Toronto's Founding Dog & How He Almost Got Eaten

It was the summer of 1793. The summer our city was founded. On an early Tuesday morning, as the late July sun rose above Lake Ontario, a British warship sailed into Toronto Bay. She was the HMS Mississauga. She had sailed overnight from Niagara, arriving in darkness, waiting for dawn and a local fur trader to show her the way through the treacherous shoals at the mouth of the harbour. On board was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada: John Graves Simcoe. His family was with him, too. The Simcoes had come to found a new capital for the new province: a tiny muddy town that would eventually grow into a booming metropolis of concrete and glass filled with millions of people.

The Simcoes weren't alone. They had brought their pets with them. There was a white cat with grey spots and a big friendly beast of a dog. He was a Newfoundland. His name was Jack Sharp.

Newfoundlands are a Canadian dog. By the time Jack Sharp was born, his breed had already been living on the island of Newfoundland for centuries. They've been there so long that no one is entirely sure where they came from — how they were first bred or evolved. Some people like to say they're descended from the big black bear dogs the Vikings brought with them across the Atlantic a thousand years ago. Others say their ancestors were the wild wolves of Newfoundland, or the domesticated hunting dogs of the local First Nations people. But most seem to think they were probably bred by the first European fishermen to come to Canada — sailors from the Basque Country and from Portugal who spent their summers fishing the waters off the coast of Newfoundland in the very early 1500s. However it happened, by the time the first colonists made the island their permanent home, the Newfoundland dog was solidly established as its own distinct breed.

They were perfect for life on the frontier. Big and strong and brave. Smart and loyal. They have webbed feet and a thick, waterproof coat, so they're fantastic swimmers. Just like their cousins the St. Bernards, they're famous for rescuing people. When the first European explorers headed west toward the Pacific, Newfoundlands were at their side — one travelled with the famous British-Canadian map-maker David Thompson; another with the Americans Lewis and Clark. The dogs became a familiar sight for Canadian pioneers.

The Niagara River by Elizabeth Simcoe, 1790s

Jack Sharp was one of those frontier dogs. He lived in Niagara-on-the-Lake back in the days when it was still a new settlement — so new it didn't even have a church yet; an isolated outpost at the spot where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario. It was called Newark back then, a tiny town with a tiny population. But for a few brief years, it was the centre of political power in Upper Canada: the brand new capital of the brand new province, which had recently been created as a safe haven for Loyalist refugees in the wake of the American Revolution. 

The first Governor of the new province arrived at Niagara in the summer of 1792. It took John Graves Simcoe and his family nearly a year to make the long trip from England all the way out to the edge of the Canadian frontier. They spent two months sailing across the Atlantic, an entire winter stuck in Quebec City, and another two months travelling up the St. Lawrence and across Lake Ontario.

Back home in England, they'd enjoyed life on a sprawling country estate with a legion of servants to take care of them. At Niagara, life was much more rustic. They pitched a pair of elaborate tents on the banks of the river — the same canvas houses once used by the legendary explorer Captain Cook on his famous travels through the Pacific. The Simcoes still had plenty of help and lots of nice things, but life in Canada was much more difficult than it had been back home. The Governor's wife, Elizabeth, even suffered from a bout of malaria.

Still, the Simcoes did all they could to bring their British way of life to Upper Canada — that was, in fact, part of their mission. While the Governor busied himself running his new province, Elizabeth kept a detailed diary, painted watercolours, did needlework and entertained the most powerful Upper Canadian families. Her calendar was filled with social events: dinners, dances, balls and card games with people like the Jarvises, the Russells and Chief Justice Osgoode. Even Prince Edward, the future father of Queen Victoria, came all the way to Niagara for an official state visit. And there were visits from important First Nations allies, too, like the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea.

Elizabeth Simcoe

Elizabeth also had a family to run. The Simcoes had brought their youngest children with them to Canada: Sophia was in her terrible twos; Francis had just turned one. Even with a pair of nurses to help, the toddlers were more than a handful. And Elizabeth was pregnant yet again. That winter in the canvas house, she gave birth to a baby girl they named Katherine.

Even on the frontier, the Simcoe children would grow up with plenty of pets. Once they got to Upper Canada, the Simcoes had been given a white cat with grey spots and a hound called Trojan. Trojan was a gift for the kids, but it was Elizabeth Simcoe that he loved best. He even slept in her room inside the canvas house at night. And soon, there was another new addition to the menagerie. Jack Sharp had been the sheriff's dog. But when the Simcoes arrived, the big Newfoundland quickly fell in love with them. Before long, he had managed to adopt them as his own, joining their growing family. 

Elizabeth wrote about the animals in her diary — and about the mischief they caused. When Jack Sharp joined Governor Simcoe on a long trip to Detroit, the big dog faced off against a raccoon and then attacked a porcupine and earned a neck full of quills. When Elizabeth left Trojan alone in her tent with a map she'd painstakingly drawn, the hound tore it to pieces. (Governor Simcoe, who fancied himself something of a poet, even wrote some verses to mark the occasion: "Upon the Dog Trojan tearing the Map of N. America.")

Sadly, Trojan wouldn't live to see Toronto. He met a tragic end in the spring of 1793 — on a strangely hot day in early April. The heat was sweltering, recorded as high as 45°C. It was so hot that Trojan fell ill. When one of Simcoe's soldiers saw the symptoms, he made a terrible mistake: he thought Trojan had contracted rabies. He hadn't — if he had, he would have been scared of the water and wouldn't have waded out into the river to cool off like he did. But the soldier didn't know any better: he shot the dog dead.

