Toronto of Old:
Collections and Recollections
ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE
EARLY SETTLEMENT AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE CAPITAL OF ONTARIO.
By HENRY SCADDING, D.D.
TORONTO:
ADAM, STEVENSON & CO.
1873.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year OneThousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-three, by Adam, Stevenson & Co.,in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.
Hunter, Rose & Co.,
Printers, Stereotypers and Bookbinders,
Toronto.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
The Earl of Dufferin, K.C.B.
GOVERNOR GENERAL OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
A KEEN SYMPATHIZER WITH
THE MINUTE PAST, AS WELL AS THE MINUTE PRESENT,
OF THE PEOPLE COMMITTED TO HIS CHARGE,
This Volume,
TREATING OF THE INFANCY AND EARLY YOUTH
OF AN IMPORTANT CANADIAN CIVIC COMMUNITY
NOW FAST RISING TO MAN'S ESTATE,
IS
(BY PERMISSION GRACIOUSLY GIVEN,)
THANKFULLY AND LOYALLY DEDICATED
PREFACE.
t is singular that the elder Disraeli has not included in his"Curiosities of Literature" a chapter on Books originating in Accident.It is exactly the kind of topic we might have expected him to discuss,in his usual pleasant manner. Of such productions there is doubtlesssomewhere a record. Whenever it shall be discovered, the volume herepresented to the reader must be added to the list. A few years since,when preparing for a local periodical a paper of "Early Notices ofToronto," the writer little imagined what the sheets then under his handwould finally grow to. The expectation at the time simply was, that thearticle on which he was at work would assist as a minute scintilla inone of those monthly meteoric showers of miscellaneous light literaturewith which the age is so familiar; that it would engage, perhaps, theattention for a few moments of a chance gazer here and there, and thenvanish in the usual way. But on a subsequent revision, the subject thuscasually taken up seemed capable of being more fully handled. Two orthree friends, moreover, had expressed a regret that to the memorandagiven, gathered chiefly from early French documents, there had not beenadded some of the more recent floating folklore of the community, someof the homely table-talk of the older people of the place; such of themixed traditions, in short, of the local Past of Toronto as might seemof value as illustrations of primitive colonial life and manners. It wasurged, likewise, in several quarters, that if something in thisdirection were not speedily done, the men of the next generation wouldbe left irremedia