Monday, May 12, 2009 — Two Places On King Street

Almost every day, I walk past two spots of his­tor­i­cal inter­est on King Street, here in Toron­to. They are only a block apart, but they rep­re­sent the moral nadir and zenith of the city’s history.

The first is only a dusty bronze plaque mount­ed on the side of an old office build­ing. It marks the place where, in 1798, Toron­to’s first jail was built. Since it was known as the “old log jail”, we can guess the kind of pub­lic struc­tures that graced the streets of what was then known as “Mud­dy York,” and reclaimed its Iro­quoian name of Toron­to only in 1834. The plaque makes note of the fact that the first exe­cu­tion took place on Octo­ber 11th, 1798, when one John Sul­li­van was hung by the neck until dead, for the crime of steal­ing a note worth approx­i­mate­ly one dollar.

This lit­tle adden­dum tells us more about the nature of the era than a library of his­to­ry books and ency­clo­pe­dias. We tend to assume that we must delve into remote antiq­ui­ty to find a bar­bar­ic human nature, devoid of moral­i­ty. How­ev­er, I need only walk a half mile from my home to find evi­dence of a sadis­tic and sav­age human race dwelling in my own city, only two short cen­turies in the past. That a man could be hung for a dol­lar tells all that one needs to know. One can eas­i­ly pic­ture the scene. York, a squalid lit­tle vil­lage new­ly built and gar­risoned as a bul­wark against inva­sion from the Unit­ed States, its streets calf-deep in sticky mud, made aro­mat­ic by the shit of the hun­dreds of semi-fer­al pigs that roam untend­ed. Exe­cu­tion for pet­ty prop­er­ty crimes is the norm, and the “drop” will not be adopt­ed until the 1870’s. Slow, ago­niz­ing tor­ture is part of the whole enter­tain­ment, con­sid­ered suit­able and even edu­ca­tion­al for chil­dren. In the jail-yard, a jeer­ing and laugh­ing mob waits for the thrill of see­ing John Sul­li­van slow­ly stran­gle, antic­i­pat­ing the hilar­i­ty of see­ing his eyes bulge and tongue turn blue, his neck stretch like taffy, and, hope­ful­ly, for him to soil him­self. More dig­ni­fied, but equal­ly amused, are the city’s elite: mil­i­tary offi­cers, wealthy mer­chants, pious cler­gy­men. All are sub­lime­ly con­fi­dent of their right­eous­ness. And they are proud of being pro­gres­sive. It is, after all, not like Old Eng­land, where an eleven year old girl might be hung for the theft of a spoon, and mag­is­trates would pro­claim the just neces­si­ty of it with all the same argu­ments that Con­ser­v­a­tives use to defend the death penal­ty in 2009. No, they don’t hang chil­dren in Mud­dy York, but a theft of a dol­lar is anoth­er mat­ter. Jus­tice must be done.

By 1870, the author­i­ties came to see the pub­lic delight at exe­cu­tions as some­thing embar­rass­ing, and the sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies were with­drawn into the court­yard of a new­er jail. Cana­da main­tained a pro­fes­sion­al exe­cu­tion­er on the Fed­er­al pay­roll. John Rad­clive, the first such offi­cial, exe­cut­ed 150 peo­ple between 1892 and his death from alco­holism in 1911. The last three peo­ple exe­cut­ed in Toron­to (and in Cana­da) were Ronald Turpin, Arthur Lucas, and Jay Nick­er­son, in 1962. The death penal­ty was abol­ished de fac­to in 1963 and de jure in 1976. The cur­rent Con­ser­v­a­tive fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, of course, keeps the bar­bar­ians’ porno­graph­ic dream alive, always hop­ing that it can re-instate the practice.

On the same block, in the 1870’s, an anti-Catholic mob, led by the unspeak­ably evil Orange Order that long con­trolled the pol­i­tics of the city, attempt­ed to burn down St. Patrick Hall, in a blood lust to kill a guest speak­er of the Irish Catholic Benev­o­lent Union.

Adja­cent to the site of that ter­pi­tude, there is some­thing alto­geth­er more inspir­ing, which holds a spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for me.

