Canadian Cities
of Romance

XI. London—The ForestCity

     At the beginning of the last century much of the population of south-west Ontario centred around Long Point, an old settlement in the country of Norfolk whose judicial seat was Vittoria. The trend of emigration was, however, turning westward. So Vittoria’s power waned, and, accident or Providence removing the courthouse by fire in 1825, there was definite thought of a new centre.
     Colonel Thomas Talbot, whose settlement of seventy thousand acres lay in a lovely region between Lake Erie and the river Thames, pressed for St. Thomas, named for him, which he characteristically called “my capital”, and he even selected the site for a courthouse.
     But long before this, Governor Simcoe, in one of his western tours, had observed that a certain tract of country at the forks of the Thames was one of the finest in North America for agricultural purposes. He was struck by its central position, between Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario, and not too close to the frontier. He even suggested it as suitable for the capital of Upper Canada, and so named the tiny settlement, New London. [page 151] The first surveys were made in 1826, though it was several years later that it had its own municipal government. To its name was added the qualification, “Forest City.”
     But the first impartial visitor to the new village, seeing crude streets, wide but encumbered with decaying logs, black stumps and fragments of broken trees, might have renamed it the city that killed the forest. For it was the chief ambition of the first settlers in Upper Canada—that chaotic bushland—somehow to kill the forest. The forest was their natural enemy—a vast innumerable army of trees which enveloped the whole land, trod it down, hid it, would have buried it if possible. At first sight motionless, the march of the forest was as steady and inevitable as the surge of the sea. In summer it went forward, sending out a great advance-guard of seedlings and young trees. Winter was its ebb tide of frost and snow.
     To the Indians there was cosmic force in the forest. It lived exceedingly to them. During the cold there was a mesmeric glitter, through which vast blue spaces seemed to open before their eyes. In summer the thick dark arches were carpeted by undergrowth, interlaced with brilliant flowers. The swamps were alive with butterflies and ferns, and jewel-eyed snakes, and [page 152] peopled, to the savage mind, with powers more kingly than themselves.
     But in the march of trees the settlers saw only a sinister enemy, and with puny weapons and painful labour they laid their enemy waste as best they could.
     Every settlement that emerged from the trees was decorated with the dead bodies of the slain. There was satisfaction, even a certain triumph, in letting these bodies lie and rot in the sun.
     So, accounts of the Forest City, during the first few years of its existence, are mainly comments upon new streets, rough roads, low wooden buildings—and stumps.
     We are told that many of the roadways lacked pavement or sidewalk, and the stumps remained to obstruct the passage after dark. Street lamps there were none, and the only light when there was no moon came from the windows of small houses, stores and taverns.
     Those who journeyed at night used round tin lanterns, with holes cut in flowery patterns on the sides, and a tallow-dip dimly burning within.
     But the new village was connected with the neighboring country by two bridges. And these were named Westminster and Blackfriars.
     New London was destined to swift growth. Anna Jameson, the English writer and critic, wife of the first [page 153] Vice-Chancellor of the province, in a picturesque, if painful, journey by wagon over the corduroy roads, says of the village of 1837:
     “In size and population it exceeds every town I [page 154] have yet visited, except Toronto and Hamilton….The population may be about thirteen hundred. The jail and courthouse, comprised in one large and stately edifice, seemed the glory of the townspeople. As for the style of the architecture, I may not attempt to name or describe it: but a gentleman informed me, in rather equivocal phrase, that is was “somewhat gothic”. The population consists principally of artisans; blacksmiths, carpenters, builders, all flourishing. I have seen nowhere such signs of progress and prosperity….But though the people have work they have neither education or amusements. Here as everywhere else I find the women of the better class lamenting over the want of all society, except of the lowest grade in manners and morals.”
     Education and even social intercourse were, however, on the way. The close of the rebellion of ’37 saw the beginning of a new era. The village became a garrison town, and the chief impetus to the growth of the settlement came when the government appropriated the then large sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the erection of a barracks. Shortly after this period says Dr. C. T. Campbell, the local historian, “scarlet was undoubtedly the favourite colour.” And Miss K. M. Lizars has found a jingling ode, written by [page 155] an officer of this time, in which a young lady is supposed to have proclaimed the joys of London society:

Sing the delights of London society,
     Epaulette, sabretache, sword-knot and plume;
Always, enchanting, yet knows no variety—
     Scarlet alone can embellish a room.
While spurs are clattering,
Flirting and chattering,
     Bend the proud heroes that fight for the crown;
Dancing cotillions,
Cutting civilians.
     These are the joys of a garrison town.

