CHARLES
MCKAY, who wrote Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [ SEE Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and the Madness of Crowds], toured the U.S. and
Canada during 1857-1858. He wrote as he travelled and his articles were
published in various newspapers. I’ve included bits and bytes from areas close to
me, although he also visited Quebec and other parts of Canada. Americans may
find it a curiosity. Evidently a comment he made about Philadelphia caused a
bit of a stir. ”LIFE
AND LIBERTY
AMERICA: OR, SKETCHES OF A TOUR IN
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA IN 1857-8” which chronicled his
adventures was published in 1859.
The streets are long and
straight. There is no more crookedness in them than there is in Philadelphia;
and they all run at right angles to the lake; and one of them—York Street—is
supposed on the map to stretch away—straighter than an arrow's flight—to Lake
Simcoe, nearly forty miles distant. There is a Yankee look about the whole
place which it is impossible to mistake ; a pushing, thriving, business-like,
smart appearance in the people and in the streets ; in the stores, in the
banks, and in the churches. I could not but observe, too, that there was a much
larger predominance of Scotch names over the doors than I had previously seen
in any other city of America. Looked upon from any part of itself, Toronto does not greatly impress the imagination; but seen from
the deck of one of the ferry steam-boats that ply at regular intervals between
the city and the long, low strip of a peninsula that, at a distance of four
miles from the shore, protects the harbor, it has all the air of wealth and
majesty that belongs to a great city. Its numerous church spires and public buildings;
its wharves, factories, and tall chimneys, mark it for what it is—a busy,
thriving, and expanding place.
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| Toronto 1858 |
In the year 1793, the spot on
which it stands was covered with a dense forest, amid which, close to the lake,
might be seen the wigwams of the Mississagua Indians. The site was flxed upon by Governor Simcoe, and the
future town named York, in honor of the Duke of York, then a favorite with the
British army ; and the ground cleared in 1794. The Parliament of Upper Canada
met here in 1797. …
The "show-places"
of Toronto, after the Houses of Parliament, are the University, the normal and
model school, under the superintendence o f the Rev.
Dr. Egerton Ryerson, to whom education
in Canada owes much ; and the furniture manufactory of Messrs. Jacques
and Hay. All these establishments are
not only interesting in themselves, but suggestive of the present importance
and future progress of Canada. At the manufactory of Messrs. .Jacques and Hay
may be seen the production by machinery of furniture en gros, from the commonest stool, chair, table, or bedstead
required for the log hut of the humblest settler in the wilderness, to the most
costly ottoman and fauteuil demanded by the luxury of the richest merchant.
Walnut wood, so expensive in England, is in Canada among the cheapest of the
woods of which furniture is made.
Toronto has a great future
before it. For the last ten years its progress has been such as to justify the
expectation that it will rival, if not surpass Chicago and Milwaukee, still
farther west, for it has advantages not possessed by either of these cities,
and which will indubitably be turned to proper account when Canada shall be
properly known to the emigrants of the British Isles. At present the great tide
of emigration sets to the United States. Hereafter it is more than probable
that Canada will be the favorite.
HAMILTON,
SARNIA & LONDON
The
flourishing city of Hamilton, in Burlington Bay, may be reached from Toronto, by
the Great Western Railway of Canada, in an hour and a half, and by a pleasant
drive along the shores of Lake Ontario. Hamilton contains a population of
upward of 30,000, and has from small beginnings made as rapid a progress as any
city in Canada. It aspires to rival, and looks with considerable jealousy upon
Toronto. The principal journal of Hamilton was, at the time of my arrival, in
great spirits at the supposed effects of a recent storm in the lake, which had
made a breach through the long, narrow peninsula— six miles long, and about
twenty yards wide—with its row of trees, which protects the harbor of Toronto.
In the estimation of -the writer, this catastrophe had ruined Toronto as a
port. The people of Toronto, however, were of a different opinion, mid looked
upon the alleged calamity as a piece of great good fortune, in saving them the
expense of cutting a previously projected canal through the very place which
the storm had so opportunely broken down.