When I first began to read seri­ous­ly in his­to­ry, as a boy, my instincts led me to avoid look­ing for heroes. Try­ing to find peo­ple in the past to admire and respect can be a trap. One is bound to be dis­ap­point­ed. The sad truth is that scoundrels and mon­sters rou­tine­ly find their way into his­to­ry books, but good peo­ple do not. The very fact that one is a decent human being vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­tees that one will be for­got­ten. His­tor­i­cal fig­ures propped up as mod­els or cham­pi­ons of this and that usu­al­ly turn out to be out­right frauds, or at the very least to have gen­uine accom­plish­ments marred by major flaws. But there was one his­tor­i­cal fig­ure that I could not help admir­ing, and that was Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, whose Auto­bi­og­ra­phy inspired me from child­hood. And I did not know until recent­ly that I could walk on the very floor where Dou­glass walked and spoke, right near my own home.

At the cor­ner of King and Jarvis stands St. Lawrence Hall. This fine struc­ture was built in 1850 to pro­vide a venue for pub­lic meet­ings, con­certs, balls, and oth­er cul­tur­al events of the lit­tle city that was then matur­ing out of its crude fron­tier begin­nings. Over the next cen­tu­ry, the hall would be used to echo the voice of Jen­ny Lind, dis­play the curios of P.T. Bar­num, and be used as a prac­tice dance hall by Rudolf Nureyev and Mar­got Fonteyn. The struc­ture is well pre­served, and an excel­lent exam­ple of the Renais­sance Revival style of the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Unlike most such struc­tures, it has main­tained its intend­ed func­tion through­out its existence.

The tim­ing of its con­struc­tion was pro­pi­tious, for there was an impor­tant issue for pub­lic dis­cus­sion: the recent­ly enact­ed Fugi­tive Slave Law in the Unit­ed States. This law allowed agents from the south­ern slave states to con­duct a reign of ter­ror in north­ern states, kid­nap­ping run­away slaves, and many free blacks, and drag­ging them back to the slave pens of the south. It effec­tive­ly unleashed the ten­ta­cles of the mon­strous­ly evil insti­tu­tion of slav­ery through­out the Unit­ed States, can­cel­ing out exist­ing abo­li­tion­ist reforms. This hideous injus­tice would soon lead the Unit­ed States into a bloody civ­il war. The activ­i­ties of the Under­ground Rail­road, the orga­nized resis­tance move­ment which smug­gled escaped slaves to free­dom in Cana­da, were now much more dan­ger­ous. Upper Cana­da had enact­ed leg­is­la­tion for the abo­li­tion of slav­ery in 1793. On the issue of slav­ery, Cana­di­ans were con­sis­tent­ly and adamant­ly on the side of the angels. The Under­ground Rail­road ter­mi­nat­ed in Toron­to. Escaped Amer­i­can slaves formed free agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered around rur­al Ontario, and much of the resis­tance was orga­nized here.

So it’s not sur­pris­ing that Fred­er­ick Dou­glass came to Toron­to, and spoke at the new­ly-built St. Lawrence Hall to a cheer­ing crowd of 1,200 on April 3, 1851[1]. Yes­ter­day, I entered the build­ing, and walked through the emp­ty hall, which has not much changed in gen­er­al appearance.

Since I acknowl­edge so few heroes from the annals of his­to­ry, I rarely get that spe­cial thrill that his­to­ri­ans can enjoy… the plea­sure of plant­i­ng one’s feet on a spot trod by a pal­adin. I once stood rapt with plea­sure in front of Mozart’s house, lis­ten­ing to one of his arias being sung. But Mozart’s is an exam­ple of a trag­ic life, tran­scend­ed by genius, and can hard­ly serve as an exam­ple to fol­low. I have no tran­scen­dent genius of my own, so his exam­ple is use­less to me, personally.

But the work of Fred­er­ick Dou­glass has long been, for me, a kind of guide­book in the quest for free­dom and human dig­ni­ty. The man was a genius, no doubt about it, but it was a real-world genius. He start­ed as a slave, a chat­tel, and freed him­self. In the process, he became the spokesman of all slaves, and the cham­pi­on of all who suf­fer injus­tice. His Auto­bi­og­ra­phy reveals a pro­found spir­i­tu­al depth, a sophis­ti­ca­tion far beyond the vapid and over­praised intel­lec­tu­al “giants” of his time. There are many fig­ures from the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry who are parad­ed through the his­to­ry books as genius­es and heroes. At the very bot­tom, moral­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly, would be Karl Marx, whose moron­ic racist and geno­ci­dal rant­i­ngs sick­ened me when I first read them, rough­ly at the same time I was being inspired by the nobil­i­ty of Dou­glass’ work. Marx is immense­ly more famous than Dou­glass, but Dou­glass is a hun­dred mil­lion times more wor­thy of respect. But it is the nature of the human race to wor­ship turds… that is why there is slav­ery in the world, in the first place. That’s why Dou­glass’s work meant so much to me. Yet he was a real, earth­ly man, with van­i­ties and foibles. If I were to meet him, I would no doubt argue with him over some issues, per­haps grow impa­tient with his short­com­ings, but I would always respect him. I was, in a way, one of the peo­ple he gave free­dom to, and I will always be grateful.

