manacean, Nov. 5th, 1803: — "I have been 

 sorely disappointed, once or twice, in missing you, whilst you were inspecting Cornwall. It 

 was not long after your visit at my friend Mr. Hoblyn's, but I slept also at Nanswhydden. Had 

 I met you there, the Nodes Atticce, the Cmnce Deorum, would have been renewed, if peradventure 

 the chess-board intervened not ; for rooks and pawns, I think, would have frightened away the 

 Muses, familiar as rooks and pawns might have been to the suitors of Penelope." Polwhele, 544. 



Near the Commissariat store-houses was the site of the Naval Building Yard, where an unfin- 

 ished ship-of-war and the materials collected for the construction of others, were destroyed, 

 when the United States' forces took possession of York in 1813. It appears that Bouchette had 

 just been pointing out to the Government the exposed condition of the public property here. 

 In a note at p. 89 of his " British North America " that officer remarks : "The defenceless situ- 

 ation of York, the mode of its capture, and the destruction of the large ship then on the stocks, 

 were but too prophetically demonstrated in my report to headquarters in Lower Canada, on my 

 return from a responsible mission to the capital of the Upper Province, in the early part of 

 April. Indeed the communication of the result of my reconnoitering operations, and the intel- 

 ligence of the successful invasion of York, and the firing of the new ship by the enemy, were 

 received almost simultaneously." The Governor-in-Chief, Sir George Prevost, was blamed for 

 having permitted a frigate to be laid down in an unprotected position. There was a " striking 

 impropriety," as the Third Letter of the celebrated Veritas points out, " la buUding at York, 

 without providing the means of security there, as the works of defence, projected by General 

 Brock, (when he contemplated, before the war, the removal of the naval depot from Kingston to 

 York, by reason of the proximity of the former to the States ui winter by the ice,) were discon- 

 tinued by orders from below, [from Sir George Prevost, that is,] and never resumed. The posi- 

 tion intended to have been fortified by General Brock, near York, was," Veritas continues, 

 " capable of being made very strong, had his plan been executed ; but as it was not, nor any 

 other plan of defence adopted, a ship-yard without protection became an allurement to ths 

 enemy, as was felt to the cost of the inhabitants of York." 



In the year 1832, the interior of the Commissariat-store, decorated with fiags, was the scene 

 of the first charitable bazaar held in these parts. It was for the relief of distress occasioned by 

 a recent visitation of cholera. The enterprise appears to have been remarkably successful. We 

 have a notice of it in Sibbald's Canadian Magazine of January, 1833, in the following terms : 

 " All the fashionable and weU-disposed attended ; the band of the gallant 79th played ; at each 

 table stood a lady ; and in a very short time all the articles were sold to gentlemen, — who will 

 keep 'as the apple of their eye' the things made and presented by such hands." The sum 

 collected on the occasion, it is added, was three hundred and eleven pounds. 



Where Windsor Street now appears — with its grand iron gates at either ■ end, inviting or for- 

 bidding the entrance of the stranger to the prim, quaint, self-contained little village within — 

 formerly stood the abode of Mr. Jolm Beikie, whose taU, upright, staidly-moving form, generally 

 enveloped in a long snuff-coloured overcoat, was one of the dramatis %iersonos. of York. He had 

 been, at an early period, sherift' of the Home District ; at a later time his signature was familiar 

 to every eye, attached in the Gazette to notices put forth by the Executive Council of the day, 

 of which rather aristocratic body he was the Clerk. 



Passmg westward, we had on the right the spacious home of Mr. Crookshank, a benevolent 

 and excellent man, sometime Receiver-General of the Province, of whom we shall again have 

 occasion to speak; and on the left, on a promontory suddenly jutting out into tlie harbour, 



