"Quiz Report" - Which, Where? When?: Schooner Days DCLXXIV (674)

by C. H. J. Snider

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SOMETIMES it is said that nothing ever happens that can't be related to Schooner Days. This year we were challenged to prove it in the case of the Toronto civic elections. That is not difficult. Robert J. Saunders, mayor-elect for 1945, is a great great grandson or nephew of Capt. "Sanders" (as the name was spelled at the time) of the schooner Bella Gore, who was killed by a musket ball while valiantly fighting at the head of the dockyard men in the American attack on York, U.C., April 27th, 1813.

The Bella Gore was one of the few commercial vessels on Lake Ontario at the time. She may have been frozen in the harbor. Capt. Sanders was buried in an old cemetery up Yonge street near Thornhill.

The Bella Gore was built in York in 1809, and was named after Governor Gore's wife, Lady Bella Gore, who gave her name to Belleville, because she enjoyed a picnic lunch on the site, when the settlement was known as Meyer's Creek.

This schooner was also known as the Lady Gore. Little could her master guess that his descendant , would captain the great city of Toronto from a spot within a mile of the dockyard where rallied the artificers to put the torch to the sloop-of-war, Sir Isaac Brock, to save her from American capture.

Mr. E. A. PEARCE submits the alongside photograph for identification is of a harbor, still charming and not very different, which did a great trade with Oswego in schooner days and still ships its products to wherever a canopener is around. If it were said that it had the prettiest approach of all the harbors on Lake Ontario this would be correct in every respect save one. We've been there, and hope to go again, but how many Lake Ontario sailors can identify it?

What we don't know, and what are we chiefly interested in, are the names of the two schooners lying against the trees. One might be "Two Brothers" of Port Hope, but we don't know if that vessel had the two heavy wales or fenderstrakes shown in the outside schooner. The inner one might be the S. & J. Collier, the Picton, or the Persia, after she changed over from black to white paint. That would place the year around 1894, for she was lost within twelve months of the transformation. But let us have answers from those who know better.