The restored main room of St. Lawrence Hall.

The restored main room of St. Lawrence Hall.

Toron­to’s his­to­ry is so unevent­ful, by most stan­dards, that it is hard to remem­ber that the the past is real. My friend Fil­ip Marek, in Prague, can every day walk across the Charles Bridge, and expe­ri­ence a sort of fast-rewind of spec­tac­u­lar inci­dents from the his­to­ry books, each leav­ing a mark in stone for him to touch and see. The high­lights in Toron­to’s his­to­ry are some­what less excit­ing ― a com­i­cal lit­tle upris­ing against British rule in 1837, a few embar­rass­ing inci­dents like the above-men­tioned mob, and decade after decade in which the prin­ci­ple “his­toric events” were hock­ey games. These have left few phys­i­cal reminders. For more than a cen­tu­ry, noth­ing has hap­pened here oth­er than peo­ple get­ting up in the morn­ing, going to work, rais­ing kids, play­ing hock­ey, and hav­ing a cold bot­tle of beer and a bar­be­cued hot dog in the back yard on a hot sum­mer day. Mil­lions came here, from every war-torn cor­ner of the globe. Now Toron­to is the most diverse metrop­o­lis on Earth, with more than half of it’s pop­u­la­tion born out­side the coun­try (twice the pro­por­tion of New York). Every lan­guage is spo­ken, every reli­gion pro­fessed, every appear­ance shown. And they all choose to work and raise their kids in much the same way as their pre­de­ces­sors, with­out ran­cour. Only the food on the bar­be­cues has changed.

When Fred­er­ick Dou­glass spoke in St. Lawrence Hall, in 1851, he could not have guessed that this would be the future of the lit­tle town, which may have been a haven for run­away slaves, but was wracked with infan­tile reli­gious quar­rels and ruled by pompous hyp­ocrites. Nor could he have guessed that more than a cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, some­one would press his hands on the pan­eled wall of St. Lawrence Hall, and be grate­ful that it still stood, mere­ly because his noble words had echoed upon them.

An 1859 albumen stereograph by Armstrong, Beere & Hime

An 1859 albu­men stere­o­graph by Arm­strong, Beere & Hime

"View of Kings Street" - an 1885 etching by William James Thomson

View of Kings Street” — an 1885 etch­ing by William James Thomson

An 1888 ink drawing later (c.1912) transformed into a watercolour by Frederic Victor Poole

An 1888 ink draw­ing lat­er (c.1912) trans­formed into a water­colour by Fred­er­ic Vic­tor Poole

Facade photographed by Jon Bilous, an American architectural photographer

Facade pho­tographed by Jon Bilous, an Amer­i­can archi­tec­tur­al photographer

Toronto’s great meet­ing hall and one of its most impor­tant his­toric build­ings opened on April 1, 1851, with a lec­ture enti­tled “Slav­ery” deliv­ered by a British Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. Lat­er that year, St. Lawrence Hall host­ed the his­toric North Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion of Col­ored Freemen, where abo­li­tion­ist lead­ers such as Fred­er­ick Dou­glass and Hen­ry Bibb dis­cussed the reset­tle­ment of refugees from Amer­i­can slav­ery. The Toron­to con­ven­tion offered African Amer­i­can lead­ers a safe haven to meet pub­licly with abo­li­tion­ists from Cana­da, the Unit­ed States and Britain with­out fear of vio­lent reprisal.

— James Marsh Toron­to In Time

Invitation the Firemen's Ball at the Hall

The Fire­men’s Ball at the Hall, 1859

[1] Toron­to’s pop­u­la­tion was then 30,000.

Leave a Comment