In 1844 it would be renamed Queen, Victoria not so honoured in Parkdale for some years to come.īefore that, Dundas ruled. Or just Dundas Street - if not the one we now know anywhere east of Ossington. It ran dead straight along the First Concession line, called Lot Street in town, known beyond (and on some maps even in town) as the Road to Dundas Street. The other route heading west (variously named for where it led: Lake Shore Road, Burlington Road, Niagara Road) was often a bog. Dundas was a main highway, paved as the "West Toronto Macadamized Road" by 1833. Begun in 1799 as military route set well inland for defence, it headed north from the First Concession line at what is now Ossington Avenue, then angled northwest. Up it now runs Brock Avenue, originally Brockton Road, suggesting (as did many such names) that it led somewhere significant.īrockton sprang up along what was at the time the most significant road west of town: Dundas Street. James got lots in the broken front, "Commonly called Brock's Land" says a map of 1833. What they had got as gifts they or their heirs soon sold off, reaping 100% profit.Īmong them was James Brock, of Guernsey, "apparently a cousin," historians say, of General Sir Isaac Brock - saviour of Upper Canada in the War of 1812, falling (and monumentally honoured) at Queenston. Like many of York's gentry farther east they did not live on their estates, happier to speculate in real estate. But they also shaped what would become Parkdale.įrom 1797 to 1799, four 100 acre Park Lots in the First Concession, numbered 29 to 32 west of what is now Dufferin, two "farm lots" twice the size further west, and the "broken front" running south to the lake were all granted to soldiers who had served under Simcoe as Queen's Rangers. The Park Lots, running north from a line at the bottom of the First Concession (now Queen Street), are best known for shaping development downtown. Least of all Parkdale.įounding the Town of York in 1793, Colonel John Graves Simcoe doled out free land to his loyal retainers. None of these names is native to its locale, nor even long applied. The land between those two French forts we now call Swansea, Sunnyside, High Park and, rising above the eastern shore of Humber Bay, Parkdale. Just west, Fort Rouillé stands in name only, if likely seeing more visitors: its short stretch leads to a TTC bus loop. In 1759, with New France falling, Fort Rouillé was burned by retreating troops, leaving the British just "five heaps of charred timber and planks." A plaque marks the site, in the Canadian National Exhibition grounds just east of Dufferin Street. The newer and bigger was more formally named, by the governor in Quebec City, to flatter the Minister of Marine in Paris. Both were often called le fort de Toronto. To secure its bay they soon built another, three miles east along an Anishnawbe lakeside trail. In 1750 the French built a fort at the river's mouth. All of them, Percy Robinson would write in 1933, "with or without license robbed the poor Indian." Dutch traders from the Hudson knew "the carrying place." English freebooters from Albany did too. The Wendat long had, the Senecas too, and the Anishnawbe (it means, simply, person to the French they were Mississaugas). Black robed missionaries and rowdy coureurs de bois would come to know well le passage de Toronto. In 1615 they showed that place to Etienne Brulé, then 23, scouting for Samuel de Champlain. The Wendat, for whom it was the end of a trade route down from Huronia on Georgian Bay, called it "toronto." We call them now the Humber, and Lake Ontario. This place we call Parkdale lies not far east of another place - this city's very reason for being: a place where waters meet, a river flowing into a lake. Modern marking of the village named (accounts differ) for either Sir Isaac, hero of Queenston Heights, or the less famous if likely related James. Just south: French fort recalled in a mere bus loop, the arch of the Exhibition's Dufferin Gate beyond. Greeting near the foot of Dufferin - if on its east side, so not in Parkdale proper.
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