Toronto

“ Toronto, city of education, culture, religion; a city of homes with all that makes for the beauty and the happiness of family life; Toronto, with her noble University whose enrolment of students exceeds in number that of Oxford, her conservatories of music, her impressive cathedrals and churches, her splendid Parliament Buildings, and her classic Public Library with its numerous branches—the capital of the rich province of Ontario, this beautiful and inspiring city of Canada provides, indeed, an ample basis for the enthusiasm and devotion of her citizens. ”

“ Toronto—such is now the sonorous name of this our sublime capital—was, thirty years ago, a wilderness, the haunt of the bear and deer, with a little, ugly, inefficient fort, which, however, could not be more ugly or inefficient than the present one. Ten years ago Toronto was a village, with one brick house and four or five hundred inhabitants; five years ago it became a city, containing about five thousand inhabitants, and then bore the name of Little York: now it is Toronto, with an increasing trade, and a population of ten thousand people. ”

“ The city of Toronto, the stronghold of Canadian learning and loyalty, presents an imposing appearance, as seen from the water. It stands on ground sloping upwards from the lake, and manufactories, colleges, asylums, church spires, and public buildings, the whole faced by a handsome line of quays, present themselves at once to the eye. ”

“ Anything in the shape of a slope or hill is not distinguishable in the present area on which Toronto is built; but the streets are wide and clean, and contain many handsome public buildings; and the beautiful trees which everywhere abound in the neat, well-kept gardens, that surround the dwellings of the wealthier inhabitants, with the broad, bright, blue inland sea that forms the foreground to the picture, give to it such a lively and agreeable character, that it takes from it all appearance of tameness and monotony. ”

“ Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appearance, but only in appearance, for I find the inhabitants British in heart, in tastes, and habits. When I say that it is an American city, I mean to say that Toronto is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms and dirty streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph and telephone wires. The hotels are perfectly American in every respect. ”

“ Toronto’s two-pennyworth of history would go into a paragraph.
I admire Montreal. But I simply fell head over heels in love with Toronto. It has a population of 350,000 progressive optimists. The whole city is full of bustle, but of bustle without hustle. It is a hive of healthy and vivacious industry. Toronto lives at the brisk pace that keeps the blood in a healthy glow. The people have discovered the happy mean between the hurry that wrecks nerves and the sloth that impairs digestion. Everybody in Toronto seems to be busy for the sheer joy of the thing. ”

“ And a first step has, as we conceive, been taken towards generating for Toronto, for many of its streets and byways, for many of its nooks and corners, and its neighbourhood generally, a certain modicum of that charm which, springing from association and popular legend, so delightfully invests, to the prepared and sensitive mind, every square rood of the old lands beyond the sea. ”

“ The following is an ideal Canadian winter day; the sky, a far-off canopy of brightest blue, with no clouds to obscure the sunbeams, which pour down on fair Toronto, melting the icicles when his smiles are warmest, and gladdening the hearts of the million. There is just enough of frost in the air to make a walk to town pleasant, cheering and exhilarating, so that Mrs. Dale is glad when Mrs. Gower proposes their going. The whole city seems to have turned out, and the streets are alive with the busy hum of life, and the tinkling music of the merry sleigh-bells. ”

“ Toronto abounds in pretty suburbs, chief among them being Rosedale. The comfortable wooden houses of the upper and middle orders convey an idea of prosperity, with their neat gardens, a swinging hammock in the creeper-covered verandah, and the family sitting out in the cool of the evening. ”

“ Toronto is the centre and heart of the Province of Ontario; and Ontario, with a third of the whole population of Canada, directs the country for the present, conditioned by the French on one hand and the West on the other. And in this land, that is as yet hardly at all conscious of itself as a nation, Toronto and Ontario do their best in leading and realising national sentiment. A Toronto man, like most Canadians, dislikes an Englishman; but, unlike some Canadians, he detests an American. ”

“ Toronto exceeded the most sanguine expectations that I had formed of it at a distance, and enabled me to realize distinctly the rising greatness and rapid improvement of the colony. It is only here that you can form any just estimate of what she now is, and what at no very distant period she must be.
The country, for some miles round the city, appears to the eye as flat as a floor; the rise, though very gradual, is, I am told, considerable; and the land is sufficiently elevated above the lake to escape the disagreeable character of being low and swampy. ”

“ In its warm, moist climate, almost in its very conformation, it is a replica of the motherland of an Englishman's ideal; a motherland with everything annoying, from hooliganism to suffragettes, removed.
But Victoria is across a broad continent as well as a broad sea, and so your thrifty emigrant from an English town picks Toronto as the city of his adoption. Winnipeg he deems too American; Montreal, with her damnable French blood showing even in the street-signs and the car-placards, quite out of the question. But Toronto does appeal to him and so he comes straight to her. ”

“ An unseen hand touches an electric battery, and in a moment hundreds of gas jets are aflame, and the place is filled with a blaze of light. Now the great organ heaves its thrilling thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it forth upon the soul. Surely the contrast is almost incredible, and what we have said on this point in regard to Toronto may be said of every city, town, village or country place in the Province. ”

“ You cannot measure the tonnage of Toronto harbor as you measured the harbor of Cleveland—alongside of the greatest ports of the world—for Ontario is the lonely sister of the five Lakes. No busy commercial fleet treks up and down her lanes. But Toronto is a railroad center of increasing importance; they are still multiplying the lines out from her terminals and, as we have just intimated, she is a great and growing manufacturing community. Her industrial enterprises have been hungry for skilled and intelligent men. ”