So that summer, when the Simcoe family left Niagara, it was only their cat and Jack Sharp who came with them. 

They left because Niagara wasn't going to be safe anymore. Soon, the Americans would be taking over the other side of the river; it was one of the peace terms negotiated in the wake of the Revolution. The big guns of Fort Niagara were over there — just across the mouth of the river from Niagara-on-the-Lake. The tiny capital would be almost impossible to defend if the Americans decided to invade. And it seemed inevitable they would. Simcoe needed to find a new capital. Fast.

Toronto harbour by Elizabeth Simcoe, 1793

The spot he eventually picked was directly north across the lake from Niagara: a place called Toronto. There, a natural harbour had been formed by a long sandbar that would eventually become the Toronto islands. There was only one way into the bay, so it would be relatively easy to defend against an attack. That's where Simcoe would build his new capital.

In the middle of July, the Governor sent a hundred soldiers across the lake to begin work. They were the Queen's Rangers; some of them, the very same men Simcoe had commanded while fighting against the American rebels during the Revolution. At Toronto, his troops would build on land the British had "bought" from the Mississaugas years earlier (with a document so sketchy the Canadian government would eventually settle a land claim for $145 million). Simcoe's men made camp at a spot near the entrance to the harbour, at the mouth of what would become known as Garrison Creek. There, they got to work felling trees, hacking away at the ancient forest that towered over the shore. Great pines and oaks came crashing to the ground. In their place, a military base began to take shape: Fort York. It was the beginning a brand new town. Simcoe would call it York; we call it Toronto.

Back at Niagara, the Simcoes were getting ready to follow the Queen's Rangers across the lake. The Governor had just finished overseeing a session of the Upper Canadian legislature — one of the most important parliamentary sessions in Canadian history. Simcoe wanted to abolish slavery; the elected assembly balked. Slave-owning families like the Jarvises and the Russells were planning to bring their slaves with them to the new capital. Simcoe convinced them to accept a comprise: they could keep the slaves they already owned, but no new slaves could enter the province and the children of slaves would be freed when they reached the age of 25. The Act Against Slavery was the first law to abolish slavery in the history of the British Empire.

It was at the very end of that same month — on July 29th — that the Simcoes left Niagara. That night, the family and their pets climbed aboard the HMS Mississauga. She was a big warship: an armed schooner. An impressive way to travel — for a human or a dog.

As the Simcoes slept, the warship sailed north across the lake. Early the next morning, she made her careful way into Toronto Bay.

Toronto shoreline by Elizabeth Simcoe, 1796

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time the Governor and his wife went ashore for the first time. And when they did, they brought the dog with them.

Jack Sharp was far from the first canine to ever set paw on this land. Wolves and foxes roamed the woods around Toronto. And domesticated dogs had been here as long as humans had. The people of the First Nations and their ancestors had been hunting with them on the northern shore of Lake Ontario for thousands and thousands of years before our city was founded. As the Wendat-Huron historian George Sioui points out, dogs played an important role in the spiritual life of his own nation. The first racist French missionaries — anxious to paint the First Nations as "uncivilized" — claimed those dogs were only being raised for their meat. "Like sheep," they said. But in fact, dog meat was only consumed during important ritual ceremonies, and the people shared a close bond with their canine companions. The Wendat had long said that souls travel a path through the stars when they die: humans along the Milky Way and their dogs along a celestial dog path right next to them. In more recent years, as the first Europeans arrived, other dogs must have visited Toronto. Many of the explorers, fur traders and early settlers who passed through the area probably had dogs with them, too.
 
So Jack Sharp wasn't Toronto's first dog. Not by a long shot. But he was our city's founding dog: the canine member of the first family to establish the town that would grow into our modern metropolis.

A few days after they arrived, the Simcoes pitched their canvas houses just across the creek from Fort York, where they could watch as the Queen's Rangers hammered and sawed away. That's when they brought the children ashore, along with the nurses and servants. By the end of the first week of August, the entire family, including Jack Sharp, was living in the fancy tents at the mouth of Garrison Creek. In the months to come, the town itself would begin to take shape: the first ten blocks were carved out of the woods where the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhoood is now. From George Street over to Berkeley; from Front Street up to Adelaide.

It's easy to imagine what life in Toronto must have been like for Jack Sharp. Splashing in the shallows of the harbour as waterfowl scattered into the sky. Playing with the Simcoe children on the beach. Racing through the old forest, chasing chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels.

Toronto 1793 (with HMS Mississauga) by Elizabeth Simcoe

But for the humans, life on shore at Toronto was even harder than life at Niagara had been. There, at least, the settlers enjoyed an established town. Here, the town was still being built. Many of the province's other most powerful families were shocked by the Simcoes' living conditions. As Peter Russell wrote to his sister, "you have no conception of the Misery in which they live..." The other leading political families dragged their feet, staying at Niagara as long as they could before following the Simcoes across the lake.

The First Family of Upper Canada suffered through an entire winter at Toronto. But the most terrible moment of the Simcoes' time in Canada came the following spring. Katherine Simcoe had been a very healthy baby; she was more than a year old now, beginning to walk and to talk, old enough to start playing with the cat and Jack Sharp. But in April she suddenly fell very ill. It may have been malaria or some other similar disease. A fever turned into a terrifying night of uncontrollable spasms. By morning, she was gone. She was buried in a new cemetery near the fort; today, it's a park we call Victoria Memorial Square, just a bit south-east of Bathurst & King.

