TORONTO OP OLD. 103 



XXXVIir.— QUEEN STREET— FROM THE COLLEGE AVENUE TO JOHN STREET. 



Pursuing our way now westward from the Avenue leading to the University, we pass the 

 Powell park-lot, on which was, up to recent times, the family vault of the Powells, descend- 

 ants of the Chief Justice. The whole property was named hy the fancy of the first possessor, 

 Caer-Hoel, Castle-Hoel, in allusion to the mythic Hoel, from whom all ap-Hoels boast to he 

 sprung. Dummer Street, which opens northward a little further on, retains, as we have said, 

 the second ijaptismal name of Chief Justice Powell. 



Beverley-liouse and its surroundings, on the side opposite the Caer-Hoel estate, recall one 

 whose name and memory must repeatedly recur in every narrative of our later Canadian history. 

 Sir Jolm Robinson. 



The Park-lot which follows that occupied by Chief Justice Powell was selected by Solicitor 

 General Gray, of whom fully already. It afterwards became the property of Mr. D'Arcy 

 Boulton, eldost son of Mr. Justice Boulton, and was known as the Grange estate. The house 

 whicii bears tlie name of the " Grange," was built at the beginning of the brick-era of York, 

 ;md is a favorable specimen of the edifices of that period. The Grange-gate, now thrust far 

 back by the progress of improvement, was long a familiar land-mark on the line of Lot Street. 

 It was just within tliis gate that the fight already recorded took place between Mr. Justice 

 Boiiltou's horses, Bonaparte and Jefferson, and the bears. A memorandum of Mr. G. S. Jarvis 

 of Cornwall, in our ijossessiou, affirms that Mr. Justice Boulton drove a phaeton of some pre- 

 tensions, and that his horses, Bonaparte and Jefferson, were the crack pair of the day at York. 

 As to some other equipages he says : " Tlie Lieut. Governor's carriage was considered a splen- 

 did affair, but some of the Toronto cabs would now throw it into the shade. The carriage of 

 •Chief Justice Powell, he adds, was a rough sort of omnibus, and would compare with the Gaol 

 van used now." We remember the late Bishop's account of a carriage sent up for his own use 

 from Albany or New York : it was constructed on the model of the ordiuaiy oval stage coach, 

 with a kind of hemispherical top. To our former notes of Mr. Justice Boulton, we add, that 

 he was the author of a work in quarto published in London in 1S06, entitled a " A Sketch of 

 the Province of Upper Canada." 



John Street, passing south just here, is, as was noted previously, a memorial, so far as its 

 name is concerned, of the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. On the plan of the 

 "new town," as the first expansion westward, of York, was termed, — while this street is marked 

 "John," — the next parallel thoroughfare eastward is named ''Graves," and the open square 

 included between the two, southward on Front Street, is " Simcoe-place." The three names 

 of the founder of York were thus commemorated. The e.xpression "Simcoe-place" has fallea 

 into disuse. It indicated, of course, the site of the present Parliament Buildings of the 

 Province of Ontario. Graves Street has become Simcoe Street, a name, as we have seen, 

 recently extended to the thoroughfare northward, with which it is nearly in a right line, viz., 

 William Street, which previously recorded, as we have said, the first Christian name of Chief 

 Justice Powell. Tlie name "John Street" has escaped change. The name sounds trivial 

 enough ; but it has an interest. 



In tlie minds of the present generation, with John Street will be specially associated the 

 memorable landing of the Prince of Wales at Toronto in 1S60. At the foot of John Street, for 

 that occasion, there was built, as will be remembered, a vast semi-colosseum of wood, opening 

 out upcm tlie waters of the Bay ; a pile whose capacious concavity was densely filled again and 

 again, during the Prince's visit, with the inhabitants of the town and the population of the 

 Burrounding country. And on the brow of the bank, immediately above the so-called amphi- 

 theatre, and exactly in the line of John Street was erected a finely designed triumphal arch, 

 recalling those of Septimius Severus and Titus. This architectural object, while it stood, gave 

 ;i peculiarly fine finish to the vista, looking southward along John Street. The usually monoto- 

 nous water-view presented by the bay and lake, and even the common-place straight line of the 

 Island, seen through the frame-work of three lofty vaulted passages, acquired for the moment a 

 genuine picturesqueness. An ephemeral monument it was indeed ; but as long as it stood its 

 effect was delightfully classic and beautiful. The whole group — the arch and the huge amphi- 

 theatre below, furnished around its upper rim at equal intervals with tall masts, each bearing 

 a graciif ul gonfalon, and each helping to sustain on high a luxuriant festoon of evergreen which 



