Yonge Street never popular as a toll road

As angry farmers trudged out of Hogg’s Hollow on their way to Montgomery’s Tavern for the primary battle of Upper Canada’s Rebellion of 1837, it’s unlikely they were stopped at the toll-gate on the hill’s crest.The toll-gate, located near today’s Loblaws, was a tiny two-storey building on the west side of Yonge with a roof stretched over the roadway to a support on the far side.

Pedestrians were exempt from paying the toll, but the gatekeeper usually collected a few pence for a horse-drawn carriage by extending a bowl out the window in rougher weather. Some keepers may have extended half a coconut shell, although it’s doubtful coconuts were an easy commodity to come by. If the keeper was on duty in winter, sleighs were charged a similar toll.

The gatekeeper was usually a local landowner who had won the bid for the government contract. He was typically poorly paid, but one keeper — a local chicken farmer — complemented the wage by selling eggs to travelers and locals. Another keeper, Charles McBride, later became the owner of the local Bedford Park Hotel.

Initially, the tolls were used to help pay for the transformation of Yonge Street from mud to crushed stone. The street’s first toll-gate was erected at Yorkville in 1820, and 10 years later the second one, in our neighbourhood, was built. Three more turned up later, at Gallow’s Hill (just south of St. Clair), and at Langstaff and Elgin Mills roads.

But the income collected never came close to matching the construction costs — not surprising since travellers weren’t keen on paying to use a road that wasn’t yet fixed. In 1837 it was necessary for the government to kick in an extra £100,000 to keep the construction moving.

By 1845, the government cut off further funds and construction stopped. As a result, fewer people used the road north of Toronto and it became necessary for the government to compensate the gatekeepers who often didn’t collect enough to make it feasible.

To get out of the financial quagmire, the government sold Yonge Street (along with Dundas Street and Kingston Road) to a private company. But the resurfacing continued to absorb cash until the company defaulted on its interest payments, passing the roads back to the government. In 1865, the gates were sold to York County — for a quarter of the price they were worth 20 years earlier.

Over the next 30 years, opposition to the gates continued to mount because the collected tolls were no longer being used to maintain the roads. So, the government abolished them in the 1890s. Toll-roads disappeared for the next 100 years. With the advent of tolls on Highway 407 in 1999, coconut shells were replaced by transponders.

The Kingston Road toll-gate was very similar in design to the one that stood at the top of Hogg’s Holllow near today’s Loblaws.

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of Community Life.

The Rebellion of 1837

In the first week of December 1837, community residents watched as a growing number of rebels streamed down Yonge Street — recently paved with crush stone — for an inevitable conflict with the government.

Some residents, like James Nightingale the butcher (at Brookdale Avenue) sympathized with the rebels’ frustration with the Family Compact that was tightly controlled by the colony’s wealthy families. Others, like farmer Peter Lawrence (at Lawrence Avenue), were appalled that citizens would resort to violence in opposing the crown and the Lieutenant-Governor.

There were more than a hundred of them on the Sunday — rebels armed with pikes, pitchforks, clubs or rifles — coming from the townships to the north. They were seizing Tory sympathsizers as prisoners along the way. Their destination was Montgomery Tavern on the site of today’s post office at Yonge and Montgomery, just north of Eglinton. The impressive inn boasted 27 rooms on the main floor and 19 on the second.

But as big as the inn was, there was a problem. Rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie wasn’t expecting his supporters to gather until Thursday. He was unaware that some of the rebel leaders had advanced the order to march by three days to maintain the element of surprise. So, Montgomery Tavern had neither the space nor the food for the growing crowd.

By Tuesday, small groups of rebels were sent out into the neighbourhood to track down more food. Some of them made their way back up Yonge Street. One brigade seized meat from Nightingale’s slaughterhouse. Another group took cattle from the Ketchum family farm north of today’s Blythwood Road and herded them up to Nightingale’s.

Over the next few days there were several military skirmishes to the south in Toronto, incidents that were usually followed by hasty retreats back to the inn. By Thursday, government troops and Tory supporters arrived just south of today’s Eglinton Avenue and set up their cannon.

A direct hit into the wall of the tavern sent the rebels scattering. The Tory prisoners still being held in the tavern’s ballroom were brought outside by David Gibson and Leonard Watson to be marched back up Yonge. Gibson, a local politician and surveyor, was a one of the rebel leaders. Watson was the contractor who had just that year turned Yonge Street from a mud road into one with a hard surface.

They used that hard surface to take the prisoners about a kilometre north, hiding them behind Samuel Huson’s impressive new farmhouse in Lawrence Park. Once it was clear that troops were continuing to move north, the decision was made to release the Tories.

But the situation remained tense. One of the rebels, 21-year-old William Alves who had been an employee at Montgomery Tavern, aimed his gun at prisoner Archibald Macdonell, a Toronto wharf owner who had been captured Monday night. Macdonell grabbed another guard’s gun, forcing a standoff. He told Alves he regreted that he and others had taken up arms against the government. “It is a glorious cause,” replied Alves. “and I will die for it.”

However, Alves, Gibson and the other rebels took off, heading north past Lawrence’s farm and Nightingale’s slaughterhouse. Alves was captured and ordered transported from the Canadas for 14 years. Gibson escaped to the U.S. after his home was burned by the troops. He returned in 1849 and built a new house on his property which is now the Gibson House museum a block north of Mel Lastman Square.

Sketch (about 1921): The March of the Rebels upon Toronto in December, 1837, by C. W. Jefferys, from the Government of Ontario Art Collection

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Community Life.