For the Simcoes, death was never far away. The previous fall, Jack Sharp had had his own brush with mortality. And Governor Simcoe, too.

It came during a long trip north. Simcoe wanted to find the best route from Toronto all the way up to Lake Huron. Easy movement through the province would be vital in case of an American invasion. And that was seeming ever-more imminent: the British were now at war with France, the Americans' allies, caught up in the violence that engulfed Europe in the wake the French Revolution. Simcoe was worried the trouble would spread across the Atlantic — which it soon would with the War of 1812. The Simcoes' peaceful life at Toronto felt precarious. Enemy ships might sail over the horizon at any moment; enemy troops might emerge from the woods. As she slept in her canvas house at night, Elizabeth had nightmares about it. In fact, when the Simcoes finally sailed home to England, French warships would be waiting to chase them out of the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Both John Graves Simcoe and his son Francis would eventually die in the fight against Napoleon.

So that September, Simcoe and his men headed north with the help of Ojibway guides. Jack Sharp went with them, too. They travelled up a portage route called the Toronto Carrying-Place. The big dog made for something of an awkward passenger in a canoe, but they made quick progress up the Humber River, through the marshlands far to the north of Toronto, and then along the Holland River to a lake the French called Lac aux Claies.

John Graves Simcoe

When they arrived, Simcoe renamed the lake, like he was renaming just about everything he found in Upper Canada. He called it "Lake Simcoe" — not after himself, but after his father, who had died in Canada during the last war against the French, just a few months before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.

There, Simcoe found his route north. It wouldn't be hard to get from Lake Simcoe to Lake Huron — and to make things even easier, he would have a road built north from Toronto toward the Holland River. He named the road after a friend, the British Secretary at War: Sir George Yonge.

But getting home now — with Yonge Street still just a dream — would prove to be an unexpectedly perilous challenge.

As Simcoe, his men, his dog and the Ojibway guides all headed back south toward Toronto, their luck began to turn against them. One man had nearly severed a toe and couldn't walk anymore; others would fall ill. The party was forced to split up. The group Simcoe was with only had enough food for one day, but had a five-day journey ahead of them. From there, things quickly got worse. They were taking a different route home than the one they'd taken north: this time, they were heading along the eastern fork of the Toronto Carrying-Place portage route, which headed south down the Rouge River. They got lost along the way, stumbling through the woods for days on end, never quite sure where they were. Meanwhile, their rations were growing dangerous low. If they didn't find home soon, they would starve.

Things were getting desperate. So a plan took shape. If they didn't find Toronto that day, they would have no choice. They would kill Jack Sharp. And then eat him.

The Newfoundland was spared just in the nick of time. First, the men came across a surveyor's line. It was a good sign. And then, through the trees they spotted it: Lake Ontario. They finally knew where they were: just a few kilometers from the tiny new Upper Canadian capital. They were ecstatic. That morning, they wolfed down the rest of their food for breakfast and then finally headed west toward home.

The founder of Toronto was saved. And so was Toronto's founding dog. 

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That painting at the top of this post isn't Jack Sharp, but another famous Newfoundland dog called Bob. The painting is called "A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society" by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, painted in 1831. Bob was found in a shipwreck off the coast of England and would go on to save twenty-three people from drowning in the Thames over the course of fourteen years.

You can read my post about the Simcoe's cat here, about Elizabeth Simcoe's nightmare here, and about John Graves Simcoe's vision for Toronto (a city so awesome it would undo the American Revolution) here.

You can read Elizabeth Simcoe's diary online here. You can borrow it from the Toronto Public Library here. Or buy it from Amazon here.

You can read excerpts from Elizabeth Simcoe biography, by Mary Beacock Fryer, on Google Books here, buy it here, or borrow it here from the Toronto Public Library. Her biography of John Graves Simcoe written with Christopher Dracott is here and here. While her biography of Francis Simcoe is here and here.

You can read Bathsheba Susannah Wesley's fascinating Master's thesis about her habit of setting small fires during her time in Canada here [PDF]. The always excellent Dictionary of Canadian Biography has a full bio for Elizabeth Simcoe here. And John Graves Simcoe here. You can learn more about the soldiers who built Toronto, the Queen's Rangers, here. And learn more about the Simcoe's canvas houses here.

Learn more about the historian George Sioui from the Tyee here. The New York Times has a history of dogs in the early Americas here. Cheryl MacDonald writes about Jack Sharp and other famous Newfoundlands in her book "Celebrated Pets" on Google Books here. Jack Sharp also gets mentions in a footnote to Richard D. Merritt's "On Common Ground: The Ongoing Story of the Commons in Niagara-on-the-Lake" on Google Books here.

Elizabeth Simcoe's painting of the Toronto harbour comes from the Toronto Public Library's Digital Archives here.  Her painting of the Toronto shoreline comes via Heritage Toronto here. Her painting of the Niagara River comes from the Wikimedia Commons here. 

This post is related to dream 01 Metropolitan York John Graves Simcoe, 1793

This post is related to dream 30 The Conference of the Beasts Francis Simcoe, 1796

This post is related to dream 34 The Upper Canadian Ball Elizabeth Simcoe, 1793

Stuff You Should See At Doors Open 2015

It's Doors Open weekend in Toronto! More than a hundred and fifty buildings across the city will be opening their doors to the public over the next two days — including some of the most interesting, beautiful and historic buildings that Toronto has to offer. And since there's no way one person can manage to catch all of the cool stuff, I thought I'd share some of my own picks for this year's event.

