Acland’s Letters: Eleventh Letter
Toronto
Toronto
Sept. 11, 1860
The Times correspondent
The time of our leaving Canada draws near. This week brings us to Niagara, and next week to Chicago. Then we are clear out of “the Province.” The Times Correspondent11 meeting me the other day said, “Well Sir, you will change your opinions about Canada when you get into the States – “No Sir, I shan’t” – I answered – “You seem very clear about it” – “Of course I am” – I said – “for I have no opinions and therefore can’t change them – I keep my eyes & ears open and mean to chew no cud till all is over, & then I will digest an uncommonly large meal.” Now this is well enough for an answer to shake off “our own” – but it is of course not absolutely true. I have formed opinions. But those opinions do and will require great circumspection in their utterance; and I have very much to learn. All my knowledge is fragmentary in the extreme; and acquired with dangerous facility as well as with the utmost difficulty: facility because for asking I can obtain anything – difficulty, because time is very short – quiet is absent & interruptions endless. This is a prelude to saying you must have one more very dull letter: but before I quit Canada I shall hope to sum up much that I shall wish to say to you of a general kind.
Now for Toronto.
There are sometimes 12 or more addresses a day – and now American deputations come up – even from the place of…Buffalo, begging the party to go there. So great is the furore that on board the Kingston after we left some of the visitors kissed H.R.H.’s pillow – and cut up the soap that was left into bits.
Toronto’s prosperity
Toronto you are well aware was formerly the seat of government of Upper Canada. The first tree was, I believe, cut down in its soil by order of the admirable & remembered Governor General Simcoe22. The Government was removed to Quebec through a series of changes & causes not now to be entered upon. I now write in the old Government House which was fitted up for our reception – a spacious admirable building33 in a charming garden. Here formerly Sir Edmund Head lived.
The town itself is neat & spacious. That is the streets are wide & the houses generally good; some admirable. There is more the appearance of ordinary English trade on a good footing among the shops than I have seen at all, but things are dear. A new coat which I want to protect my old skin against the on-creeping cold is to cost 30 dollars – Bond St. price – 20 per cent is paid on British manufactures imported44 so cloth a pound a yard in London is here 25% – at the least.
The extent to which the Province taxes itself either in general or in detail for public purposes is very remarkable, and the result is a kind of magnificence about certain things which must astonish a stranger – and which contrasts strangely with some of our petty disputes at home.
Unsettled politics
Nothing however seems to be settled here. Everything is liable to instant change from political causes of a small kind. There is perhaps, and in justice it should be said a more ancient and serious ground of difficulty – the difference between Upper and Lower Canada in respect of Nationality & Religion. Doubtless with the best intentions these come up at various & unexpected turns. Originally for instance Montreal was the seat of Government. Then Toronto became the seat of Government for Upper Canada. Then when the union was effected by Lord Sydenham between the two, Toronto ceased to be the seat. When the rebellion took place, Montreal ceased to be, and Toronto and Quebec alternately were. When this became inconvenient as it obviously was, then the only chance of any concert in the matter was by referring the matter to the Queen, who wisely chose Ottawa thereby pleasing nobody, but not offending either half of the Province.
But it is clear, as I implied, that in all political questions these changes & circumstances keep up perpetual discomfort & doubt. We live among the politicians, the Attorney generals, treasurers & financiers; and hear their talk and see their motives to some extent. And those are the same among all party politicians – looking out for the support in future of their personal constituents. This is to us a cause of considerable inconvenience. A wishes a to be visited, because a is A’s peculiar – and we must do as A likes. B stands in the same relation to b, and [what] was accorded to B & b on account of A & a must of course be given at least to G, H, & I – and if to I why every one knows that J’s are always put upon – and V says the same of the conduct of U from time immemorial – and therefore of their addresses there is no end. There are sometimes 12 or more addresses a day – and now American deputations come up – even from the place of “Gals,” [title of popular song] Buffalo, begging the party to go there. So great is the furore that on board the Kingston after we left some of the visitors kissed H.R.H.’s pillow – and cut up the soap that was left into bits.
* * * * *
John Graves Simcoe was appointed lieutenant governor after the Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the Province of Quebec to create the culturally distinct Loyalist province of Upper Canada.
