The Water Dogs

The rush was on. The Government of Upper Canada was giving away 200-acre lots flanking Yonge Street from Eglinton all the way to Lake Simcoe. To have a shot at a land grant, it helped to have connections in the government.

The Kendrick brothers had those kinds of contacts. John, Duke William, Joseph and Hiram were among the first settlers to the Toronto area, arriving in 1793. They were well known as contractors and sailors. Several of the Kendricks helped build Castle Frank, Governor Simcoe’s summer home in the country (at the west end of the Bloor Street Viaduct, on the south side of the street).

They were also prominent on the waterfront where, at various times, they served as captains on vessels plying Lake Ontario. Their affinity for boats earned them the nickname “Water Dogs”.

So, it wasn’t surprising that the four Kendricks were granted four side-by-side properties – giving them ownership of all the land between Yonge and Bathurst, from Lawrence to Hogg’s Hollow.

Joseph was the first to receive a lot, the southernmost strip of land, between Lawrence and Woburn. The 200-acre property was nothing but forest. There was no Lawrence Avenue, no Bathurst, and no Woburn. Yonge Street was a stump-infested quagmire. To keep the land, Joseph would have to build a house on the property within 12 months. He did. It’s likely that by 1798 he and his wife, son and two daughters were living in a 16-by-20-foot dirt-floor hut near the northwest corner of Yonge and Lawrence.

But Joseph was still lured by the lake, and served as captain of the Peggy. By 1804, he sold his property and moved back into town. Ten years later, he bought the farm back, only to subdivide and resell it.

His older brother, Duke William, was given the next lot to the north, between Woburn and St. Germaine. He too had a house built within a year, which he shared with his wife Susan and five children. Following an unsuccessful attempt to establish a potash business on the property, Duke William moved back to York where he served as an innkeeper. He also worked as a pilot on the lake. He died serving in the War of 1812.

The youngest brother, Hiram, was next, with property running from St. Germaine to Old Orchard Grove. He remained firmly rooted in town and rented out his land rather than build on it.

The eldest brother, John, was given the lot between Old Orchard Grove and the Governor’s Hill condominiums. He too built on the site, selling the west half of the farm in 1805. He still owned 15 acres in 1822, but it’s likely he rented out the property and was living in London, Ontario.

Just before the dawn of the 19th century, the Water Dogs owned the entire Bedford Park community west of Yonge. By the mid-1820s, the Kendrick name had largely disappeared from area.

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of Community Life.

The road from nowhere to nowhere

Augustus Jones, the deputy surveyor of Upper Canada, set off in February 1794 to plot the route that would become Yonge Street.

The middle of winter may not seem a particularly astute time to survey a road through unknown bush, but Jones preferred it. The season had actually been a mild one and there was no snow on the ground. The forest floor was frozen hard and there were no leaves on the beech trees to obstruct survey readings.

John Graves Simcoe, the Governor of Upper Canada, wanted Jones to find a 30-mile route to Holland Landing for a military road that would be a shortcut to the upper Great Lakes. The road would provide a land bypass to avoid American-held Detroit. It was going to be called Yonge Street, named for Simcoe’s friend George Yonge, the British Secretary of War. Yonge was also an expert on Roman military roads that were usually called ‘streets’.

It took Jones and his four Queens Rangers about three weeks to lay out the ‘street’. It would have happened faster if they hadn’t done the job twice to make sure it lined up. The Rangers, who cleared small brush out of the way, were Toronto’s original regiment that Simcoe preferred to use for civil projects – about 300 years before Mel Lastman used the military to help dig Toronto out of a snowstorm!

A month later, D.W. Smith, the surveyor-general, directed surveyor Alexander Aitkin to follow Jones’s survey line to create a “road which is to be a chain wide (about 66 feet), lots to 20 chains wide (one-quarter mile) fronting on the road and…containing 200 acres more or less.” Aitkin had been on Simcoe’s original trek the previous fall along the Indian trail that more or less followed the Yonge route

In all, Aitkin created 111 lots on each side of Yonge, from the 4th Concession (Eglinton) north to Holland Landing. (The three concession roads south of this are now Queen, Bloor and St. Clair.) Each lot was a quarter-mile wide running more than mile east or west of Yonge. The back of the west lots eventually became Bathurst Street, while the east lots ended at what would become Bayview Avenue.

Want to know how big the lots actually were? One still exists. Mount Pleasant Cemetery – from Yonge to Bayview – is about 200 acres.

Aitkin hacked his way through the bush as far as Lot 17 (just south of Mel Lastman Square). It was a road from nowhere to nowhere. Years would pass before Yonge extended south of Eglinton. In the meantime, a rough path meandered east of the present street, eventually joining up with today’s Parliament Street downtown.

The new street through our community was barely passable. Twenty feet wide, it was littered with large tree stumps that had refused to budge. Large potholes created small ponds, swamps had a few logs thrown across, and creeks (like the one where Locke Library now stands) had to be forded.

It may have been inaccessible and rustic, but there was little doubt that when the government began giving away the 200-acre lots, there would be a frenzied interest in acquiring them.

The illustration of the building of Yonge Street was by C.W. Jeffreys.

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Community Life.

A forgotton trail inspires Ontario’s main street

On October 13, 1793, North Toronto was an endless maze of beech and pine trees, populated by deer, bears and wolves. The only sign of civilization in the neighbourhood was an almost forgotten Indian trail near the Don River – running through today’s Rosedale Golf Club.

Unlike the busy Carrying Place Trail near the Humber River, the trail through North Toronto was limited to use by Mississauga Indians fishing for salmon in the various rivers. In earlier times, it was likely a route used by Iroquois raiding parties, the coureurs-de-bois (French voyageurs) and Jesuit missionaries.

On this particular day it was being travelled by a small party led by the new Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe. ‘Led’ might not be the right word, because the group was often lost, stumbling off the vague pathway only to find it again a few hours later.

They were returning from a two-week trek exploring the trails and canoe route as far north as Lake Huron. An Ojibway, Old Sail, had told Simcoe about this forgotten trail south of Lake Simcoe that was a more direct route to Lake Ontario than the Carrying Place Trail.

And now they were down to their last day of food, concerned they might not make it back to Fort York on Lake Ontario. It’s likely some in the group – which included surveyor Alexander Aitkin, a small survey crew and a few Indians – were wondering just what they were doing here. Wet, cold, hungry and discouraged, the party pitched camp near the Don (probably in the vicinity of Glendon College).

The next morning, they came across a surveyor’s marker in the woods for the 4th Concession (now Eglinton Avenue). They knew where they were! By the end of the day they were back at Fort York.

The trail had been a twisting – at times invisible—pathway. But Simcoe knew he had the military route he wanted to Lake Simcoe and, ultimately, Lake Huron. He was determined to push a road, straight as an arrow, up to Lake Simcoe, using the path as a guide.

Aitkin, who had drawn maps and kept a journal along the way, had already had plenty of practice imposing rigid British survey grids onto the irregular landscape of Ontario. In fact, he laid out the first town plan for Toronto. Architectural author Eric Arthur has described Aitkin’s square-block grid for the new capital city as “practical, but indescribably mean and unimaginative”. It quite simply defied the hills and ravines that dotted the area.

Now Aitkin, along with surveyor Augustus Jones (the one who had placed that survey marker at the 4th Concession), began plotting the ramrod road through the bush that would become Yonge Street.

The painting of John Graves Simcoe was by Jean Laurent Mosnier.

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Community Life.