I'll also be out and about myself this weekend, armed with dreams, leaving them at the some of the Doors Open sites. You can follow me on Twitter and on Instagram (@TODreamsProject) to find out when and where I do.

If you'd like more information, you can visit the Doors Open website here. Chris Bateman shares his own picks for blogTO here. And NOW Magazine's Elena Gritzan has a list here.
 
 

SCADDING CABIN

This is the oldest building in Toronto. Scadding Cabin turns 221 this year. It was originally built all the hell the way back in 1794. Our city was still brand new; Toronto was just a tiny muddy little frontier town surrounded by ancient forests. It had only been founded the summer before. The guy who built the cabin was John Scadding — he had been John Graves Simcoe's right-hand man back on his country estate in England and became his right-hand man in Canada, too. But while Simcoe went home, Scadding eventually settled here with his family for good. His son, Henry, would grow up to become one of city's earliest historians.

The cabin originally stood on the banks of the Don River, but in the late 1800s it was moved to the Exhibition Grounds. That's where it stands today. You'll find its doors open on Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 5.

Also nearby: The Liberty Grand; BMO Field.
 

THE GIBRALTAR POINT LIGHTHOUSE

It's the oldest lighthouse on the Great Lakes — the second oldest in all of Canada. It has been standing on the island since before it was an island — since 1808 — which makes it the oldest building in Toronto still standing on the spot where it was originally built.

I recently wrote a whole post about the history of the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, which includes the mysterious disappearance of the first lightkeeper, John Paul Radelmüller. They say his ghost still haunts the lighthouse today, searching for the limbs that were hacked off him during his grizzly murder in the final days the War of 1812.

Getting the chance to go inside is a rare privilege, so you'll want to show up early. There were long lines last year. The iconic red door will be open from 10 to 5 on both Saturday and Sunday — but they'll probably cut off the line a bit earlier than that.

Also nearby: Artscape Gibraltar Point.

ST. JAMES CATHEDRAL

Not only is the Cathedral Church of St. James one of the most spectacular buildings in Toronto, it's also one of the most important buildings in the entire history of Canada. The story of St. James stretches all the way back to a small wooden church built at what's now the corner of Church & King in the very early 1800s — and over the course of that century, it played a central role in the battle for democracy in Canada. This was the church most our city's leaders attended. The first preacher, John Strachan, was also our city's first Anglican bishop, arch-nemesis of William Lyon Mackenzie and a figurehead of the infamously anti-democratic Family Compact. He's still there today, buried under the chancel. I wrote the full story for Torontoist a while back; you can check it out here. To this day, it's still the heart of the Anglican faith in Canada. Even the Queen prays here when she's in town.

The doors to the church will be open from 10 to 5 on Saturday and 12:30 to 4 on Sunday afternoon.

Also nearby: The Market Gallery; Commerce Court North.

 

THE HIGH LEVEL WATER PUMPING STATION

Just like the much more famous R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant out in the east end (which will also be open this weekend), the High Level Water Pumping Station takes Toronto's water infrastructure and transforms it into something beautiful. And the old building also played a central role in one of the most delightful episodes in the history of our city. Back in the 1960s, the residents of the surrounding neighbourhood — Rathnelly — declared independence from the rest of Canada. As the story goes, they wrote a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, elected a Queen, issued their own passports, and sent an "air farce" of children holding a thousand helium balloons to surround the Pumping Station until their demands were met. To this day, the neighbourhood is known as the Republic of Rathnelly. They've even got their own custom street signs featuring a national crest.

The doors will be open from 10 to 5 on both Saturday and Sunday.

Also nearby: City of Toronto Archives; Spadina House.

FORT YORK

It's one of the jewels of Toronto. A National Historic Site hidden between the highways and the skyscrapers. Fort York has been standing on this spot for more than 200 years. Its story stretches back through one war after another, back through the bloody battle that raged here during the War of 1812, back all the way to the very first day the city of Toronto was founded. It was here, at what was then the mouth of the Garrison Creek, that the first British soldiers showed up to start chopping down trees and building the military base that would guard the mouth of our harbour. Meanwhile, Governor Simcoe and his wife Elizabeth lived in an elaborate tent overlooking the construction from the other side of the creek, exploring the beaches and the forests with their young children, their pet cat and a dog they called  Jack Sharp.

The fort is always open to the public, but why not take advantage of the free admission during Doors Open? The site will be open from 10 to 5 on both Saturday and Sunday.

Also nearby: John St. Roadhouse - Toronto Railway Museum. 

Other great spots I'd recommend include Old City Hall, Mackenzie House, Fool's Paradise, Osgoode Hall, and the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres.

Remembering The Great Toronto Fire of 1904

It was a miserably cold night, with bitter gusts of wind and a light snow even though it was the middle of April. And about an hour after sunset, things would get even worse. No one is entirely sure what caused the blaze. It might have been faulty wiring. Or a stove. But around 8 o’clock on that terrible night of April 19, 1904, a constable walking his beat in downtown Toronto spotted the first flames rising out of a necktie factory on Wellington Street just west of Bay (where the black towers of the Toronto-Dominion Centre stand now). As the officer rushed to sound the alarm, the flames spread. Quickly.

Within an hour, every firefighter in the city was desperately trying to contain the blaze. But they were losing the battle. Violent gusts of wind blew the water from their hoses off course. The spray froze in mid-air, coating everything with ice. Thick tangles of newly-installed telegraph, telephone and electrical wires made it impossible for ladders to reach the flames. Textile factories, book-sellers, paper supply companies and chemical manufacturers crowded the core of the city — they provided the perfect fuel. The firefighters were being blinded by smoke. The fire chief broke his leg, falling from a ladder. The April snow was joined by a constant rain of burning wood, broken glass, and ash.