Acland wrote from Government House, a Georgian home with wide lawns and gracious trees at King and Simcoe Street.
Toronto’s population more than quadrupled between 1830 and 1850.
Magnetic observatory
I need hardly recount to you the round of Regatta, Horticultural shows, laying stones, and inaugurations55 which ‘Our own’ will relate. But I will relate some of my own work. The three things which I have paid most attention to are the Hospital, the University, the Magnetic Observatory. The latter is so well known that I need not make much remark on it. There are four great British Magnetic Observatories – St. Helena, Kew, Cape of Good Hope, Toronto66. The latter is the furthest north and the most westerly. There are others, one at St. Petersburg, but the whole I cannot enumerate. The object is of course to examine & record the condition and changes of Magnetism on the earth’s surface – partly for purely scientific purposes, partly for the use of the practical purposes of Navigation – The methods of observatories will not much interest you, and you had too large a dose of Dr. Smallwood. I went in company with Mr. Blackwell and Colonel Wilmot introducing them to Professor Kingston who was a Cambridge man. The institution was I suspect in more masterly order for its period when Colonel Lefroy was here. The Imperial Government formerly in his & Sabine’s time supported it – and now it does credit to the Province that it allows £1200 currency (£1000) to its maintenance – The Professor has 3 Artillery Sergeants to aid him – retired non commissioned officers – of whom one Sergeant Walker has been there 22 years. Colonel Wilmot built the St. Helena Observatory & worked there 7 years: and Walker had once served under him – Professor Kingston was very obliging and answered all sorts of questions to me – concerning the structure of his instruments, and his arrangements – especially those of adjustment – On the whole the Observations is a more simple matter than I had expected, but the calculations are of the most troublesome & difficult nature.
Races at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club: The yacht club was founded in 1852 for recreation and as an auxiliary to the Royal Navy in its defense of Lake Ontario.
The Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, located on the grounds of the University of Toronto just west of Queen’s Park, played an important part in a global scientific project that involved observatories in both hemispheres and included scientific communities in Russia, Germany, France, and Britain.
University of Toronto
This Magnetic observatory is immediately below the University Building which stands on a hill rising gradually from the Town, or from the lake – The University has undergone various phases.77 A quantity of land has been received for the purpose of Collegiate endowment in connexion with the Church of England: but as might perhaps have been expected this was unacceptable to the many sects, and by dint of exertion it was removed from what is called a Sectarian appropriation. The whole story is not worth here recording. But when the decision took place to which I allude the Bishop by great exertion erected an Anglican University. There are therefore now two. The Anglican one supported by Anglican contributions and poor – The other endowed and the favorite of the Public & the Legislature – It is this which is built somewhat on the plan of our Museum – It is our Design minus the Area – turned Norman & gone wild.88 It would offend my Father – But it has [a] certain solidity of appearance which ours lacks, is more ornate – less delicate – smaller in its parts – but is in many respects a very creditable building, and though possessing no qualities for much admiration, will still serve as a standard for a certain kind of Gothic Art – And no one will imitate it though it will suggest much. It is more to the point that I should tell you that the Institution contains [a] private House – Library – 2 Reading Rooms – Museum – Geological Museum, Laboratory, Lecture Rooms, Residence for about 40 Students, with their Common Room – Kitchen of course & so on – Therefore you will gather here is the Matériel for the complete educational course99, except Theology, and with regard to Theology it is provided that every pupil is to be, that is, ought to be, and is expected to be trained religiously by the ministers of his parents’ persuasion.
All was in admirable order – All well managed. Library catalogues complete and reading rooms most convenient for use & need.
Besides the University there is a complete system of Higher Grammar Schools, one at least in each County.
Normal school
In completeness & perfection neither of these approach the Normal or Training School – This, under the management of Dr. Rierson, and due to his exertion, is a very noble institution.1010 A capital Library, fine Lecture Room, large Museum, Gallery of copies of pictures of all epochs of Art, and very numerous casts are the chief additions to the Training School for Masters & Mistresses of lower Schools – to the practising Schools – and to the Schools for training Grammar Masters & Mistresses. To which must be added a Department for supplying Libraries selected from a certain list, and that an extensive and high one for schools & parishes throughout the Province.
