Читать книгу Toronto Sketches 11 - Mike Filey - Страница 12

It was 1858 when one of Toronto’s most treasured attractions, our own Toronto Island, first came into being. This historic event was recorded in the following day’s Globe newspaper:

The Peninsula Hotel Washed Away

A disaster which has for some time been anticipated occurred yesterday morning (April 13) with the washing away of Mr. Quinn’s hotel on the Island. The storm commenced early on the afternoon of the previous day (April 12) and towards night the breeze freshened, and continued blowing steadily from the north-east. Such was the fury of the tempest on the bay that serious fears were entertained that the hotel would be blown down, but it withstood the violence of the hurricane. Towards morning the waves were breaking on the beach in rear of the house and at about five o’clock the water made a complete breach over the Island, undermining the house and leaving it a total wreck, and at the same time making a wide channel four or five feet in depth which will make a convenient eastern entrance to the harbour for vessels of light draught. Fortunately, Mr. Quinn, who was anticipating the cataclysm, succeeded in removing his family and the greater part of his furniture to a small dwelling which he had erected a short time ago, a little to the west of his late residence.

Before this severe storm wreaked havoc across the young city’s waterfront, what was to suddenly become Toronto Island (while in this case “island” is a singular term, numerous large and small islands covering a total of 825 acres are involved) was originally nothing more than a series of long, sandy “fingers” of land known collectively as The Peninsula. This formation trailed westward from a swampy landmass at the east end of the harbour, an area originally called Ashbridge’s Bay, then the Eastern Harbour Terminal District, and now simply as the Port Lands.

A map of the Town of York (renamed City of Toronto in 1834) sketched prior to the tremendous storm that struck the young city on April 13, 1858, that resulted in the creation of Toronto Island. Note the narrow and extremely vulnerable isthmus that connects the town with what would later become the island.

Geologists tell us that much of the material that made up those “fingers” actually originated as sand and rocks that over countless centuries had eroded from the weather-worn surfaces of the bluffs located a few miles east of the town site. (This geological feature was first referred to as the Scarborough Bluffs in the late 1700s by Governor Simcoe’s wife, Elizabeth, soon after the couple’s arrival to take up residence in the new Province of Upper Canada).

It was the counter-clockwise circulation of water on this side of the lake that resulted in this eroded material migrating in a westerly direction. Over time, sufficient quantities of silt and sand dropped out of the solution when met by the outflows from the Rouge, Don, and Humber watercourses to create a substrate to which, centuries later, newcomers to the area added harbour dredgings and construction debris, resulting in the much enlarged Toronto Island that we have today.

While the first breach in the narrow isthmus took place more than 150 years ago, it wasn’t until this newly created channel was widened, made deeper, and stabilized over the next few years that it became a truly useful entrance and exit to and from Toronto Harbour.

April 11, 2010

The Eastern Channel had been in existence for less than half a century when a photographer captured these two ladies watching the passenger ships SS City of Ottawa and SS Chicora, a sailboat, and the tug D.W. Crow traverse Toronto Harbour’s Eastern Channel.