The flames tore through the heart of the city, moving south from Wellington all the way down to the Esplanade and east toward Yonge. Twenty acres of downtown Toronto — more than a hundred buildings — were on fire. You could see the glow of the flames for miles in every direction.

Mayor Urquhart sent urgent telegrams to other cities asking for help. And all through the night they came: firemen from Hamilton, London, Peterborough, Niagara Falls and Buffalo joining the fight. Within a few hours, there were two hundred and fifty of them pouring millions of litres of water on the flames. At the Evening Telegram offices on Bay Street, employees spent hours spraying water out the windows to save the building. At the Queen Hotel (which stood about where the Royal York does now), guests and employees organized bucket brigades, hung water-soaked blankets out of the windows and beat off the flames, saving the hotel and helping to stop the fire's advance before it could cross Yonge Street.

Finally, not long before sunrise, nearly nine hours after it had started, the fire was out. One hundred and twenty-five businesses had been destroyed. Five thousand people were put out of work. More than ten million dollars worth of damage had been caused. Somehow, amazingly, no one had died.

The ruins smouldered for two more weeks, with smaller fires popping up and reigniting from time to time. The charred husks of the damaged buildings were dynamited and the rubble cleared out of the way. That’s when the Great Fire claimed its only life.

John Croft was an experienced dynamiter — he’d worked in mines back home in England before moving to Canada. He and his team set to work in the ruins of Toronto, lighting long fuses and then running for cover. More than two dozen blasts went off without a hitch; their explosions brought the crumbling buildings crashing to the ground, great clouds of dust billowing into the air. But when a fuse seemed to fail, Croft eventually went in to investigate. The delayed explosion tore through his arm, broke a rib, sliced through his scalp, blinded him in one eye. He didn’t last long after that. He was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery; a small street between Harbord and College was eventually named in his honour.

Toronto soon rose again. Where the ruins of the Great Fire once stood, new brick buildings (many of those bricks supplied by the now-booming Don Valley Brick Works) filled the skyline. They were built to a new fire code and protected by more hydrants and a new high-pressure water system — all designed to make sure the biggest fire in the history of our city would stay that way forever.

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Front Street (Archives of Ontario)

Looking north up Bay Street (Toronto Archives)

Front Street west of Yonge (Toronto Public Library)

Looking north up Bay Street (Archives of Ontario)

(Archives of Ontario)

Looking west on Wellington Street from Jordon Street (Archives of Ontario)

Front and Yonge, with what's now the Hockey Hall of Fame on the right (Toronto Archives)

Looking east on Wellington west of Bay (Toronto Archives)

(Toronto Archives; I've adjusted the contrast and saturation to clarify the image)

Front Street looking east from Bay (Toronto Public Library)

South-west of Wellington & Bay (Toronto Public Library)

Looking south on Bay north of Wellington (Toronto Archives; adjusted contrast)

Front Street west of Bay (Toronto Archives)

Looking north up Bay Street (Toronto Archives; adjusted contrast, brightness, saturation)

(Toronto Archives; adjusted contrast, brightness, saturation)

West side of Bay Street looking south from Melinda Street (Toronto Public Library)

Looking north up Bay Street (Toronto Archives)

(Toronto Archives)

"Curio seekers" search through the rubble, 1906 (Toronto Archives)

1907ish (Toronto Archives)

(Archives of Ontario)

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A version of this post was originally published on January 2, 2011. I've updated it with more details, photos and the video.

Jamie Bradburn tells the story of John Croft on Torontonist here. Derek Flack tells the story of the fire on blogTO here. Adam Mayers tells it for the Toronto Star here. The Archives of Ontario tell it with an online exhibit here. The City of Toronto tells it here. Wikipedia's version is here.
 
Super-thanks to Nathan Ng for uploading that video to YouTube. There are shots of horse-drawn fire engines rushing down Bay Street toward the blaze, flames consuming a building, and the demolition of the ruins in the aftermath. You can check out his also-amazing Historical Maps of Toronto site here.

The Archives of Ontario have an animated map showing the spread of the fire here.

The 1904 fire wasn't the only "Great" fire in Toronto's history. There was one in 1849, which I'll write a post about someday. It destroyed everything between Front and Adelaide, from Church in the west to Jarvis in the east.

Dream 17 "The Arts & Letters Club" (Tom Thomson, 1914)

In his dream, he stepped outside for a moment — to take the air while he smoked his pipe. That’s when the first drop hit him, a wet drip on the brim of his hat. When he touched it, his fingers came away with a mustard slime of paint. Then there was a splatter of ochre on the sidewalk beside him; globs of crimson splashing in the street. A heartbeat later it was pouring, a deluge of plums and maroons and forest greens and aquamarines.

Thomson opened his umbrella. Puffed at his pipe. The city washed away into colour.

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Tom Thomson was one of the greatest painters in Canadian history, an important part of the circle of aritsts who would later become the Group of Seven. He spent his summers in Algonquin Park where he mysteriously died — possibly murdered — in 1917.

You can read more about his life, his art and the mystery of his death on Wikipedia here. Explore more Toronto Dreams Project postcards here.

