846 CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY: 



XIX.— FBOM POWER AND TRINITY STREETS TO DON STREET. 

 We immediately approach anoblier road entering from the north, which again draws us aside. 

 This opening led up to the only Roman Catholic church in York, an edifice of red brick, 

 substantially built. Mr. Ewart was the architect. The material of the north and south walls 

 was worked into a kind of tasselated pattern, which was considered something very extraordi- 

 nary. The spire was originally surmounted by a large and spirited efBgy of the bird that admon- 

 ished St. Peter, and not by a cross. It was not a flat, moveable weathercock, but a fixed, 

 solid figure, covered with tin. In this building ofiiciated for some time an ecclesiastic named 

 O'Grady. Mingling with a crowd, in the over curious spirit of boyhood, we here, at funerals 

 and on other occasions, first witnessed the ceremonial forms observed by Roman Catholics in 

 their worship ; and once we remember being startled at receiving, by design or accident, from 

 an overcharged aspergillum in the hands of a zealous ministrant of some grade passing down 

 the aisle, a copious splash of holy water in the eye. Functionaries of this denomination are 

 generally remarkable for their quiet discharge of duty and for their apparent submissiveness to 

 authority. They sometimes pass and repass for years before the indifferent,gaze of multitudes 

 holding another creed, without exciting any curiosity even as to their personal names. But 

 Mr. O'Grady was an exception to the general run of his order. He acquired a distinctive 

 reputation among outsiders. He was understood to be an unruly presbyter ; and through his 

 instrumentality, letters of his bishop, evidently never intended to meet the public eye, got 

 into general circulation. He was required to give an account of himself, subsequentlj', at 

 the feet of the "Supreme Pontiff." Power Street, the name now applied to the road which 

 led up to the Roman Catholic church, preserves the name of the Bishop of this communion, 

 who sacrificed his life in attending to the sick emigrants in 1847. The road to the south, a 

 few steps further on, led to the wind-miU built by Mr. Worts, senior, in 1831. In the pos- 

 session of Messrs. Gooderham & Worts are three interesting pictures, in oU, which from time 

 to time have been exhibited. They are intended to illustrate the gradual i:)rogress in extent 

 and importance of the mills and manufactures at the site of the wind-mill. The first shows 

 the original structure — a circular tower of red brick, with the usual sweeps attached to a 

 hemispherical revolving top ; in the distance town and harbour are seen. The second shows 

 the wind-mill dismantled, but surrounded by extensive buildings of brick and wood, sheltering 

 now elaborate machinery driven by steam-power. The third represents a third stage in the 

 march of enterprise and prosperity. In this picture gigantic structures of massive, dark-col- 

 oured stone tower up before the eye, vying in colossal proportions and ponderous strength 

 with the works of the castle-builders of the feudal times. — We are told by an inhabitant weU 

 known, that when out duck-shooting, now nearly forty years since, he was surprised by falling 

 in with Mr. Worts, senior, rambling apparently without purpose in the bush at the Little 

 Don : all the surrounding locality was then in a state of nature, and frequented only by the 

 sportsman and trapper. On entering into conversation with Mr. Worts, our friend found that 

 he was there prospecting for an object ; that, in fact, somewhere near the spot where they 

 were standing, he thought of putting up a wind-mill ! The project at the time seemed suf- 

 ficiently quixotic. But posterity beholds the large practical outcome of the idea then brooding 

 in Mr. Worts's brain. In their day of small things the pioneers of new settlements may take 

 courage from this instance of progress in one generation, from the rough to the most advanced 

 condition. For a century to come, there will be bits of this continent as unpromising, at the 

 first glance, as the mouth of the Little Don, forty years ago, yet as capable of being reclaimed 

 by the energy and ingenuity of man, and being put to divinely-intended and legitimate uses. — 

 Returning now from the wind-mill, once more to the "road to Quebec," in common language, 

 the Kingston road, we passed, at the corner, the abode of one of the many early settlers in these 

 parts that bore German names — the tenement of Peter Ernst, or Ernest as the appellation 

 afterwards became. Just opposite on the left was where Angell lived, the architect of the 

 abortive bridges over the mouths of the Don. We obtain from the York Observer of December 

 11, 1820, some earlier information in regard to Mr. Angell. It is in the form of a "Card" thus 

 headed : " York Land Price Current Office, King Street." It then proceeds — "In consequence 

 of the increase of the Population of the Town of York, and many applications for family 

 accommodation upon the arrival of strangers desirous of becoming settlers, the Subscriber 

 intends to add to the practice of his Oflice the business of a House Surveyor and Architect, to 