“ The private houses of Toronto are built, according to the English taste and desire of exclusiveness, away from the road, and are embowered in trees; the American, let his house be ever so large, or his plot of ground however extensive, builds within a few feet of the road, that he may see and know what is going on. You do not perceive the bustle, the energy, and activity at Toronto, that you do at Buffalo, nor the profusion of articles in the stores; but it should be remembered that the Americans procure their articles upon credit, whilst at Toronto they proceed more cautiously. ”

“ If I thought Toronto rather a "slow" place, the fault may be in my quicksilver temperament, which sent me off by railroad through the backwoods to Detroit, after one day's sojourn in it. Ah! that I liked! Those grand old woods, those primeval trees, towering and stately as "cedars of Lebanon;" those log-huts with the bronzed mother standing in the door-way, and a group of rosy little children about her; the woodman near by, resting on his axe at the sound of the shrieking whistle, all unconscious how pretty a picture he and his were making. ”

“ Such is Toronto. A brisk city of getting on for half a million inhabitants, the largest British city in Canada (in spite of the cheery Italian faces that pop up at you out of excavations in the street) , liberally endowed with millionaires, not lacking its due share of destitution, misery, and slums. It is no mushroom city of the West, it has its history; but at the same time it has grown immensely of recent years. It is situated on the shores of a lovely lake; but you never see that, because the railways have occupied the entire lake front. ”

“ At Toronto the holiday-maker may board the luxurious train for Huntsville, where he takes the steamer for that idyllic cruise by the chain of lakes that lands him at the fascinating Hotel Wawa; or gives him access to any one of a myriad resorts in the unique Lake-of-Bays region. Algonquin Park, the Muskoka Lakes, all these "Highlands of Ontario" which are attracting throngs of summer wanderers, are within easy reach of Toronto, to all of which, indeed, the city is the gateway, and the distributing centre as well. ”

“ And here it may be observed that, in its way, Toronto is a capital, even as New York is, or London, and quite as accustomed as either to put on metropolitan airs, so far as circumstances permit; and seeing that all mankind are made of one kind of clay, there may be less difference in the spirit which animates the small community and the great one than would appear. ”

“ Toronto, or the Queen City of the West, as she loves to call herself, stands upon the north shore of Lake Ontario, and has not only achieved a great success, but may be said, in spite of all the moving to the North-West of which we hear so much, to have a great future before it, on account of its position with regard to railways, which alone in this great country decide the fate of towns and cities. Immediately in front is a broad bay, from which you get an imposing view of the city, while its forest of spires and factory chimneys gives evidence of prosperous and busy life. ”

“ Toronto represents Ontario. It is its monetary, intellectual, educational centre, and I may add that here, more than anywhere else in Canada, the visitor is conscious of the complicated energy of a very vigorous civilization. The city itself has grown rapidly—an increase from 86,415 in 1881 to probably 170,000 in 1888—and it is growing as rapidly as any city on the continent, according to the indications of building, manufacturing, railway building, and the visible stir of enterprise. ”

“ It is claimed that there are more homes, each with its green lawn and its garden—homes owned by their occupants—within the thirty-six square miles that comprise Toronto than in any other city on the American continent. Toronto is truly a thing of life in its expansion. The construction of streets and buildings is in constant progress and the residential limits are being carried many miles into the country. Within the past decade the city has crossed two rivers, marched up a hill, and clambered over two ravines, all of which give the residential region an aspect of romantic beauty. ”

“ Toronto is a city in which the civic ideal is very strong, and the concern not merely of the municipality but of all the citizens. It believes in beautiful and up-to-date town planning, and the elimination of slums, of which it now has not a single example. On his ride the Prince saw every facet of the city's activity. ”

“ The growth of Toronto has been more rapid than that of any other city in Canada. Though of such recent origin compared with many Canadian towns, it is now second only to Montreal in size and population, the former having increased from twelve hundred in 1837 to upwards of eighty thousand at the present time. The site of the city is low, the surrounding country being level, but free from swamp and perfectly dry. The ground rises gently from the shores of the lake. The scenery in the vicinity is tame and comparatively monotonous, though not unpleasing. ”

“ Still, many a first-class American city could hardly afford to laugh at the growth of Toronto, particularly in recent years. She prides herself that she had doubled her population each fifteen years of her history and here is a geometrical problem of growth that becomes vastly more difficult with each oncoming twelvemonth. At the close of the second war of the United States with England, just a century ago, Toronto was a mere hamlet. ”

“ George Brown; Sir Oliver Mowat; but the most widely known Toronto citizen is probably Goldwin Smith, the great historian and economist. Toronto has ever shown itself fervently British in sentiment. Its later history has been purely civic without other interest than that attaching to prosperous growth. A pleasant society and an attractive situation make it a favourite place of residence. ”

“ The glow of early day was brightening in the east, as the steamer approached Toronto. We rounded the point of the interminable, flat, swampy island, that stretches for several miles in front of the city, and which is thinly covered with scrubby-looking trees. The land lies so level with the water, that it has the appearance of being half-submerged, and from a distance you only see the tops of the trees. I have been informed that the name of Toronto has been derived from this circumstance, which in Indian literally means, "Trees in the water." ”

“ No man in Toronto, perhaps, is more generally known in the community, and I think I could appeal even to his political opponents to say if there is a citizen of Toronto at this day more thoroughly respected and esteemed. With a full knowledge of all that has passed, and all the consequences that have flowed from a day of weakness, I will say that an honester man does not breathe the air of heaven ”