The True Story of Toronto's Island Ghost

They say that on some dark nights, as an eerie mist creeps over the Toronto islands, you can still hear him moaning somewhere in the distance. On others, you might hear him walking up the steps of the old lighthouse, even though there's no one there — or see a ghostly light shining up top, even when the lantern isn't lit. Sometimes, you might find his fresh blood spilled on those old wooden stairs. Or even catch a glimpse of him yourself: a spectre stalking through the undergrowth, or wandering the paths around the lighthouse, bloodied and beaten, his arms missing. They say he's the ghost of Toronto's first lightkeeper and that he's searching for the pieces of his body that were hacked off more than two hundred years ago and buried somewhere in the sand.

The story of John Paul Radelmüller came to a bloody end in Toronto, but it began more than six thousand kilometers away — in the royal courts of Europe.

He was born in Bavaria — which is part of Germany now — in the town of Anspach, not far from Frankfurt. This was in the middle of the 1700s. Back then, the British royal family were all from Germany. King George II had been born in Hanover; Queen Caroline came from the very same town where Radelmüller grew up. And even though they were ruling England, the royal family kept close ties to their homeland. Many of their servants were German, too.

That's how Radelmüller ended up in England. He was a teenager when he got a job as a royal servant during the reign of "Mad" King George III: he attended to the king's younger brother, Prince William. But as luxurious as the royal quarters were, it can't have been an entirely easy life. The king was suffering from bouts of severe mental illness and frequently clashed with the prince. At the same time, the prince's son was such a jerk that even members of his own family called him "The Contagion". After sixteen years serving the prince, Radelmüller finally quit. He headed back home to Bavaria to become a farmer. 

But this was 1798. The French Revolution had plunged Europe into decades of chaos and war. Radelmüller's farm was caught right in the middle. He was forced to flee, becoming a refugee. Knowing he would be welcome back in England, he returned to the royal court.

Prince Edward

This time, he served as a porter to one of the "mad" king's sons: Prince Edward. The Prince Edward. The father of Queen Victoria. The guy Prince Edward Island and Prince Edward County are named after.

Edward was a huuuuuge fan of Canada. In fact, he's the very first person who ever used the word "Canadians" to refer to both anglophones and francophones. By the time Radelmüller joined his staff, the prince had already spent years living in Québec and in Nova Scotia; he was only back home in England to recover after falling off his horse. Soon, he headed back across the Atlantic to Halifax. And his new porter went with him.

It didn't take long for Radelmüller to fall in love with Canada, too. When Prince Edward fell ill and was forced to return home to Britain, Radelmüller stayed at his side — but he came back to Canada as soon as he got the chance. He landed a gig as a steward for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.

Still, he dreamed of becoming a farmer again. Someone had told him the best farmland was far to the west, in the brand new province of Upper Canada. He was determined to make a new life for himself out here on the Canadian frontier. And no one was going to stop him. The Governor was reluctant to let him go — promising to give him letters of recommendation and then holding them hostage at the very last moment, hoping his trusted steward could be convinced to stay on for another year. But Radelmüller's belongings had already been loaded onto a ship ready to set sail. So he left anyway, making the grueling five-week trip up the St. Lawrence in the dead of winter.

Radelmüller arrived in Toronto on New Year's Day in 1804. He knew nobody. He had no job. No land. No letters of introduction. It wouldn't be easy. Our city was still just the tiny little town of York back then. The population was still counted in the hundreds. It had only been ten years since John Graves Simcoe and his British soldiers had first arrived to carve the muddy capital out of the ancient forest towering over the northern shore of Lake Ontario. This was still very much the frontier.

But Radelmüller succeeded anyway. First, he headed north up Yonge Street to Markham, founding a school where he taught English to the Germans who had recently settled there. Before long, he was recognized as their official translator for all government business.  

Soon, there would be an even better opportunity.

Toronto Harbour, 1793

Simcoe had picked this spot as the place to build his city because of the Toronto islands. Back then, they were still connected to the mainland: they were just one big, long, sandy peninsula stretching out from a marsh where the Port Lands are today. The sandbar wouldn't become an island until a big storm created the eastern gap in the 1850s. The peninsula created a natural harbour with only one way in: through the narrow western gap. That entrance would be easy to defend. In fact, Simcoe was so excited that he called the spot Gibraltar Point — named after the rocky fortress at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Simcoe declared that a lighthouse was one of the very first buildings they should build in Toronto. Right there on Gibraltar Point.

About ten years later, construction finally began on the south-west corner of the sandbar. The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse was the very first permanent lighthouse built anywhere on the Great Lakes. It was the first stone building in Toronto. When it opened in 1808, it towered over the beach right next to the water, stretching sixteen meters into the air. That's about five storeys. It would be the tallest building in our city for almost fifty years. At the base, the walls are nearly two meters thick, built of limestone shipped north across the lake from a quarry at Queenston — high on the heights at Niagara, which you can still see from Toronto on a clear day. At the top of the lighthouse, a bright lantern shone out as a beacon to the ships sailing through the dark waters at night. It burned two hundred gallons of sperm whale oil every year.

As Toronto's first lightkeeper, Radelmüller's job was to light the lamp every evening and extinguish it at dawn. Plus, he would be in charge of signaling the city every time a big ship pulled into the harbour. He flew a Union Jack for every vessel arriving from Kingston. And the British Red Ensign for ships sailing north from Niagara. (That's the flag you can see in the painting at the top of this post.)

He lived in a small wooden cabin next to the lighthouse. And soon, he was joined there by his family. A couple of years into his new job, Radelmüller married his wife, Magdalena. The wedding was held at Toronto's first church: St James', a little wooden building at King & Church Streets — the same spot where St. James' Cathedral stands now. Before long, they had a daughter: little Arabella was born.

