Island Ferries Once Rippled Bridge-Bound Don: Schooner Days DCCCLII (852)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE DON a navigable river?

Certainly, both in Europe and York County.

It didn't require the recent commendable enterprise of three YMCA-Don Conservation canoes last month to prove that.

Youngsters of the 1890's, when Toronto had a population of 150,000, will tell you how navigable the Don was, after—and even before—the Great Diversion.

The "diversion" gave us the long channel running south from about Winchester street bridge instead of the winding twists lined with marshes, through which the Don used to squirm in summer and flood in winter. The channel alleviated the annual invasion of the Don Flats by freshet ice, which used to be as bad as the Etobicoke display. The latter could be cured the same way.

HO FOR THE ISLAND!

When the survivors of the Gay Nineties were children they could go aboard the Island ferries Jessie L. McEdwards, Minnie Kidd and—or—perhaps the Ada Alice, at the Gerrard street bridge crossing the Don, and steam down the straightened river and turn into the bay at the cattle byres, pass the Gooderham mill and distillery, call at Sylvester's Wharf at the foot of Church street, and disembark there, or go on across the bay to Ward's Island, where "Little Eaton's," that is, the James Eaton Company, had established the summer camp Sans Souci.

Church st. was the principal ferry wharf in 1890-93, and for years afterwards an ornate ferry ticket booth stood on the west side of the slip, in the premises of the Ontario Coal Co. Brock street, lower Spadina avenue, was the next ferry wharf in importance. The original Mayflower, the double-ended ferry, not the pilgrim fathers' ship, plied from the foot of York street. She and her coadjutor, the Primrose, were too big for Church street slip if a schooner happened to be in, and there were usually three or four there for the Sylvester brethren.

The Minnie Kidd was the smallest of the ferries and could go under the Queen street and Gerrard streets bridges, and up to Winchester street. There was also a steam pleasure launch called the Victor May, which plied the Don, crewed by the owner's family of boys.

IN OLD BELT LINE DAYS

Use of the Don for transportation was a symptom of the growing pains and ambitions of a Toronto which had embarked upon an expansion policy, real estate boom, and the belt line steam railway, with a chain of suburban stations, in the late 1880s. Transportation was the supposed secret of population, and Toronto tried hard to secure both — even to the extent of commutation steamers on the river. There was also steamer service on a small scale to the Humber River, and to Victoria Park.

And commercial vessels used the river in those happy days.

We have seen somewhere a picture of schooners unloading at factory wharves in the vicinity of the Gerrard st. bridge, but have never seen the schooners themselves there. The Steambarge Gordon Jerry is reputed to have delivered cases of plate glass to the Canadian Plate and Window Glass Co. at 30 East Don roadway, or its predecessors in business on the Don. Another version hath it that the glass was for the Kemp tinware factory at Gerrard st. Both legends require explanation, for the Gordon Jerry had tall fixed masts, and could not negotiate the bridges. But the smaller steam barges May Bird and Honeydew, with telescoping masts and hinged funnels, could go wherever the ferries went, and did deliver general freight at the Gerrard st. landing. They also loaded fertilizer for fruit farms at Jordan and Aldershot for S. W. Marchment and other contractors, from the piggeries, cattle buyers, and stockyards on the Don's banks.

DRY DOCK AT MOUTH

Coghill's drydock in the marsh at the mouth of the Don, accommodated yachts and schooners, among the latter the large Gleneiffer, wrecked in 1889 and refloated, and the Flora Carveth, after getting off the beach at Whitby, in 1891.

The topsail schooner Erie Belle, with three yards cross her foremast, was laid up in the mouth of the Don in 1894 and the two-masted schooner Starling was burned there that same year.

Though the Don valley was lined a hundred years ago with the York Paper Mills, Eastwood & Co's, distillery and gristmill, Shepards axe-grinding machinery, Helliwell's brewery, and sawmills, carding mills, potasheries and flour mills, and the river was used as a navigable stream for another fifty years, its floating commerce never was great. It was embarrassed from the beginning by floods, fords, ferries, dams, fixed bridges, and marshes. There was a corduroy bridge across it by 1799, the year when the first recorded York built schooner was launched. This was the Toronto Yacht, and she was built in the Humber, not in the Don.

PRESIDENT'S SLAVES

That corduroy bridge and its successors discouraged masted traffic up the river Don, but the stream was used by flatboats and rowing craft from the earliest times. Governor Simcoe may have made his way to Castle Frank always by land, but after 1797 his successor, President Peter Russell, used boats and the Don to convey his preparations for government balls and such festivities thither from the old Houses of Parliament at the foot of Berkeley street. The preparations probably included his black slaves, Peggy and her son Jupiter, price $150 and $200 respectively, 25 per cent. off for cash, according to the Hon. Peter's dishonorable advertisement in the Gazette and Oracle in 1806. Vending human flesh by the pound or on the hoof, is revolting, whether by ghoul or governor.

BEER, PINE KNOTS, CABBAGES

Another early trafficker of the Don was Joseph Tyler, the ex-Continental soldier with the shock of white hair and beard who knew Washington by sight and lived in a dugout above the first Don bridge. He built a big canoe of two great pine logs, 40 feet long, that were cross-dovetailed together. His craft was large enough to carry twenty-two barrels of beer from Helliwell's brewery to the wharf at the foot of Sherbourne street, Dr. Scadding related, the barrels arranged in two rows, with enough space between for Joseph and his "hand" to walk fore-and-aft and ply their poles or paddles. When not brewery-trucking this Damsel of the Don used to bring carrots and cabbages to market from the Tyler garden, piled upon neatly arranged split pine knots, which found ready sale for jack-light fishing in the same river.

The Don was also used as far as the Forks by the Northwest Fur Company boat brigades, according to Dr. Scadding, being entered from the bay. This shortened the portage up Yonge street by which they were hauled by ox-teams to the Holland River. The patriots who defended York in 1813 used it to conceal the army bills and specie when the town was attacked by the Americans. And the boats of Commodore Chauncey's invading squadron toiled as far up as they could get ini search of the booty.

ONCE HEAD OF NAVIGATION - THE RIVER AT WINCHESTER BRIDGE

EASTERN AVENUE BRIDGES

BELOW EASTERN AVENUE

DOWN THE DON TODAY UNDER

GERRARD

DUNDAS

QUEEN

BRIDGES