When Northern Lights Filled Toronto's Winter Nights
Plus, will Old City Hall become a Museum of Toronto? And more...
It was five days before Christmas when one of the most famous women in Britain arrived in Toronto. Anna Jameson was a successful author, feminist and world traveller who just happened to be married to the top lawyer in our city. Toronto was still a remote frontier town back in 1836, only a few decades old. Jameson was among the most distinguished visitors ever to set foot in its streets. So, you might think her arrival was cause for celebration, a big warm welcome. But what she found here instead was quite the opposite.
For one thing, she didn’t actually like her husband. Robert Jameson was the Attorney-General, the guy Jameson Avenue is named after. But they’d been apart for years, and they preferred it that way. Robert hadn’t even picked her up in New York like he’d promised, leaving her to disembark from her ocean voyage and make her way north by herself. It was a punishing journey through the sleet and snow of upstate New York. It took a week to reach Niagara; she barely managed to catch the last steamship across Lake Ontario before the water froze over for the winter. And things didn’t improve when she finally reached her destination.
Her ship steamed into Toronto Bay on a miserably grey winter day. The boat’s arrival was unscheduled, so the wharf was deserted. There was no warm welcome. Jameson was met by nothing but the frigid embrace of a Torontonian winter.
As I stepped out of the boat, I sank ankle-deep into mud and ice. The day was intensely cold and damp; the sky lowered sulkily, laden by snow which was just beginning to fall. Half-blinded by the sleet driven into my face and the tears which filled my eyes, I walked about a mile through a quarter of the town mean in appearance, not thickly inhabited and to me, as yet, an unknown wilderness … and now, by reason of the impending snow-storm, nearly solitary. I heard no voices, no quick footsteps of men or children; I met no familiar face, no look of welcome. I was sad at heart as a woman could be, — and these were the impressions, the feelings, with which I entered the house which was to be called my home!
[The house] has the advantage of commanding one of the principal roads entering the town and a glimpse of the bay, — but at present all objects wear one hue. Land is not distinguishable from water. I see nothing but snow heaped up against my windows, not only without but within; I hear no sound but the tinkling of sleigh-bells and the occasional lowing of a poor half-starved cow, that, standing up to the knees in a snow-drift, presents herself at the door of a wretched little shanty opposite, and supplicates for her small modicum of hay. […]
What Toronto may be in summer, I cannot tell; they say it is a pretty place. At present its appearance to me, a stranger, is most strangely mean and melancholy. A little ill-built town, on low land, at the bottom of a frozen bay, with one very ugly church, without tower or steeple; some government offices, built of staring red brick, in the most tasteless, vulgar style imaginable; three feet of snow all around; and the grey, sullen, wintry lake, and the dark gloom of the pine forest bounding the prospect: such seems Toronto to me now. I did not expect much; but for this I was not prepared.
She spent most of the winter making similarly forlorn entries in her diary. One night, she writes that the ink is freezing in her pen and her fingers are growing stiff with cold. By morning, even her fireplace is a block of ice. Words like “dreary” and “monotonous” and “desolation” keep coming up. She would later refer to “the relentless iron winter” and wish, like so many Torontonians after her, that she could just skip the season by hibernating like a bear.
But in some ways, winter is when Toronto and the surrounding countryside came alive. Roads that had been treacherously muddy during the summer were now frozen solid and blanketed by snow, making travel much easier. As I wrote in The Toronto Book of Love, “With the harvest done for the year and the frigid nights getting longer, settlers were free to spend more of their time having fun. They headed out in their sleighs to visit family and friends, threw parties and dances, drank and laughed and sang until the spring came, the snow melted away, and the roads become nearly impassable once again.”
Then, there were the skies.
Toronto was still a very small city. There were only about 10,000 people living here. And since the first electric lights were still decades away, light pollution wasn’t anything like it is today. That meant on some winter evenings, those special nights when the Sun sends a stream of energized particles into the upper reaches of our planet’s atmosphere, Torontonians could still bear witness to the resulting spectacle.