In all these remarks you will recognize the type of Home Institutions – and will not be the less interested because these younger developments are in so vigorous a state and admirable order. But – but – Oxford – Oh! God willing we shall not either fail.
The Prince of Wales, happy thought, was enrolled a Student of Toronto: that is, ad eundem (the same rank: an honorary academic standing awarded by a university to a person whose work was done at another institution) in fact of his Oxford state – How much prettier than a High degree.
University College, built on property adjoining the wooded grounds and winding paths of Queen’s Park, represents the beginning of the University of Toronto.
The non-denominational university eschewed the Gothic architecture associated with the Church of England in preference for an amalgam of various movements in the period’s architectural revival, like the Norman Romanesque represented in its square central tower and rugged thick walls.
University College’s provision for both the humanities and the physical sciences concurred with Acland’s concept of knowledge as an entire whole and his belief that in a complete modern education students of the humanities should study a few sciences and students of science should study some subjects in the humanities.
The appointment in 1844 of Reverend Egerton Ryerson as superintendent of schools for Canada West was part of the new movement towards the education of the general populace that was taking place in European countries and the United States.
Prominent people
I have made much acquaintance with some persons, special Dr. Hodder of the General Hospital1111, which I carefully examined – and found deficient in every particular, in warming – ventilation – arrangements – cleanliness – Dr. Wilson author of the Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, now working the continent Ethnologically1212, and making an Ethnological collection, who also gave me the Canadian Journal, back numbers – Mr Allen, member of the Legislative Council – Sir John Robinson, Arthur Mills’ friend1313 – Dr. Rierson himself – Dr. McCane and others – Hon. John Rose, Commissioner of Works, Sidney Smith, Postmaster General1414, little Jack Cartier (Mr. Cartier) – and Blackwell continue their unceasing kindness & attention. Even Kirwin, ‘the Doctor’ or the horse purveyor, is as urbane though we have no time to ride – I have been in quest of the Cloud of Vapour of Niagara, but the weather does not allow it to be seen. A dreadful accident has happened on Lake Michigan in the loss of an excursion boat – Ingram, the proprietor of the “Illustrated News” being lost in her1515, and shedding a gloom over the sight of that paper.
The weather gets cold – 40 at night. I have not warm things enough – and the light ones are useless. Sir E. Head and I continue our march in terrorem (scared into compliance) – and Lord Lyons [British ambassador to U.S.] is joining us all heartily – being very pleasant & full of sound sense and quick. Good Lord St. Germains has become a sort of Father to us all and I am as much afraid of the General as ever.
Founded in 1825 and re-built in a new location in 1855, the General Hospital was then, as it is today, a teaching hospital for medical students.
Like many other British professionals in the period, Wilson, a Scotsman, found new opportunities in Canada.
Born in 1791 of United Empire Loyalist parents, Robinson was the same age as the colony of Upper Canada and mirrors its development.
Grandson of a Loyalist who was a founder of the town of Port Hope, Smith was appointed postmaster general for the Canadas in 1858.
Herbert Ingram, founder in 1842 of the Illustrated London News, became the subject of a tragic news story on Sept. 8.
Contextualized Notes
Nathaniel Augustus Woods, special correspondent for The Times of London, along with George Henry Andrews, an artist with the Illustrated London News, the world’s first illustrated weekly news magazine, were accorded special status during the tour. These embedded journalists were free to travel everywhere with the royal party aboard their steamers, and trains. Their on-the-spot reporting that brought a sense of immediacy to British readers had become possible through the recent expansion of telegraphs and rail networks and the growth of big-circulation, well-financed newspapers.
John Graves Simcoe was appointed lieutenant governor after the Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the Province of Quebec to create the culturally distinct Loyalist province of Upper Canada. In 1793 during the Simcoe family’s first winter in the scarcely-cleared wilderness at York (Toronto), they lived in a tent bought at a sale of the effects of Captain Cook. Simcoe purchased Indian lands, tried to create a reliable land-granting system, and built roads intended both for military communication and to give direction to future settlements. After leaving Upper Canada in 1796, he was briefly governor of St Domingo (Haiti) during a slave rebellion and was subsequently appointed commander-in-chief of India in 1806 but died in England before his departure.