Detail from a Canada Post stamp

It was a quiet, peaceful life. At least at first. They say Radelmüller even made some extra money on the side by brewing beer in the German style he'd learned to make back home. But it didn't take long for the chaos that had driven him out of Germany to find him far on this side of the Atlantic. The wars sparked by the French Revolution led to the rise of Napoleon. And while the might of the British Empire was distracted by the tiny French Emperor, the Americans seized their opportunity. They invaded Canada. The War of 1812 had begun. Just a few short years after Radelmüller had started his new job as our city's first lightkeeper, Toronto was in the middle of a war zone.

The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse was suddenly even more important. The Great Lakes were a key battleground. Control of Lake Ontario was most important of all. Keeping the British fleet safe from the treacherous shoals near the harbour was an essential job — one lost ship could turn the tide of the entire war. And it seems that Radelmüller was up to the task, playing his vital role far out on his lonely sandbar as the war dragged on for nearly three years.

Tragically, he wouldn't live to see the end of it. On Christmas Eve of 1814, a peace treaty was finally signed. But negotiations were held in Belgium, which meant that it would take weeks for the news to cross the ocean and finally reach Toronto. By the time it did, Radelmüller was already dead. He'd been murdered.

It happened after dark on the second day of 1815. The story of that terrible winter night has been told over and over again, passed down from one generation of Torontonians to the next over the course of the last two hundred years. The details are vague; there are many different versions of the tale. But it goes something like this:

Radelmüller and his family weren't the only ones on the sandbar. Hunters and fishermen used it too. First Nations families occasionally camped nearby. And not far from the lighthouse, there was a new military blockhouse. To this day we still call that spot on the islands "Blockhouse Bay". It was built during the War of 1812, armed with a gun designed to the protect our harbour against the Americans. And it was manned by soldiers from Fort York. They spent most of their time keeping watch and preparing for an attack. But they were also friendly with the lightkeeper. Sometimes, they'd row down Blockhouse Bay to visit the lighthouse and drink some of Radelmüller's beer.

On that cold January night at the very beginning of 1815, two of those soldiers came for a visit. They were called John Henry and John Blowman. At first, everything seemed to be going well. They all drank long into the night. But at some point, Radelmüller decided the soldiers had had enough. He cut them off. And that's went everything went horribly wrong.

CBC Archives

The soldiers were angry; they got violent. One took off his belt, the other grabbed a rock, and together they attacked the lightkeeper. Radelmüller ran, bleeding and afraid, scrambling up the steps of the lighthouse in a desperate bid to escape. But the soldiers followed, relentless. They broke down the door and chased him up the narrow wooden stairs to the very top of the lighthouse. That's where the lightkeeper made his last stand: up there, high above the ground as his flaming beacon shone out across the dark lake. There was a final skirmish. Radelmüller was pushed over the railing and fell to his death. It was over. The lightkeeper lay still.

The two soldiers knew they were in deep trouble. The penalty for murder was death. And so, they worked quickly to cover up their crime. They found an axe and used it to hack the body into pieces, severing the limbs. Then, they buried what was left of John Paul Radelmüller, bit by bit, in a series of shallow graves dug in the frozen sand. Their grisly job finished, they ran. 

That, it seems, was a mistake. It was more than a little suspicious: disappearing the very same night the lightkeeper did. Less than two weeks later, the York Gazette announced their arrest. "From circumstances there is moral proof of [Radelmüller] having been murdered," the paper reported. "If the horrid crime admits of aggravation when the inoffensive and benevolent character of the unfortunate sufferer are considered, his murder will be pronounced most barbarous and inhuman. The parties lost with him are the proposed perpetrators and are in prison."

It took more than two months for the case to come to trial. When it did, the soldiers were acquitted. There was little evidence. No one had ever found the body. There would be no justice for the lightkeeper.

And so, his soul was doomed to haunt his lighthouse for the rest of eternity.

At least, that's what people like to say. The details, as you might imagine, are more than a little bit sketchy — right down to the inconsistent spelling of Radelmüller's name. It's hard to find a single record of anyone who has ever claimed to have actually seen the ghost. Even the story of the murder itself is hard to verify. The tale was passed down from one generation of lightkeepers to the next. The first concrete record of the story seems to have been written down by the Toronto newspaperman and historian John Ross Robertson — but that was a hundred years after the killing took place. It was told to him by another lightkeeper at Gibraltar Point — George Durnan — whose family manned the lighthouse for more than seventy years (from the 1830s right up until 1908). Durnan didn't mention a ghost at all. And Robertson suspected that even the murder had probably never happened. He found no record of the crime in the archives of the York Gazette. "There is no doubt that it has been garnished in the telling," he admitted. "It may be a fairy tale..."

The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, 1900

Decades later, the last of the island lightkeepers — a woman with the awesome name of Dedie Dodds — spoke to the CBC. "There may be a ghost," she told them, but there were plenty of rational explanations for everything. "The cooing of the pigeons is very eerie on a dark night. And the wind howling through the lighthouse gives you the shivers. When the moon is full, it's reflected back from the top of the lighthouse." Just a few months earlier, even she had been momentarily fooled. "It gave me quite a start."

Still, it made for a very good story. And Durnan did claim to have found a piece of related evidence. He said that one day, he went looking for Radelmüller's remains around the spot he'd been told he could find them. There, buried in a shallow grave about a hundred and fifty meters to the west of the lighthouse, he found a coffin. Inside, there was a human jawbone.