     No one can write candidly of these days and omit a distinguishing feature of the countryside—its taverns.
     There were two or three taverns at every crossroad, and when a settlement came there was at least one in each block. It is a matter of history that on the Goderich road, for instance, there were, in 1840, just forty taverns scattered along its sixty-five miles.
     Over the rough heartbreaking roads swung the comforting signs. The pole, like a beacon-signal stood high. On its top was a frame four or five feet square, and beside the frame, ,swinging from the upper bar, the sign of a special device illustrating the name of the establishment.
     There was the Hope Hotel, on the corner of Talbot and Dundas Streets, with its graceful figure resting against an anchor and gazing eagerly into far-off space. [page 156] The Rob Roy, on Dundas and Richmond Streets, with the kilted highlander. The Prince of Orange, on Dundas and Clarence, with the figure of that noted gentleman on his white horse, his sword pointing out the fleeing Jacobites.
     And here at odd hours of morning, noon and night, the men of the district drank no more, and certainly no less, than their contemporaries of England or the United States.
     That amazing imperialist, Colonel Talbot, in a speech which crowned his career, delivered at a great political meeting called in St. Thomas at the King’s Arms on St. George’s Day, 1832, when Canadian liberals were advocating not only a new policy but worse that that, the temperance question, began characteristically with “Silence and Attention”, and went on to declare that these radicals had “commenced their work of darkness under cover of organized damned cold water drinking societies.” His exhortation met with the enthusiastic approval of the populace. A fanfare of drums, torchlights, and songs of victory followed the magnificent Colonel home to Port Talbot.
     Notwithstanding an alcoholic tendency on the part of most Ontario settlers of this time, education of the young was not entirely neglected. Trust hard-working nonconformist Scottish immigrants for that! [page 157] There were at first no free Public Schools, but a Government Grammar school was held in the frame building that served as the first courthouse. Also several private schools sprang up, with dominees that were sometimes more, and sometimes less, scholarly. Of the former type a notable example was William Taylor from Trinity College, Dublin, a well-known educationist, who always wore his hat in class and was a perfect master of the tawse. In 1848 a school board was established and the village took up the work of education.
     By this time also the fast settling country was beginning to reap the rewards of its agricultural wealth. Civic industries were being established, and according to Sir Richard Bonnycastle, a distinguished traveler who wrote a book on “Canada and the Canadians”, published in England in 1849: “London has become (after a recent fire which burned away many small wooden houses) a perfectly new city, with brick structures rising rapidly, and a splendid hotel where I see, mirable dictum, that fresh lobsters and oysters are advertised for every day in the season. These come from the Atlantic coast of the United States. But what will not steam and railroads do!”
     But more important than public buildings is the founding of houses that are built by established families [page 158] who tradition implies loyalty to the place that they have chosen as a permanent abode. This little town, slowly rising out of the forest, did not lack such families, and it comes to pass that in some cases their descendents live today in homesteads that are nearly as old as London itself.
     In point of age comes Eldon House, which was founded in 1835 by John Harris, and stands amid its lawns and gardens unchanged through one of the most changeful eras in human history.
     A significant page in Canada’s early story is, indeed, that of her well-known houses. After all, we are British, and always, the politics, statesmanship, agreements, and disagreements of Great Britain and her colonies have been interwoven with the social fabric. Tea-tables have played a distinct part in the life of important houses—though not of unimportant ones. And beauty has always played its part.
     So that all through early Canada—that vast, cruel Empire of scattered souls whose small settlements arose with valour out of the bright forests of the Summer, out of the terrible frozen wastes of Winter—in each settlement there were one or two houses planned by French or English families to become their settled abiding place. They contained an echo of old culture [page 159] adapted, more or less skilfully, to the sharper needs of the new world.
     These houses formed a social and political chain from one end of Canada to the other. Halifax, St. John, Fredericton, Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto—at each place were these hospitable centres, where distinguished guests were entertained as a matter of course, where affairs were discussed, careers created, and movements forwarded.
     John Harris, builder of Eldon House, on Ridout Street, ,and grandfather of the present owner, Ronald Harris, was a British naval officer, who came from England with the Bayfield Survey, and while stationed at Lake Erie, married a daughter of Colonel Samuel R. Ryerse for whom the settlement was named. She became the first mistress of Eldon House, a place of considerable dimensions which old documents describe as “a handsome price of ground highly elevated above the banks of the River Thames.” The diary of her daughter, Charlotte Harris, contains an intimate and delightful picture not only of a beautiful colonial mansion but of nearly all the makers of history of the Ontario of her day.