Until her death in 1850, the widow of John Graves Simcoe lived on a large estate near the Acland ancestral home among the rolling hills of Devon. A colourful character, Mrs Simcoe was remembered for going out in a sleigh brought back from Canada whenever there was snow. In nearby Exeter Cathedral she perpetuated the memory of her husband in a grand funeral monument that includes a life-size statue of an Indian.
Acland wrote from Government House, a Georgian home with wide lawns and gracious trees at King and Simcoe Street. This house first served as the colony’s official residence in 1815 but its status was subject to political vagaries. After the union of Upper and Lower Canada implemented by the governor general, Lord Sydenham, the capital was moved first to Kingston in 1841 and then to Montreal in 1844. With the burning of the parliament building in Montreal in 1849, the seat of government was relocated to Toronto until 1852, to Quebec City until 1856, back to Toronto until 1858, and then again to Quebec City until 1866.
Toronto’s population more than quadrupled between 1830 and 1850. With close to 45,000 inhabitants in 1860, the city’s prosperity reflected a colonial economy that had been transformed from supplier of raw material to Britain in a mercantilist system to a centre of local manufacture based on a policy of free trade. The development of canals in the 1840s and the sweep of railway lines in the 1850s created a strong domestic market and made the United States its second major trading partner. By the 1850s, Toronto began to look like a British manufacturing town with busy wharves and chimneys belching black smoke. While it still had an endless supply of “Made in England” goods, with the development of local manufacturing a new protectionist sentiment emerged with higher duties imposed on manufactures from Britain in 1848. In Kingston and Belleville manufacturers of leather shoes asked for a 30% tariff on imported shoes corresponding to the agricultural tariff protection for farmers.
Races at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club: The yacht club was founded in 1852 for recreation and as an auxiliary to the Royal Navy in its defense of Lake Ontario. Horticultural Gardens: The Toronto Horticultural Society had been established in 1834 to encourage the introduction of improved varieties of fruits, vegetables, and plants. The prince planted an oak at the Horticultural Gardens, now Allan Gardens, on the five acres of land donated by George W. Allan, mayor of Toronto, 1854-56.
Queen’s Park: Prince Edward opened the park, re-named in honour of his mother, as thousands watched in pouring rain. Originally planned by a New York landscape designer, in 1828 this picturesque park belonged to King’s College, the precursor of the University of Toronto, until it was leased to the City of Toronto for 999 years in 1859. To mark the park’s opening, 500 trees were planted along College St, its southern boundary prior to the construction of the Ontario Legislature Building in 1893. Today, at the centre of the park an equestrian statue donated by India in 1969 from its original location in Delhi features King Edward, older and more portly, riding across the park that he opened as Prince of Wales in 1860.
The Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, located on the grounds of the University of Toronto just west of Queen’s Park, played an important part in a global scientific project that involved observatories in both hemispheres and included scientific communities in Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. A pioneering collaborative enterprise, its purpose was to investigate variations in the earth’s magnetism, an invisible force generated from the earth’s molten core whose fluctuations affect accuracy in compass readings, then a problem in navigation.
General Edward Sabine, who had measured magnetic variations during the Ross and Parry Arctic expeditions in 1818-20, was appointed director of the British observatories in 1839. Colonel Frederick Wilmot, assisted by Colonel John Henry Lefroy, set up Britain’s observatory in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on St Helena’s Island. In 1842, Lefroy was transferred to direct the observatory in Canada. From its base in Toronto, he undertook an eighteen-month expedition in 1843-44 to measure magnetic variations. Equipped with 180 pounds of instruments, Lefroy travelled 8,811 kilometers (5,475 miles) by canoe along the voyageur routes of the Hudson’s Bay Company from Montreal to the west and far north. His observations during the aurora borealis were of particular interest to the global enterprise because they are caused by the interaction of elements in the earth’s atmosphere with highly-charged electrons from solar winds that follow the lines of the earth’s magnetic force. From Lefroy’s observations Sabine was able to demonstrate conclusively that the eleven-year cycle of sunspots caused a similarly periodic variation in the earth’s magnetic field. When the British magnetic project ended in 1853, George Templeton Kingston, professor of meteorology at the fledgling University of Toronto, was appointed director of the observatory by the colonial government with 2/3 of his salary paid by the province. Until 1905 the observatory was the official timekeeper for Canada.
