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292 The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord a line of American propellers (steamers driven by screws rather than paddle wheels) from Ogdensburg through the Welland Canal to the upper lakes.” Those boats did not require a special agent in Toronto, but from his Front Street office Wyatt was prepared to act as agent for the Ogdensburg line as well as the connecting Vermont Central Railroad.'* After Stevenson, the next major influence on Wyatt’s career was his father-in-law, Thomas D. Harris. By trade, Harris was a wholesale and retail hardware merchant, but his civic life led him to leadership in Toronto’s fire brigade, a succession of insurance companies, the Board of Trade, the Toronto Harbour Commission, and more. Wyatt’s wife, Elizabeth was the eldest daughter in a family of twelve.” Through the Harrises, father and daughter, Wyatt was introduced to significantly more of Toronto’s waterfront and business establishment. With the birth of his first child in the spring of 1856, Wyatt shifted his living quarters from the Wellington Hotel, a block or two from his offices, to a house on Mutual Street.”° In part, Wyatt’s business strategy became to collect more agencies. By far the most important of these was the Inman Line. Wyatt served as their Toronto agent for almost twenty years beginning in the spring of 1857, when it was still the Liverpool, Philadelphia and New York Screw Steamship Company.”’ His relentless advertising on their behalf in local papers, like the Globe, was a potential buffer against criticism for other activities, and greatly improved the chances that his name would be reported among those in a crowded meeting. A much briefer association was for the Vanderbilt lines, arranging travel from Toronto to New York to Nicaragua to California in 1858-59, with connections on to the British Columbia gold fields.” On Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence, he would serve as the Toronto agent for the Boston (1855-56), Bowmanville (1855-63), Mayflower (1854- "7 The relationship was initially contractual, but eventually the succeeding railroad took over the propeller line. Daily Democratic Press (Buffalo), 20 February 1855. William C. Pletz, “Rutland Railway Lake Steamers,” Inland Seas 21, no. 4 (Winter 1965): 277-87. 8 Brown's Toronto General Directory (Toronto: for W. R. Brown by MacLear & Co., 1856), lix. 19 “Harris, Thomas Dennie,” DCB, 10: 335-36, » ae 5 Toronto General Directory, 1856, 245. Caverhill’s Toronto City Directory, for 1859- (Toronto: W. C. F. Caverhill, 1859), 209. The Toronto directories chronicle his shifting tout the streets of Toronto. In 1862 his personal address was 28 Elm Street West; by 1864, 26 ‘Wellington West at the comer of Windsor, in 1868, Front Street West near Peter, 1872 at the corner of Brock and Wellington Place; in 1878 further up Brock. In 1880, his family settled at 256 Simcoe. The cynical might suspect that this only came about because after 1878 he was rarely in Toronto. 21 Globe, 28 April 1857, Globe, 8 September 1876. 2 Globe, 9 August 1858, 17 April 1859, 8 August 1859.