     The house is rambling, roomy, irregular. It is set in a great expanse of wooded ground which is terraced down to the river, and the river meadow has now been [page 160] utilized for a perennial garden, a swimming pool and tennis courts. A sleepy little stream, one of the many tiny inlets of the Thames, separates this part of the estate from the truck farm and kitchen gardens beyond. Eldon House, overlooking it all, is surrounded on its own level by sward and gardens leading one into another, like outdoor rooms.
     Packed with the treasures of three generations the interior of the house appears, for all its serenity, as full [page 161] of life as the century-old rose tree that blooms with firm determination under the drawingroom window.
     The story of the rose tree is the story of the house, for when Amelia Harris left Port Ryerse with her young children for the new home which her husband had just built, she brought, by wagon through the forest, furniture and family heirlooms, old silver, and a magnificent grandfather’s clock bearing the Ryerse crest, and these things were packed into a huge “traveling cart.” Then, not satisfied, she turned back to possess herself of a little rose tree from the garden. She and her children have departed now, but the clock ticks on in the shadowy hall and the rose tree in the sunny garden sends out a hundred pink blossoms every year.
     Thornwood is another historic house, built nearly two decades later, and connected in history and friendship with Eldon House. Its original site was bought in 1845 and the present house was built in 1852, the residence of H. C. R. Becher, Esq. He was the legal adviser and the intimate friend of Colonel Talbot, and on the walls of the drawingroom hang a well-known portrait of the Colonel, and a rare water colour of the interior of the Castle of Malahide at Port Talbot. The library contains old documents and books, old pictures, autographs of famous persons, among them a letter from Thackeray who had been a guest at Thronwood. [page 162]
     The immense gardens, which, like those of Eldon House, face the river, are surrounded by a beautiful and uniqe twig fence of great height which recalls in contour the pictures of ancient Canadian palisades. Behind the fence is a fine avenue of pines forming a walk around the grounds. From the rose garden one sees, across the wooded meadows, the Gothic tower of the new University of Western Ontario.
     On Ridout Street South stands Beechwood, another notable old house, the residence of Colonel W.M. Garshore. And here some of the ancient kings of the forest who escaped slaughter have found refuge. In the avenue, and to the left of the lovely old house are huge beech trees, one of which is two centuries old, Beneath its boughs one could almost build a modern bungalow.
     The grey stone tower of the main building of the new University is as beautiful on nearer view as it seems when softly framed by the foliage of Thornwood.
     Just beyond the northern limits of the city stretches a great campus, approached by a fine bridge which crosses the north branch of the Thames. The Arts Building contains the library, also an Auditorium and class rooms. This library possesses an unusually fine collection of Canadiana, also books relating to Shakespeare, forty thousand volumes in all, presented by the [page 163] late John Davis Barnett of Stratford. This and the building of Natural Sciences are only a beginning. The architect, whose treatment, in Collegiate Gothic, of the first buildings has proved so effective, has laid out a scheme for the relative location of all the buildings that will be required by the University for the next two centuries.
     The University of Western Ontario was founded and grew out of the educational interests of the Huron College of Theology, and also out of the medical needs of a fast-growing district. In 1908 it received new impetus with an Arts Faculty entirely undenominational. Then came the Institute of Public Health, built, equipped and provided with an annual grant by the Province of Ontario.
     To meet the medical needs of these Western counties impressive work has been done. No on can visit the Queen Alexandria Sanitarium for tuberculosis without realizing the perfect equipment which, as fully as his remarkable work in the development of Hydro-Electric, is a lasting monument to the genius and generosity of Sir Adam Beck.
     Victoria Hospital, the Institute of Public Health, the Sick Children’s Hospital—erected as a memorial by the Daughters of the Empire—the Nurses’ Residence, and the Medical School make an imposing pile. As [page 165] one walks through the various buildings they seem to be growing before one’s eyes. To the Nurses’ Residence Colonel Gartshore is adding a new wing. His splendid operating rooms have lately been installed in the main building of Victoria. Everywhere there is promise of greater usefulness. The Hospital, like the beautiful University, is still in the making.
     As to the industrial life of London, a complete story might be written of it. Here manufacturing on an extensive scale exists, though it does not permeate the city. Some of its largest concerns are long established, though the 90’s saw a great advance in their output. Many others have arisen during the past fifteen years.
     Of the University of Western Ontario Professor W. F. Tamblyn of the Department of English, says: “Its story is hardly one of past and present, but rather of present and more especially of future. Not of antiquity but of coming glory.”
     With that saying, so redolent of youth, one leaves this creative city which lies now as though its park lands and gardens had always been under cultivation—fully emerged, I can assure you, from out the forest. [page 166]

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