University College, built on property adjoining the wooded grounds and winding paths of Queen’s Park, represents the beginning of the University of Toronto. In tandem with the recently-established University of New Brunswick, this non-denominational, provincially-funded university replaced King’s College which had been founded after George IV granted a royal charter in 1827 to the Anglican prelate, John Strachan. By the 1840s the funding of King’s College through the sale of the Clergy Reserves, Crown Land set aside for the support of the Anglican Church, led to dissatisfaction with Anglican privilege by other religious groups and to the abandonment of the college in 1850. Convinced that religion was essential to university life, Strachan founded Trinity College in 1851 as an Anglican institution dependent on benefactors.
The non-denominational university eschewed the Gothic architecture associated with the Church of England in preference for an amalgam of various movements in the period’s architectural revival, like the Norman Romanesque represented in its square central tower and rugged thick walls. In 1856, its architect, Frederic Cumberland, toured the British Isles and France to observe recent examples of university architecture. The most significant influence from this tour was the work of the Irish architects, Deane and Woodward, who also designed the Gothic Oxford University Museum with which Acland and John Ruskin were closely associated. The Oxford Museum’s round chemistry lab, modelled on the medieval kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey (for which ventilation was also important), is replicated at University College. In the college’s interior, wooden bosses and luxuriant flowers and animals carved by German craftsmen on arches and columns speak of the influence of Acland’s friend, John Ruskin, whom Cumberland greatly admired.
University College’s provision for both the humanities and the physical sciences concurred with Acland’s concept of knowledge as an entire whole and his belief that in a complete modern education students of the humanities should study a few sciences and students of science should study some subjects in the humanities. Acland’s concept of the circle of knowledge as a unity of the divine, human and physical domains, an idea implicit in the university since its rise in the twelfth century, is emblematically represented in a sculpture above the entrance of the Oxford University Museum. Within a circle the Angel of Life is depicted holding in one hand an open book and in the other hand a dividing nucleated cell, the fundamental unit of life articulated as cell theory in 1839.
The appointment in 1844 of Reverend Egerton Ryerson as superintendent of schools for Canada West was part of the new movement towards the education of the general populace that was taking place in European countries and the United States. This movement in education was driven by changes in economic and social structures: a new need for skilled workers in industry, for clerks in large merchant firms, and for employees in the expanding banking and insurance companies. Intellectual betterment was also perceived as important for those who lived in crowded industrial centres for their moral and personal well-being, for good citizenship, and as a deterrent to crime and social unrest. As part of this movement, in England the Home and Colonial Institute had been established in 1836 for the care of younger children and the training of their teachers.
Egerton Ryerson’s background contributed to his convictions in education. He had been educated in district grammar schools first established in 1807 in Upper Canada to provide a classical education for a gentlemanly class and for those destined for the professions. During the 1820s, as a Methodist circuit rider he became familiar with the lives of pioneering subsistence farmers. In 1829 he was elected the first editor of the influential and widely-read Methodist newspaper, the Christian Guardian, and in 1841 he was elected the first principal of Victoria College, then located in Cobourg and later part of the University of Toronto.
Following a common practice as new school systems were established, in his first year as superintendent of schools Ryerson observed classroom practice and examined programs in Britain and in countries like Prussia, France, and Belgium. On his return, he established standards for elementary schools through a sequential curriculum in school textbooks, a system of exams, and school inspectors. Maps, globes, and books were supplied to school boards at half price and by 1855 a central library had made available 117,000 books.
The Normal School for the training and certification of teachers was opened in 1852 on the campus of what was called Ryerson University until 2022. Since elementary school was likely to be the most schooling children would receive, Ryerson tried to ensure that not only the foundational disciplines of reading, writing, and arithmetic were in place but that the program was comprehensive. Frederic Cumberland, the architect who designed University college, articulated Ryerson’s vision in the Normal School. Built in a graceful classical idiom, there was a laboratory on the first floor and models of constellations. On the light-filled second floor, a museum and art gallery included copies and casts of the best in Western art for the education of unsophisticated students at a time when Toronto had few cultural amenities. Three of the Normal School’s eight acres were set aside for agricultural experiments and for fruit and vegetable gardens; two acres were for botanical gardens including foreign and domestic shrubs.