The
inhabitants of Hamilton call it the " ambitious little city ;" and if
ambition is to be measured by deeds as well as by words, the promise is, in
this case, justified by the performance. It is handsomely laid out with broad
clean streets, and built upon the level of the lake. Behind it stretches what
its people call " the Mountain," but the summit of which is merely
the real level of the whole surrounding country—the margin of the great Lake of
Ontario at a time, perhaps fifty or a hundred centuries ago, when its waters
were on a height with the upper rapids of Niagara ; and when between Kingston
and the Thousand Isles there stretched toward Quebec and the Gulf of St.
Lawrence that other lake, no longer existent, in which Montreal and Bel CEil
were islands, and of which the Laurentian range on the one side, and the hills
of Vermont on the other, were the boundaries. …
"
Sarnia is a thriving town,
And
Lately was incorporated,
Has
no rivals to pull her down,
Nor
none against her can be created."
I also intended to visit the large city of
Detroit—once on Canadian soil, but now the principal port of Michigan in the
United States—but had only time to proceed as far as London, seventy-six miles beyond Hamilton. This place ought
assuredly to have received another name. It is as interesting as any city in
Canada for its rapid growth, and more so, perhaps, for the sudden check which
its prosperity received in consequence of the recoil caused by the
over-eagerness of land and building speculator's to force it into premature
importance by inadequate means. The name of the place and river was originally
"The Forks ;" but when its early founder absurdly chose to call it
London, the river, on the high bank of which it is built, was with equal
absurdity miscalled the Thames. And now, when it is a city of ten or twelve
thousand inhabitants, and when its streets are either planned or laid out in
anticipation of the day when it shall number fifty thousand or upward, the
original idea has been carried out to the full extent in the naming of its
principal buildings and thoroughfares. Thus we have in this " Forest
City," as it is sometimes called, Blackfriars' and Westminster
Bridges, Covent Garden Market and Theatre, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Pall
Mall, Grosvenor Street, and other appellations known in the World's metropolis,
and the use of which, coupled with the word "London," very often
leads to serious mistakes in the post-office, and sends to Europe letters and
orders for goods which are intended for Canada. Every one with whom I came in
contact during my visit was loud in denunciation of the folly, and there seemed
to be a general wish that the city should receive the name of Huron, as more
appropriate and distinctive. When the Anglican bishop for this part of Canada was
appointed, it was intended to call him Bishop of London; but the inconvenience
of this adoption of an ecclesiastical title already appropriated was felt to be
so excessive, that on the representation of the Home Government the new prelate
was called the Bishop of
Huron, a precedent which will, perhaps, lead to the substitution of Huron
for London in the name of a city that deserves, and is important enough to assert
its own individuality. Toronto is infinitely better as the name of a city than
York ; Ottawa is a vast improvement upon Bytown ; and, generally, the Indian names,
wherever they can be adopted, are far more sonorous, musical, and appropriate than
any names derived from the geography of Europe, or from individuals,
illustrious or the reverse, who may have chanced to possess the land on which
cities are built.
London
had
scarcely recovered from the effects of its reverse of fortune at the period of
my visit. Its " Great American Hotel" was shut up for want of
patronage, and a general depression seemed to hang over the place. But there
can be little doubt, from its situation on the high road from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, or, to speak more moderately, from Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto
to Detroit and the Far West, that London
will yet become a flourishing place, and justify the sanguine expectations of
its early founders. Here, as in Hamilton and Toronto, the Scotch muster in
large numbers, and are among the most thriving and respected of the
inhabitants.
LIFE AND LIBERTY
AMERICA:
OR,
SKETCHES OF A TOUR
IN THE UNITED STATES AND
CANADA IN 1857-8.
CHARLES MCKAY, LL.D., F.S.A.
1859
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| Ice Breakup on St. Lawrence |
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