It was all more than enough to fuel the legend. By the time Dodds became the lightkeeper in the 1950s, the phantom had become part of the myth — and the grisly tale of the haunted lighthouse had become one of Toronto's most beloved ghost stories. In fact, by the end of that decade, it would earn official recognition. After a century and a half of continuous service, the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse was finally going to be decommissioned. To honour the old building's new life as an historical monument, a new plaque was going to be erected. 

The Ontario Archaeological and Historical Sites Advisory Board decided to include the ghost story as part of the official story of the building. It was the final sentence on the new plaque:

"The mysterious disappearance of its first keeper, J.P. Rademuller, in 1815 and the subsequent discovery nearby of part of a human skeleton enhanced its reputation as a haunted building."

That line sparked a heated battle. The Advisory Board might like it, but the Metro Toronto Parks Committee disagreed. The councillors on the committee were appalled by the idea that such fantastical nonsense was going to be officially recognized. One councillor dismissed the story of Radelmüller's ghost as "a myth... an old wives' tale" unworthy of inclusion on a plaque. "I can't see it would make the place attractive to children," another councillor worried, completely misunderstanding children. Even the Metro Chairman himself, Fred Gardiner, the guy the highway is named after, weighed in. "That," he declared, "would only scare people."

The plaque in 2015 (photo by me)

But the Advisory Board refused to back down. The plaque went up anyway and the story of Radelmüller's ghost was preserved. Today, you can still find it there on the side of the lighthouse, giving the people of Toronto a colourful connection to one of our most interesting — but most easily forgotten — landmarks.

Today, the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse anywhere on the Great Lakes. Some people consider it to be the oldest in all of Canada. The only older lighthouse is in Nova Scotia — but it's been repaired and renovated so much that even Lighthouse Digest suggests that it might not really count anymore.

For more than two hundred years, our first lighthouse has kept watch over our city. It's the oldest building in Toronto that still stands in the same place where it was originally built. It has borne witness to all of our greatest and more terrible moments. It saw the American invasion during the War of 1812. The raging storm that turned the sandbar into the islands. The Great Fires of 1849 and of 1904. The arrival of the first steamships and of the first trains. It has helped thousands of sailors bring thousands of ships safely into our harbour, carrying countless new Canadians into our city to make this place their home. Once the tallest building in Toronto, the lighthouse has watched our skyline grow into one of the most impressive in the world, topped by one of the tallest buildings humanity has ever built.

It's easy to forget the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, out there alone on the island. The light was turned off long ago. The cottages where the lightkeepers and their families once lived have now all been demolished. The shoreline has evolved, grown with silt, moved more than a hundred meters away. Even with an 1830s extension taking it another few meters into the air, the lighthouse has nearly disappeared among the trees. It has been swallowed up by the same city it helped bring to life.

But the story of the lightkeeper's ghost helps us to remember — to remember not just the history of that building, but of what this place used to be.

Today, the guardian of the lighthouse is a volunteer. His name is Manuel Cappel. He too is from Germany, just like Radelmüller was. He lives on the islands, where he also builds bicycles; he used to run the Rectory Café. Torontonians today ask him the very same question they've been asking the island lightkeepers for generations now: is the lighthouse really haunted?

He gives them the same answer he gives everyone. An answer that couldn't be more true.

"It is," he tells them, "if you want it to be."

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A version of this story will appear in The Toronto Book of the Dead Coming September 2017 Pre-order from Amazon, Indigo, or your favourite bookseller

The story of Toronto's island ghost will appear in The Toronto Book of the Dead, coming from Dundurn Press in the fall of 2017.

Edward Butts uncovered much of Radelmüller's true history in his book Murder: Twelve True Stories of Homicide in Canada. You can borrow it from the Toronto Public Library here, or buy it from Dundurn Press here.

The story of the lighthouse and its ghost has been told many, many times. Gary Miedema told it for Spacing. Chris Bateman told it for blogTO. Jordan Pipher told it for the Hogtown Crier. Sarah B. Hood told it for Adventures in Upper Canada. Jacqueline Martinz told it for Torontoist. Wikipedia tells it here. Lighthouse Digest tells it here. Urban Toronto tells it here, with an assist from Heritage Toronto. The Friends of Toronto Islands tell it here. The Toronto & Ontario Ghosts and Hauntings Society tells it here. A TV show called Creepy Canada told their own version of the story, which you can watch on YouTube here. 

John Ross Roberton's original version appeared in volume two of his "Landmarks of Toronto" books. You can find in online thanks to Archive.org here. 

The Ontario Catholic Paranormal Research Society (which seeks to either debunk ghost stories, or re-contextualize them as religious events) did their own investigation of the lighthouse. They found no evidence of paranormal activity and raise many of the most convincing doubts about the story of Radelmüller's ghost here.

The Toronto Star talks to the current guardian of the lighthouse, Manuel Cappel, here. And in PDFs, which I think you're able to access if you have a Toronto Public Library card here and here. You can check out the website for his bike-building business here.

The Star also covered the story of the battle over the plaque here. And they talk to Dedie Dodds here.

The CBC talked to Dedie Dodds and a member of the Durnan family in the 1950s. You can watch that video online here. 

The main image is a slightly cropped version of "View of York" which was painted in 1816ish by Robert Irvine. It's on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario and has been featured on their website here. 

The old map of the harbour comes from the awesome Historical Maps of Toronto site here. And the photo of the lighthouse in the year 1900 comes from the Toronto Public Library's digital archives here.

This post is related to dream 25 The Lightkeepers' Daughter Arabella Radelmüller, 1815