Ghost Went West and Left a Trail: Schooner Days DCCCLXX (870)

by C. H. J. Snider

Sir—Many thanks for the excellent articles in "Schooner Days." These are a week-end "must," and even to a complete landlubber are easily the best continued series in any daily newspaper I know.

Could you give me an item of information? I have in my possession an old snapshot given to me by a friend, Mr. H. W. Barker, MacLean avenue, Toronto. It was taken over 50 years ago and shows the bow of an old ship that lay high and dry on the shore of what used to be Victoria Park near the end of the present Queen street east car line. This used to be a great attraction to the innumerable youngsters who used to go there to Sunday school picnics. Can you tell us through your column something about it, its name, how it came there, and what happened to it?

Many thanks, and may your Schooner column long continue to interest your readers.

CURIOUS.

Main street east, Hamilton.

THANKS, Mr. Curious, and since you have enclosed your reverend name and address, and not for publication, you shall have your answer. It was given before you asked the question, in Schooner Days, No. DLIII., Sept. 5, 1942, "Ghost Goes West."

The bow of the old ship at old Victoria Park would be that of the W. T. Robb. She was a timber tug, and did her share in repelling the Fenian Raiders in 1866 by carrying volunteers and munitions to the Battle of Ridgeway. Aged and out of service by 1891 she was beached at Victoria Park to protect the wharf which Ald. Tom Davies had built when the park was being developed as a place of amusement. Two steamers, the Chicoutimi and J. W. Steinhoff, ran to it daily from the foot of York street, at "25 cents return, children 15 cents." They were aided and abetted by other steamers occasionally, the A. J. Tymon, C. H. Merritt, and so on. The only other ways to get to Victoria Park was by shanks' mare or the surrey with the fringe on top, for the street car line ended at the Kingston road and a mile of sandy beach and marshy ponds intervened between the Woodbine and the park.

The gutted hull of the Robb lay on the east side of the wharf and, bedded firmly in the gravel which formed around her, never budged when the seas of an east blow rolled in. The excursion steamers berthed on the west side, where the water was deep enough, and there was shelter even from moderate southwesters, because the seas were broken by the outlying sandbars to a certain extent. The traffic did not last long, but a good time was had by all while it did. There was an "observatory" in the park, a wooden tower of bird-cage aspect in which all the population between the Humber and the Don immortalized their names with lead pencil or jackknife.

You could also buy ice cream at the park in small tin saucerettes the size of a real penny, not the U.S. substitute, which is only a halfpenny and properly called a cent; but one cent was the price of a dish of this ice cream, vanilla (white) or strawberry (pink). You had to consume it on the premises (which were the open air) and hand the little tin saucer back to the Italian with the wheelbarrow and moustaches to match, so that he could rinse it in the standing bucket of water and fill it for the next customer.

Mother didn't approve of our patronizing the rolling ice cream stand, but it tasted all right. Hot dogs hadn't been invented. The only other edibles vended were popcorn and peanuts and—

"Lemon aid

In the shade

Ice cold.

Stirred with a spade."

It was so called perhaps because it aided the popcorn to fill you when you drank it, but where the lemon came in eyes could not see, hands could not feel and tongue could not taste.

There were canoes and rowboats to hire, donkeys to ride, and swings, and a merry-go-round without music, as far as can be remembered. The amusement park wasn't so very amusing, in those fin-de-siecle 90's. By the time the new century was in the old park was out, or pretty well so. It was succeeded by Munro Park adjoining, a jazzier form of enjoyment provided by the benevolent Toronto Railway Company, which craved custom for its far flung T-rails. They had crept so far towards the Near East, sped by hearty kicks and pushes of citizens who wanted service and slowed down by squabbles over the city and township rights-of-way.

NOT ALL S. S. PICNICS

The most exciting thing that ever happened at Victoria Park was the battle Slabsy put up when some county constable or flycop tried to take him from his girl.