Two centuries ago, the northern lights were a common sight in the skies above our city. Anna Jameson wrote about what she saw one evening toward the end of March:
The Aurora Borealis is of almost nightly occurrence, but this evening it has been more than usually resplendent; radiating up from the north, and spreading to the east and west in form like a fan, the lower point of a pale white, then yellow, amber, orange, successively, and the extremities of a glowing crimson, intense, yet most delicate, like the heart of an unblown rose. It shifted its form and hue at every moment, flashing and waving like a banner in the breeze; and through this portentous veil, transparent as light itself, the stars shone out with a calm and steady brightness [...] It is most awfully beautiful! I have been standing at my window watching its evolutions, till it is no longer night, but morning.
Spring was on the way. And as the icy grip of winter loosened, the author found herself enjoying Toronto much more. She made dear friends here and fell deeply in love with the lake, spending long hours watching the colours play across the water.
She wasn’t here long, though. After spending the summer travelling through Upper Canada, she headed home, leaving her husband behind for good. They’d reached an official separation agreement. She soon published an account of her time here: Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. It opens with her miserable arrival in Toronto on that grey December day.
The damp little frontier town she found here would continue growing, of course. Soon, there would be hundreds of thousands of people living in Toronto, then millions. The first 100 streetlamps were erected a few years after Jameson’s visit, only lit on the darkest nights. But they were quickly joined by countless more. Our city has become a shining beacon, and in the process our view of the night sky has faded. Today, it’s only on some rare nights — and only if you’re very, very lucky — that you might be able to spot the aurora on the outskirts of the GTA. But in the centre of Toronto, where our lights burn bright even in the middle of the night, it sadly seems as if sightings like Anna Jameson’s might be a thing of the past.
NEXT WEEKEND…
A TORONTO CHRISTMAS HISTORY TOUR!
One last reminder that I’m offering a new walking tour this upcoming weekend! Together, we’ll explore the history of Christmas in Toronto, uncovering yuletide tales of love, war, celebration and scandal. From Christmas trees and window displays to holiday parties and parades…
I’m planning to offer the tour twice:
Saturday December 17 — 3pm
Sunday December 18 — 3pm
We’ll meet outside Old City Hall. The tour will last about an hour and a half and finish basically right back where we started.
Pay what you can.
WILL OLD CITY HALL BECOME THE MUSEUM OF TORONTO
Daniel Rotsztain recently ventured inside Old City Hall to do a bit of exploring — and he suggests you do the same. Originally opened in 1899, the grand old building at Queen & Bay spent decades as the seat of power for Toronto’s municipal government before our new City Hall opened in 1965. It’s currently being used as a courthouse, which means you can walk right in and take a look around yourself (after a security check). But the courts are moving next year, and the building’s future remains unclear — so this could very well be your last chance to see it as it is…
As Daniel points out, one possible plan for Old City Hall is to turn it into a Toronto Museum. The idea has been discussed for years, seems to have some serious support, and as Shawn Micallef pointed out in reply, there are a TON of fascinating historical artifacts in storage. It would be wonderful to finally have a central location where they could be put on public display…
From what I’ve been told, turning an old building into a museum is quite a costly idea, potentially even more expensive than just building a whole new building — since it would require an extensive retrofit in order to protect the precious artifacts on display. But placing a roof over the courtyard seems like a potentially more cost-effective solution:
You can check out Daniel’s full thread by clicking on the tweets above, where you’ll find more photos and lots of interesting replies, including a link to a report from Toronto Metropolitan University that looked at “possible future uses for Toronto’s iconic Old City Hall… intend[ing] to spark creative thinking and inspire a public discussion.”
GIVE THE GIFT OF TORONTO HISTORY — WITH AN ONLINE COURSE!
Looking for a unique gift for a Toronto lover in your life? I thought you might be! So, now you can give them the gift of an online Toronto history course.
You can give any one of my four- or five-week courses for $75. They cover everything from the city’s most notorious murders, to the history of baseball, booze, the supernatural and the gross. You can pick the course you want to give, or let the recipient choose the one they’re most interested in themselves. (In which case they’ll also be able to pick from any of the new four- or five-week courses I create next year.)
All courses will be offered in 2023. And while the exact dates are TBD, all the lectures are recorded and posted to a private YouTube page — so even if they end up having a conflict, they can watch them whenever they like.
My big overview of the entire history of the city, From Hogtown To Downtown: A History of Toronto in 10 Weeks, is also available.
And if you’re a paid subscriber to this newsletter, you’ll get 10% off any course you give!
