Читать книгу Toronto Sketches 11 - Mike Filey - Страница 18

Aw nuts! I forgot his birthday again. And now it’s too late to send him a card. Actually it’s much too late, since he passed away in 1812. And while I haven’t yet mentioned this person’s name, it’s one that virtually every Torontonian, heck every Ontarian, or quite possibly every Canadian, will recognize instantly. He’s the man for whom Toronto’s main street is named.

Interestingly, Sir George Yonge (his actual birth date was June 17, 1731) never even visited our community. So perhaps one has reason to wonder how his name came to be attached to one of the nation’s best-known streets, the very same street that was recognized for a time by the Guinness people as the world’s longest (changes to the provincial highway system made in 1998 by the Mike Harris government put an end to that claim to fame).

The real reason for Yonge Street being so named has more to do with the province’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, than anything else. And here’s why. Soon after Simcoe’s arrival from England in 1792 to begin his tenure, he started to change many of the existing place names because, as he often stated, their sounds were “foreign to his ears.” Thus Cataraqui became Kings Town (Kingston), Niagara became the New Ark (Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake), and the most foreign of all, Toronto, became York (to honour King George III’s second eldest son, Frederick, the Duke of … you guessed it, York!

Looking south on Yonge Street from just south of the dusty Lawrence Avenue intersection, circa 1905. Note the tracks of the Toronto and York Radial Railway, a sort of early GO Transit operation that carried people and freight to and from the city on high-speed electric streetcars.

Just days before the new Yonge subway was to open, a crowd waits to board a northbound Yonge streetcar at the Richmond Street intersection, March 28, 1954.

And when it came time to give a name to the new path his Rangers were cutting through the forested hinterland north of the York town site, Simcoe remembered his neighbour back in Devon, a man who had also been a colleague of his in the British House of Parliament.

Sir George Yonge, 5th Baronet, was born in a little Devon town called Colyton and he was destined to serve as the country’s Secretary at War (1782–1794), Master of the Mint (1794–1799), and the governor of the Cape Colony (1799–1801).

As important as these positions were, it’s more likely that Simcoe selected his friend’s name because of Yonge’s fascination with and expertise in the art of Roman road-building.

What better tribute than to name the pioneer road Yonge Street.

June 20, 2010

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Sir George Yonge (1731–1812), in whose honour Toronto’s main street is named.

Courtesy of the National Archives.