Old Times at the East End of the Bay: Schooner Days DCCLXXVII (777)

by C. H. J. Snider

UNTIL the present Western Gap was constructed a thousand feet south of the old narrow winding one at the Queen's wharf, Toronto Bay used to freeze solid in December. Sometimes by January the ice was three feet thick. Ice cutting on the Bay was an industry which lasted to the end of the 19th century, although in the later years in view of the new bacterial counts of astronomical size it was coyly confined to "refrigeration for other than domestic purposes." Breweries used Bay ice at one time, and possibly the ice-cream vendors whose little tin patties of it were one cent a spoonful. All this crudity faded out by the time Sir Wilfrid Laurier had presented Canada with a New Century, or before. But while we were still germ-proof, because of our ignorance of the beasties, the east end of Toronto Bay was a lively place, summer or winter.

INDUSTRY ON ICE

After the year's end it would creak and whine with the ring of ice-saws and the frosty music of big box sleighs and snorting horses, slowly coming in with shoveled grain or great cubes of ice, maybe a yard each way, and clear as plate glass except where frosted on one face with frozen snow. Popular belief was that frost, like fire, purified everything. There was also the swirling, whirling song of ice-boat skates, and the shouts of foot skaters and sleighriders, and the cheery whine of tackle-blocks and skush of scoop shovels as the longshoremen shoveled the grain in the holds of ice-bound schooners into the buckets emptying into wheat-proof sleigh-boxes, bound for mill and distillery.

Winter storage of grain was not the exact science it has since become. Vessels were all wood and mostly sail. They would arrive when they could, and anchor in the Bay till it was their turn to unload. If they were frozen in at anchor, or stuck on the bottom, they would unload into smaller vessels or into sleighs, and get their cargo ashore that way, as it was required.

One of the late Capt. John Williams' triumphs was turning the chronically in-the-hole Paddy Young into a dividend payer by a little post-season diplomacy. The big Jas. G. Worts, three-master, came in late in 1882, drawing nearly 12 feet, and grounded a long way off from the Gooderham mill and elevator. Mill and elevator were already full, and they were anxious about leaving so big a cargo in the Worts for winter storage, with her fast on the bottom, for fear she would strain. So Capt. John got a chance to lighter 3,000 bushels into the Young. Charlie Robinson, his owner, was worried when he heard the grain might have to stay in her till spring. The hatches were none too good, and who was to pay the damages if the grain spoiled? "There won't be any damages," said John, and bought six rolls of tarpaper up at Meredith's hardware on King street east. With this he sheathed the dubious deck, and the grain stayed dry. Charlie Robinson gave him a gold watch for the profitable idea.

GRIST TO THE MILL

The G&W Christmas card called "Grist to the Mill, Toronto, Winter, 1835" calls up memories of Toronto's waterfront not as old as the centenarian windmill shown, but still of "respectable antiquity."

Governor Kidd, of the old jail at the foot of Berkeley street, which , Dickens described caustically, had a favorite pastime for prisoners, cutting a lane through the bay ice for his brother's topsail schooner Sophia, to get her to the open water at either Gap when March came around. The Sophia belonged to the early 1840's, and except that she was painted black could have served as the model for the topsail schooner unloading into the blue box sleigh in Rowley Murphy's careful drawing of old windmill in winter.

The Gooderham and Worts industry was the core and key to the eastern development for eighty or ninety years, and had a lasting effect upon the whole harbor.

Toronto Bay was a good natural haven but not a ready-made commercial port. Its high bank at the Front street grade was creased by creeks and fringed by a foreshore of sandpits and bulrush beds. Early wharf builders tried to tidy it up but the Don was always depositing more mud, and the lake was always pushing the Island, or as it was then known, The Peninsula, in on the harbor. The red brick windmill Gooderham and Worts built was a surveyor's stake to establish the limits of riparian rights. What was called the Windmill Line running from the windmill to the Queen's Wharf at the west end of the Bay, was taken as a base for harbor development. It roughly corresponds to the "mud-wall" or viaduct across the city front now.

The distillery was only one item in the G&W industry. They were the greatest grain buyers in the province and had flourishing mills in various places in old Ontario and especially in Toronto. The original red brick windmill was succeeded by a fine limestone mill and elevator. The former matched the waterfront jail in architecture and is still discernible, though high and dry inland, and hidden by the present viaduct. They established a sugar refinery at the foot of Princess street, west of the mill and distillery. At the foot of Berkeley street was Medlar and Arnot's shipyard, where the Gooderham yacht Aileen was built, and the second Oriole, and where the first Oriole was broken up.

The Gooderham family have been outstanding yachtsmen for four generations. Up to the 1900's the east end of the Bay in summertime was enlivened by the family fleet at moorings off the foot of Trinity street—Commodore George's Oriole, "Mr. Willie's" Aileen, George H.'s Vivia, and the steam yachts Abeona and Cleopatra, the latter a handsome steel sample of George Lennox Watson's skill from the Clyde. Every afternoon at 3 o'clock the Oriole's mainsail would rise and the Bobs, a little steam tender, would put off from the mill wharf to bring the owner and his guests for the day aboard.

The cutter Condor and Mr. J. J. Wright's steam yacht Electric, schooner rigged even to a square-sail, also used these moorings. The rest of the RCYC fleet then moored at the foot of Simcoe street.

Coghill's drydock was farther east, at the mouth of the Don, and near the cattle byres.

These were not all Gooderham enterprises, but they centered on the red brick windmill and its limestone successor. So, too, did the rows of neat one story houses for workmen, with mellow old Trinity Church at the top of the street, and the mellow old Gooderham homestead at the bottom, among the poplar trees and acacias, which flourished before the gas works withered them.

The old Gooderham and Worts mill at the beginning of the Windmill Line, 1835.