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CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY. 

 TORONTO OF OLD: 



A SERIES OF COLLECTIONS AND EE C O LLE C T I NS. 



('Continued from page Sl63.) 



BY THE KEY. DR. SCADDING. 



XIV.— KING STEEET, FEOM CHUECH STEEET TO GEOEGE STEEET. 



We were arrested in our progress on King Street by St. James's Church. Its associations, 

 and those of the District Grammar School and its play-ground to the north, have detained us 

 long. We now return to the point reached when our recollections compelled us to digress. 

 Before proceeding, however, we must record the fact that the break in the line of building on 

 the north side of the street here, was the means of checking the tide of fire which was rolling 

 irresistibly westward, in the great conflagration of 1849. The energies of the local fire-brigade 

 of the day had never been so taxed as they were on that memorable occasion. Aid from steam- 

 power was then undreamt-of. Simultaneous outbursts of flame from unraeroiis widely-separated 

 spots had utterly disheartened every one, and had caused a general abandonment of efert to 

 quell the conflagration. Then it was that the open space about St. James's Church saved much 

 of the town from destruction. To the west, the whole sky was, as it were, a vast canopy of 

 meteors streaming from the east. Tlie church itself was consumed, but the flames advanced 

 no further. A burning shingle was seen to become entangled in tlie luff'er-boards of the belfry, 

 and slowly to ignite the woodwork there : from a very minute start at that point, a stream of 

 fire soon began to rise — soon began to twine itself about the upper stages of the tower, and to 

 climb nimbly up the steep slope of the spire, from the summit of which it then shot aloft into 

 the air, speedily enveloping and overtopping the golden cross that was there. At the same 

 time the flames made their waj'' downwards within the tower, till the internal timbers of the 

 roofing over the main body of the building weee reached. There, in the natural order of things, 

 the fire readily spread ; and the whole interior of the church, in the course of an hour, was 

 transformed before the eyes of a bewildered multitude looking powerlessly on, first into a vast 

 "burning fiery furnace," and then, as the roof collapsed and fell, into a confused chaos of 

 raging flame. The heavy gilt cross at the apex of the spire came down with a crash, and 

 planted itself in the pavement of the principal entrance below, where the steps, as well as tlie 

 inner walls of the base of the tower, were bespattered far and wide with the molten metal of 

 the great bell. While the work of destruction was going fiercely and irrepressibly on, the 

 Public Clock in the belfry, Mr. Draper's gift to the towii, was heard to strike the hour as usual, 

 and the quarters thrice — exercising its functions and having its appointed say, amidst the 

 ■sympathies, not loud but deep, of those who watched its doom ; bearing its testimony, like a 

 martyr at the stake, in calm and unimpassioned strain, up to the very moment of time when 

 the deadly element touched its vitals. 



Opposite the southern portal of St. James's Church was to be seen, at a very early period, 

 the conspicuous trade-sign of a well-known furrier of York, Mr. Josejih Eogers. It was the 

 figure of an Indian Trapper holding a gun, and accompanied by a dog, all depicted in their 

 proper colours on a high, upright tablet set over the doorway of the store below. Besides 

 being an appropriate symbol of the business carried on, it was always an interesting reminder 

 of the time, then not so very remote, when all of York, or Toronto, and its commerce that 

 existed, was the old French trading-post on the common to the west, and a few native hunters 

 of the woods congregating with their packs of "beaver" once or twice a-yoar about the entrance 

 to its picketted enclosure. Other rather early dealers in furs in York were Mr. Jared Stocking 

 .and Mr. John Bastedo. In tb.» Gazette toi April 25, 1822, we notice a somewhat pretentious. 