And if you’d like to get that 10% discount — or simply ensure The Toronto History Weekly will be able to survive into the future — you can switch to a paid subscription by clicking the button below. Only about 5% of readers have made the switch so far, which basically means that by offering a few dollars a month you’ll be giving the gift of Toronto history to 20 other people:
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
HANGING NEWS — It was on this day in 1962 that Canada’s last executions were carried out. Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin were hanged at the Don Jail in a gruesome scene that left a priest splattered with blood. In the decades since, many have wondered whether Lucas was even guilty of the crime for which he was killed. As Lorna Poplak writes for TVO, that’s largely thanks to a determined journalist, Betty Lee, who published a six-part series in The Globe & Mail, raising disturbing questions about the case. Read more.
GOD BEHIND BARS NEWS — One of the most fascinating historical buildings in the west end is the old prison chapel in Liberty Village. Its the only surviving piece of the Toronto Central Prison which used to stand on Liberty Street (and is thought to have given the street and neighbourhood their names, since the road is where freshly released prisoners took their first steps in freedom). The future of the chapel has been up in the air for a while, but now it looks like a plan is actually moving forward. It is slated to become an art gallery. Read more.
PHANTOM NEWS — The double-decker Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre has been standing on Yonge Street since 1913. It was originally built as a showcase for vaudeville performers and silent movies, with the Elgin known as the Loew's Yonge Street Theatre. And now that history will have a more prominent place in the streetscape. The old Loew’s Theatre ghost sign, which had almost completed faded, is being restored.
CHECKER BOARD FLOOR NEWS — The Horseshoe Tavern is celebrating its 75th birthday this week. David McPherson, who literally wrote the book about the legendary music venue, dives in its history over at TVO. From how the bar began (taking over an old Victorian blacksmith shop), to its ever-changing clientele (everyone from 1940s gangster to 1970s punks), to the legends who’ve taken its stage (like Stompin’ Tom, The Rolling Stones and Green Day). Read more.
GREENBELT NEWS — Meanwhile, also at TVO, Jamie Bradburn looks back two decades to the birth of the Greenbelt… and who opposed it. Surprise! The critics included John Tory and at least one of the developers set to make a fortune after buying up protected land just before Doug Ford announced it was no longer going to be protected. Read more.
SECRET MAIL NEWS — When a piece of mail slipped between the floorboards of a home on Euclid Avenue, the family who lives there discovered a treasure trove of lost letters stretching back 70 years. Read more.
SIMIAN FASHION NEWS — It’s been ten years since the sage of the Ikea monkey. Isabelle Docto checks in with him at the sanctuary where he now lives. Read more.
FLAMING LEGISLATURE NEWS — Queen’s Park’s provincial parliament building is 130 years old. And it’s in dire needs of repairs. A new report calls on those renovations to be carried out urgently, a project that looks like it will shut the building down for years. “A serious incident is likely to occur if this critical work is delayed…. particularly vulnerable to fire.” Richard Southern reported on the story for CityNews. Watch it.
PROMISCUOUS TENANTS NEWS — Brandon Donnelly takes a quick look at Toronto’s first apartment boom…. and the moralizing backlash that followed. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
CURATOR’S TALK: LEONARD COHEN: EVERYBODY KNOWS
January 20 — 6pm — AGO
“Join exhibition curator and the AGO’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Julian Cox for a talk describing his research and exploring the themes of Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows, a landmark exhibition dedicated to the life and times of iconic Canadian artist Leonard Cohen.”
$10, or $5 for members
LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES: TWO LOYALIST
January 23 — 7:30pm — Both online & at Lansing United Church — Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society
“While building out his family tree, Rick Hill was surprised to discover a 3rd great-grandmother who could have boasted that three of her four grandparents were United Empire Loyalists—and she had a Loyalist great-grandfather, too! During the American Revolutionary War, these UEL ancestors—Henry Dennis, his son John, John’s wife Martha (née Brown), and Lawrence Johnson—all fled Pennsylvania. Three of the four made it out of the future USA, first to Nova Scotia, and ultimately to York Township and the Town of York in Upper Canada. Their stories include the Battle of St. Lucia, the Quaker religion, losing a husband at sea, founding a settlement that banned slave masters, shipbuilding in Kingston, ill-starred actions in the War of 1812, a house at the corner of King & Yonge, a Methodist bishop, and the first customer of a new burial ground.”
Free, I believe!