TORONTO OP OLD. 85 



finally readhing Ihe Market Place. Of the opening of Yonge Street through a tier of building 

 lots that in ISOO blocked the way from Queen Street southwards we shall speak hereafter in 

 the excursion which we propose to make through Yonge Street from south to north the moment 

 we have iinished recording our collections and recollections in relation to Queen Street. 



In the Oracle for Saturday, Januai-y 21, 1804, we have this brief advertisement :— "The sub- 

 scribers for openmg Lot Street are requested to meet at Cooper's Hotel on Monday next at 11 

 o'clock in the forenoon. York, January 21st, 1804." No account of the meeting is afterwards 

 given and the names of the subscribers do not appear. 



According to the old plans, the original Toronto Street started southward from Queen Street 

 exactly four chains and twenty links to the east of the present south-east corner of Yonge 

 'Street. It then ran, as we have said, a little to the west of the present Victoria Street which 

 was first known as Upper George Street. The fact that the street which in modem times is 

 called Toronto Street is the nearest passage to King Street from the lower end of what is 

 virtually the old Toronto Street, probably suggested the name — Toronto Street. 



In the old Court House, situated as we have described, we received our first bosrish impressions 

 of the solenmities and forms observed in Courts of Law. In paying a visit of ciiriosity subse- 

 •tiuently to the singular series of Law Courts which are to be found ranged along one side of 

 ■Westminster Hall in London — each one of them entered in succession through the heavy folds 

 of lofty mysterious-looking curtains, each of them crowded with earnest pleaders and anxious 

 suitors, each one of them provided with a judge elevated in solitary majesty on high, each one of 

 them seeming to the passing stranger more like a scene in a drama than a prosaic reality — we 

 could not but revert in memory to the old upper chamber at York where the remote shadows of 

 such things were for the first time encountered. It was startling to remember of a sudden that 

 our early Upper Canadian Judges, our early Upper Canadian Barristers, came fresh from these 

 Westminster Hall Courts ! What a contrast must have been presented to these men in the 

 rude wilds to which they found themselves transported. Biding the Circuit in the Home, 

 Midland, Eastern and Western Districts at the beginning of the present century was no trivial 

 undertaking. Accommodation for man and horse was for the most part scant and comfortless. 

 Locomotion by land and water was perilous and slow and racking to the frame. The apartments 

 procurable for the purposes of the Court were of the humblest kind. Our pioneer jurisconsults 

 in the several degrees, however, like our pioneers generally, unofficial as well as official, did 

 their duty. They quietly initiated in the country, customs of gravity and order which have 

 now become traditional ; and we see the result in the decent dignity that surrounds, at the 

 present day, the administration of justice in Canada in the Courts of every grade. 



Prior to the occupation of Mr. Montgomery's house as the Court House at York, the Court 

 of King's Bench held its sessions in a portion of the Government Buildings at the east end of 

 the town, destroyed in the war of 1813. On June 25, 1812, the Sheriff, John Beikie, advertises 

 in the Gazette that " a Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the Home District 

 will be holden at the Government BuUdings in the town of York on Tuesday the fourteenth 

 day of July now next ensuing, at the hour of ten o'clock in the forenoon, of which all Justices 

 of the Peace, Coroners, Gaolers, High Constables, Constables and Bailiffs are desired to take 

 notice, and that they be then and there present with their Rolls, Records and other Memoranda 

 to do and perform those things which by reason of their respective offices shall be to be done." 



It is with the Court Room in the Government Buildings that the Judge, Sheriff and Crown 

 Counsel were familiar, who were engulfed in Lake Ontario in 1805. The story of the total loss 

 of the government schooner Speedy, Captain Thomas Paxton, is widely known. In that ill-fated 

 ■vessel suddenly went down in a gale in the dead of night, along with its commander and crew. 

 Judge Cochrane, Solicitor-General Gray, Mr. Angus McDonell, Sheriff of York, Mr. Pishe, the 

 High Bailiff, an Indian prisoner about to be tried at Presquisle for murder, i^\'0 interpreters. 

 Cowan and Ruggles, several witnesses, and Mr. Herchmer, a merchant of York ; in aU thirty- 

 nine persons, of whom no trace was ever afterwards discovered. The weather was threatening, 

 the season of the year was stormy (7th October), and the schooner was suspected not to be 

 sea-worthy. But the orders of the Governor, General Peter Hunter, were peremptory. Mr. 

 Weekes, of whom we have heard before, escaped the fate that befel so many connected with, 

 his profession, by deciding to make the journey to Presquisle on horseback, which he did. 1 

 ■was the occurrence of this fatal casualty to Mr, McDonell that occasioned the vacancy in the 



