Читать книгу Toronto Sketches 11 - Mike Filey - Страница 19
Royal Twist to Street Name
ОглавлениеThere is still much interest in this country today in the affairs of the British Royal Family, so I thought it only fitting to present my readers with a column with a “royal” twist. That twist has to do with the name of one of Toronto’s most interesting streets and one that bears the name of our present queen’s (Elizabeth II) great-great-grandmother.
Queen Street, looking west toward the split with King Street, just west of the Don River. Note the dangerous level railway crossing, which disappeared when the present bridge was built in 1911. This view is circa 1900.
City of Toronto Archives.
Looking west along Queen Street from the bridge over the Don River, 1948.
A similar view today.
Soon after the community we now know as Toronto was established by Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe in 1793, his land surveyors created a map of the area on which an east–west “base line” was delineated. Starting at this important geographical element and moving northward, additional east–west streets were added to the map, with each of these being exactly one hundred chains apart (a chain being a surveyor’s measuring device, with one chain equal to sixty-six feet). Mathematically, this one-hundred-chain distance translates into 6,600 feet, or one and a quarter miles. These streets, known as concession roads in the beginning, would eventually become the major east–west crossroads we now know as Bloor, St. Clair, Eglinton, Lawrence, York Mills/Wilson, Sheppard, Finch, and Steeles.
The original “base line,” which ran across the bottom of the grid, eventually took on the descriptive name Lot Street because it formed the southern boundary of the one-hundred-acre parcels of land (or lots) that were awarded to the settlement’s privileged newcomers. These lots were a kind of reward for giving up the amenities of the province’s established communities, such as Kings Town (Kingston) or Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) for a life in the undeveloped hinterland around York.
It wasn’t until after Alexandrina Victoria (the granddaughter of King George III, after whom our King Street is named) ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1837 that her loyal subjects here in Toronto changed the name of Lot Street to Queen Street to honour their new monarch.
July 4, 2010