Founded in 1825 and re-built in a new location in 1855, the General Hospital was then, as it is today, a teaching hospital for medical students. Dr Edward Mulberry Hodder, who studied medicine in London, Paris, and Edinburgh before immigrating to Upper Canada, had been a professor at Toronto’s medical schools since 1850 and was a leading practitioner in obstetrics and gynaecology.
Like many other British professionals in the period, Wilson, a Scotsman, found new opportunities in Canada. In The Archeology and prehistoric annals of Scotland, published in Edinburgh in 1851, Wilson helped establish the science of prehistory, a word he introduced into English. Based on this scholarship, Wilson was appointed in 1853 to University College, Toronto, as chair of history and English literature, a discipline recently introduced into universities. As a member of the Royal Canadian Institute (founded in 1849) and editor of its periodical, the Canadian Journal: a Repertory of Industry, Science, and Art, he continued his work on ethnology by gathering data on North American Indians from fellow members of the institute who had first-hand experience of the Indigenous way of life: for example, Paul Kane, painter of First Nations people; the explorer-scientist, John Henry Lefroy; and the politician, George W. Allan, who collected Indigenous artefacts. In his ethnological work, Wilson argued for the common origin of all races, rejecting the opposing theory of separate origins used to justify both Black slavery and the restrictive policy of Indian reserves that prevented First Nations people from competing equally with whites.
Born in 1791 of United Empire Loyalist parents, Robinson was the same age as the colony of Upper Canada and mirrors its development. In the War of 1812, he served with distinction against American invaders. In the conflict between fur trading companies and settlements, he presided over the legal dispute in 1817 between the North West Company and Lord Selkirk’s Red River colony in present-day Manitoba. He supported the scheme in the 1820s to offset American immigration through British immigration with settlers brought to Almonte and the Peterborough area by his brother, Peter Robinson, for whom Peterborough is named. After the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, he sentenced rebels convicted of treason. In the course of his role as chief justice from 1829 until 1862, Robinson did much to define Canadian common law in its formative period through his legal decisions confronting the new realities of banks, insurance companies, railroads, canals, and colonial land holding. A member of the elite Family Compact that in large part sparked the colony’s rebellion, Robinson’s conservative views on colonial governance were familiar to Arthur Mills, Acland’s brother-in-law, a British member of parliament who was considered an expert in colonial government and expenditures.
Grandson of a Loyalist who was a founder of the town of Port Hope, Smith was appointed postmaster general for the Canadas in 1858. After the devolution of responsibility for the Post Office from Britain to the provinces in 1851, the volume of mail increased exponentially, rates were drastically reduced, many new post offices were opened, and the prepaid postage stamp was introduced. Scarcely six months before the royal tour, Smith travelled to Paris to persuade the French government to follow Great Britain and the United States in using a Canadian line of steamships for transatlantic mail. He pointed out that the revolution in transport of rail and steam meant that mail from New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico could reach Chicago within forty-eight hours and with the recent completion of the Victoria Bridge in Montreal it would reach the Atlantic seaport in Portland within another forty-eight hours. The speed and regularity of steam travel meant that the voyage from Portland to Cork, Ireland, would not exceed ten days. Special mail trains from Cork ensured that mail would reach London within twenty hours, a total of fifteen days. By contrast, seventy-seven years earlier in 1784 a pioneer courier route from Halifax to Quebec City through a thousand kilometers of forest tracks took about fifteen weeks for the return trip.
Herbert Ingram, founder in 1842 of the Illustrated London News, became the subject of a tragic news story on Sept. 8.
Engravings in newspapers like the New York Illustrated News and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicted the collision during a stormy night on Lake Michigan of a lumber schooner with the Lady Elgin, an elegant side-wheel passenger steamer named for the wife of the former Canadian governor general. With some 350 other passengers and members of the ship’s crew, Ingram and his son drowned in what remains the greatest loss of life in open water in the history of the Great Lakes.