Alas poor Slabsy! We knew him well, Horatio. At his worst more sinned against than sinning, and at his best as honest an Irish lad as you would find in a day's march along the old Esplanade, with pluck enough to dive out over the railway track from the roof of the old Northern elevator, 70 feet above the water. He had brains and brawn enough, too, to rescue three from an upset canoe. He took a girl on each arm and their escort in his mouth. He sunk his teeth into the fellow's shirt collar, and, floating on his back, kicked himself and the party to shore. Then he kicked the escort farther up the street for taking such poor care of his charges.

When Slabsy was little, the brats roosting around lower Bathurst street had bullied him because he was so placid. He actually turned the other cheek when smitten.

"That's all right for wan time," the student priest of St. Mary's said, "and maybe for two, but the next time—hit first."

"Hit first, father?" asked Slabsy, his gentian blue eyes wide open in amaze.

"Yis," said his junior reverence who afterwards became Monsignor McCann, "you should learn your own strength, me b'y."

The next time came right soon, and the young cub on the receiving end landed the other side of the car-tracks and kept on going. Slabsy continued inoffensive and non-quarrelsome, but the King street dudes and dead game sports of the 90s got him into battles-royal and liquor—and you can guess the rest.

Those battles-royal were gruesome things in the poverty stricken life of the old Esplanade. When King Street Clubland, with its waxed moustaches, couldn't find a dog fight or a cocking main, half a dozen young fellows, handy with their fists, would be rounded up aboard some anchored schooner or in a waterfront shed, or back of a brewery, by the inducement of a keg of beer or perhaps a $1 purse, for a night's mill. A ring would be formed by the Inner circle called mobbers. The paying patrons stood on chairs behind them. It was the mobbers' duty to push back into the fray any of the six gladiators who lacked interest in the proceedings. The six fought with feet, fists, fingers and teeth, all against one and one against all and devil take the hinder-most. They fought till five had been kicked, battered, pummeled, gouged, chewed or strangled into unconsciousness. It was the survivor's duty to restore to a semblance of vitality the last man he had vanquished, and he had to do this before he got the beer or the buck or whatever the gory prize was.

PARK'S BIG MOMENT

This time at Victoria Park Slabsy laid out the law in windrows until maneuvered aboard the steamer Steinhoff and frapped with hawsers and packed off for the distant city like a parceled chicken. When he came to, the steamer was a mile offshore and two miles from the Eastern Gap. Slabsy unwound himself like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, and leapt overboard. The park boat reported him drowned while escaping custody, but some hours after that entry on the police blotter Slabsy hauled himself out on the clean dry sand at the Eastern Gap and laid him down in the sun to sleep off the weariness of a super-battle-royal followed by a three-mile swim. It was dark when he awoke, which was what he wanted, for he was afraid to go home in daylight, because he had an idea the cops might be after him still. He had no money for the island ferry, and besides, he might attract attention. So he slipped into the water again and swam another long mile across Toronto Bay to the old Queen's Wharf at the foot of Bathurst st. When the police notified his next of kin of his untimely demise Slabsy shouted from upstairs that that was all right, and no hard feelin's and the police let bygones be bygones.

TRAVELLING SKELETON

The old Robb stared solemnly at the amusement centre as long as the excursion steamers ran, and until the last hurdy-gurdy was heard no more. The abandoned park or parks were cut up into building lots as the Kew and Balmy Beaches were built up. The old wreck and the old wharf fell apart (what of them had not already gone up in corn roasts and bonfires) and disappeared in the gravel. By the time the new waterworks plant was built only a few ribs and nubs of timbers remained.

But pounding seas from the eastward battered all the harder along the new concrete-bound shoreline and the ghost or skeleton of the Robb edged westward year by year for a mile. Last time we saw any of it it had moved up abreast of the Balm Beach clubhouse. It may be there yet, concealed by the high water which came in 1943 and is still with us but now on the ebb.

THE ROBB IN 1864

'LEAVE THE POOR OLD STRANDED WRECK AND PULL FOR THE SHORE'