[514] 

 CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY. 



TOKONTO OF OLD: 



A SERIES OF COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS, 

 (Continued from page, hZS.) 



BY THE REV. DR. SCADDING. 



XXVII.— QUEEN STREET, FROM THE DON BRIDGE TO PARLIAMENT STREET. 

 We return once more to the Don bridge ; and from that point commence a journey westward 

 along the thoroughfare now known as Queen Street, but which at the period at present occu- 

 pying our attention, was non-existent. The region through wliich we at first pass was long 

 known as the Park. It was a portion of Government property not divided into lots and sold 

 until recent times. Originally a great space extending from the first Parliament houses, bound- 

 ed southward and eastward by the water of the bay and Don, and northward by the Castle 

 Frank lot, was set apart as a " Reserve for Government Buildings," to be, it may be, accord- 

 ing to the idea of the day, a small domain of woods and forest in connection with them ; or 

 else to be converted in the course of time into a source of ways aud means for their erection 

 and maintenance. The latter appears to have been the view taken of this property in ISll. 

 We have seen a plan of that date, signed " T. Ridout, S. G " sliewiug this reserve divided into 

 a number of moderate sized lots, each marked with " the estimated yearly rent, in dollars, as 

 reported by the Deputy Surveyor [Samuel S. Wilmot]." The survey is therein stated to have been 

 made " by order of His Excellency Francis Gore, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor." Tlie number of 

 the lots is eighty-three. None of them bear a larger figure than twenty dollars. Some of them, 

 consisting of minute bits of marsh, were expected to yield not more than one dollar. The 

 revenue from the whole it realised would have been Eleven hundred and thirty-three dollars. 

 In this plan, what is now Queen Street is duly laid down, in direct continuation of the 

 Kingston Road westward, without regard to the engineering difficulties, presented by' ravines ; 

 but it is entitled, in large letters, " Dundas Street." On its north side lie forty-six, and on its 

 south, thirty-seven of tlie small lots into which the whole reserve is divided. The scheme was 

 never carried into effect. The Park, as we remember it, was a tract of land in a state of nature, 

 densely covered, towards the north, with massive pines ; and towards the south, with a thick 

 secondary growth of the same forest tree. Through these v,roods ran a devious and rather 

 obscure track, originating in the bridle-road cut out, before the close of the preceding century, 

 to Castle Prank ; one branoli led oft' from it to the Playter-estate, passing down and up two 

 very steep and difficult precipices ; and another, trending to the west and north, conducted 

 the wayfarer to a point on Yonge Street about where Yorkville is now to be seen. To the 

 youthful imagination, the Park, tlms clothed with veritable forest — 



The nodding horror of whose shady brov/s 



Awed the forlorn and wandering passenger— 



and traversed by irregular, ill-defined aud very solitary paths, leading to widely-separated 

 localities, seemed a vast and rather mysterious region, the place that immediately flashed on 

 the mind, whenever in poem or fairy tale, a wild or wold or wilderness was named. As time 

 rolled on, too, it became actually the haunt and hiding place of lawless characters. 



After passing, on our left, the burial-plot attached to tlie first R. C. Church of York, and 

 arriving where Parliament Street, at the present day, intersects, we reached the limit, in that 

 direction, of the "Reserve for Government Buildings." Stretching from the point indicated, 

 there was on the right side of the way, a range of " park lots," extending some two miles to the 

 west, all bounded on the south by what at the present time is Queen Street, but whicli, from 

 being the great thoroughfare along the front of this very range, was long known as "Lot Street." 

 (In the plan above spoken of, it is marked, as already stated, " Dundas Street," it being a 

 section of the great military way, bearing that name, projected by the first Governor of 



