One 24th of May: Schooner Days MCCXXI (1221)

by C. H. J. Snider

OH it was a great Twenty-fourth of May that year!

"The 24th of May's

The Queen's birthday,

If you don't give a holiday

We'll ALL run away!"

Johnny Williams, aged 9, had chanted that lustily the day before, in Norway school. Five days a week he walked to school through the bush, a mile from his log-built home in "the Kew," away out Queen street, east beyond the present Woodbine. Miles and miles from "the Market," at King and Jarvis streets, then the civic centre of 40,000-population Toronto, Queen City of the West.

No school for him this day. No, sir. This day he was to ship in the Rover!

"The Kew" where the Williamses lived — and still live — was at this time "21 acres more or less" of standing and fallen timber, marsh, sand, and good market garden soil. Joseph Williams, time-expired color sergeant of Her Majesty's 100th Regiment, England's garrison for Fort York, was a sailor of sound vision, with a passion for old London where he was born. When his army time was up he bought this rough waste land and patiently developed it as an amusement park, relatively as far on the outskirts of the Canada West city as his remembered Kew Gardens were from London. His vision was fulfilled in Kew Beach, a choice residential section highly profitable to his heirs.

On May 24th, 1866, this was all much in the future. Just then a living had to be made for a family of six children. The soil provided some of it, the lake the rest. Joseph Williams had bought the stonehooker Rover in Port Credit.

Early that morning Little Jack and his big brother Joe, aged 15, went down to the beach and got the Williams' skiff into the water and began rowing towards Brown's wood-wharf at the foot of Scott street in Toronto. At dawn father had put Old Sam into the shafts of the light wagon and driven the long sandy Queen Street trail into the city with Tommy, the in-between brother. The four joined forces at the city wood-wharf and loaded the wagon with sails and gear, while city folks were having breakfast. The rowers continued up Toronto harbor, out into the lake and across Humber Bay.

And did they have blisters on fists and bottoms after four hours' pulling. Glad both were to cross the Dutchman's Bar and draw the skiff up on Van Every's Point, or Two Tree Point as it was later called, on the far side of Humber Bay. Van Every and the Two Trees and both names and the point itself have all vanished under the tide of urban expansion, but it was a fairyland then, with a wreck on the shore, and a queer duck-foot paddle boat begun by the Dutchman in the little runway on his farm.

Old Sam soon hove in sight, plodding down the dirt lane, for Father and Tommy had steered him and his load through the city to the Parkdale dugway, and down to Sunnyside. There long-drawn Queen street reappeared as the Lake Shore road, following the lovely natural crescent of Humber Bay, shaded by budding Balm-o'-Gileads. Over the old wooden Humber swing bridge they had rumbled and jolted, and so down to the trysting place on the point.

CHANGE OARS!

Here was a turnabout, Father and Tommy took the skiff for the six-mile pull along the shore to Port Credit, and Joe Jr. and Jack stiffly mounted to the driver's seat of the wagon, after Old Sam's head had been turned again for the gravel road. Along its undulations they creaked past farms and wood lots to the steep winding descent to the Etobicoke, one of the most ancient landmarks in the province, and up the far-side slope to the level which brought them, rested but thirsty, to the Credit.

A lovely haven was Port Credit then, as remote from Toronto as if on the other side of Lake Ontario. Everything was very green this 24th of May, as the boys came in, all green and gold. The 1866 model frogs were singing amid the fresh butter of the new-minted marsh marigolds in the low places. The big cottonwood landmark tree on the east side of the harbor was ablaze with new tassels.

Budding leaves of the hardwoods in the crowding remains of the primeval forest around had hidden the funereal plumes of the pines and firs.

Above the unpainted fences of the village gardens, lilacs and snowballs made splashes of white and mauve, apple blossoms were out, and the lordly rhubarb reared his yellow-white spire above emerald elephant ears, glossy on crimson stalks. Roosters crowed, and hens clucked to chicks, turkeys gobbled, guineas whimpered, dogs barked. - The Canada bird called "CANada - CANada - CANada - CANada - CANada!" in its five-barred 'trill, though Confederation was still a year and a month and a week to come. Spring was spring in country villages 90 years ago.

Dust trailed the light wagon down to its moorings by the little wooden bridge. Here Joe Jr. brought Old Sam up all standing (no objection on Sam's side) for they were abreast of a bare-sparred, flat sided, square-ended craft that looked as though she had been left behind in the spring out-fitting.

"Here we are, " said Joe. "Out you get, Jack."

"In good time, too," came from a perspiring Joseph Sr., as he thrust his sunburned face above the craft's farther rail. "Almost a dead heat!" The skiff had arrived from Two Tree Point as quickly as Old Sam.

"My Dad" said little Johnny as he strutted the littered deck, ignoring alike splinters in his bare feet, and the water he could see in her hold from last winter's ice. "My, Dad, she's a big one! She's certainly a big one!"

"Get yourself a bite to eat from the basket, you and Joe," said his father briskly. "Then Joe'll help Tom and me finish fitting her out, and you'll start back with the horse, and be sure you're home before dark!"

This rather dashed Johnny's enthusiasm over the "big one," for he thought they might sail back, horse, wagon and all. But he had mastered the sailor's first rule, obedience. Soon he began the long drive home, alone. He had lots of adventures between this 40-ton "big one" and the 10,000-ton steamers he commanded fifty years later.