Government House was the official residence of the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada and Ontario, Canada. Four buildings were used for this purpose, none of which exist today, making Ontario one of four provinces not to have an official vice-regal residence. [1]
The colony's first Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, occupied a couple of residences during his tenure. Upon his arrival in Upper Canada in 1792, he used one of the buildings at Navy Hall in Niagara-on-the-Lake as a residence, [2] sharing the space with Upper Canada’s legislature. [3] When Simcoe moved the colonial capital to York (present-day Toronto) in 1793, he built a summer residence, Castle Frank, north of the settlement in 1794. [4] Simcoe's successor and the colony's second Lieutenant Governor, Peter Hunter, initially continued to reside in his own home, Russell Abbey, located at the south-west corner of Princess and Front streets. [3]
The first official government house was a one-storey, U-shaped frame house built at Fort York in 1800, designed by Captain Robert Pilkington and first occupied by Hunter. [5] The structure was destroyed when a nearby powder magazine exploded in 1813 during the War of 1812. [3] [6] [7] [8] [9]
After the destruction of the Fort York house, York did not have another Government House until after the War of 1812. In 1815, the government purchased Elmsley House, a more commodious Georgian residence, for its Lieutenant Governor. [10] The new Government House was located in a wooded area to the west of the settled portion of the (then) Town of York, roughly midway on the block now occupied by Roy Thomson Hall and Metro Hall in downtown Toronto.
Built in 1798, the residence had been the home of the Chief Justice and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, John Elmsley, and it served as the colony's Government House from 1815 to 1841 (and intermittently from 1841 to 1858, during some of the times when Toronto served as the capital of the Province of Canada). From 1847 to 1849 it was home to the Toronto Normal School.
For many years after its purchase by the government, the residence was still known by the name of its former owner, with the correspondence of the Lieutenant Governor typically dated from "Elmsley House". [7] [11] [12] [13] In 1846, the grounds were used for the first annual Provincial Agricultural Fair. [14]
Beginning in 1849, Lord Elgin, the Governor General of the then united Province of Canada, resided for two years at the similarly-named Elmsley Villa, located near what is today the intersection of Bay and Grosvenor Streets (northwest corner), rather than at Elmsley House. [3] Elmsley Villa was a two-storey Georgian structure that stood until at least the 1860s.
Elmsley House was destroyed by fire in 1862. [15]
Four years after the fire at Elmsley House, the firm of Gundry and Langley of Toronto was commissioned to design a new Government House on the same site. [15]
In 1868, construction began on a new Government House, designed in the Second Empire style by architect Henry Langley. A three-storey red brick home, trimmed with Ohio cut stone, the building featured a tower, steeply sloped mansard roofs and dormer windows, with the main entrance and carriage porch facing Simcoe Street. The drawing room on the first floor and the state bedroom on the second floor faced Lake Ontario over a large landscaped garden. Completed in 1870, the house cost CA$105,000, and its first resident was John Beverley Robinson. [15]
By the 20th century, the development of railways and industrial uses nearby prompted the provincial government to seek a more appropriate location for its vice-regal residence, as it had done more than a century before. The third Government House was sold to the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1912 and demolished in 1915. [3] [15]
During the transition from the third to the fourth Government House, the Lieutenant Governor temporarily lived at Pendarves (later known as Cumberland House) from 1912 to 1915. [3] Originally designed as an Italianate villa by Frederick William Cumberland for his family's use and completed in 1860, the house is located at 33 St. George Street. [16] It has been owned since 1923 by the University of Toronto and now functions as the international students' centre. [17]
The government sought to construct a new government house on Bloor Street East and 12 architects submitted proposals in 1909. [18] However, as that area was becoming too commercial, the province moved the site to a 14-acre (5.7 ha) parcel of secluded and undeveloped land in Toronto's Rosedale neighbourhood. The proceeds from the sale of the Bloor Street site were used to acquire the land in Rosedale. [19]
Chorley Park, the fourth government house, was constructed between 1911 and 1915. It was named for Chorley, Lancashire, the birthplace of Toronto alderman and first chair of the Toronto Public Library, John Hallam. The house was designed by Francis R. Heakes and built of Credit Valley stone in a French Renaissance style, reminiscent of French châteaux in the Loire Valley. It was one of the most expensive residences ever constructed in Canada at the time and outshone even Rideau Hall in size and grandeur. Sir John Strathearn Hendrie and his wife were the first viceregal couple to live at Chorley Park. The Prince Edward (later King Edward VIII) stayed here for three days in late August 1919, on his cross-Canada tour.
During the Great Depression, Mitchell Hepburn made it a key component of his party's election platform to close Chorley Park, promising that an opulent palace would not be maintained by the taxpayers of Ontario; Chorley Park used 965 tons of coal to operate, whereas the average Toronto home used only six to seven. [20] After Hepburn was appointed premier, following the Liberal Party's victory in the 1937 provincial election, he ensured that Albert Edward Matthews would be the last lieutenant governor of Ontario to live in an official residence; in 1937, after only 22 years and seven viceroys, Chorley Park was closed. The contents of the mansion were auctioned off the following year, bringing in a profit of $18,000 [20] ($ 331,000 in 2021 dollars [21] ), and Ontario became the first province in Canada not to have a government house. (Alberta also closed its Government House in 1938.) The estate was bought by the federal Crown-in-Council and thereafter served various functions, including a military hospital during the Second World War, the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Toronto, and a residence for refugees of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, including several of Imre Nagy's staff members. [20]
Under Mayor Nathan Phillips in 1960, the City of Toronto bought the house for $100,000 ($913,500 in 2021 dollars [21] ) in order to destroy it and create municipal parkland. [20] At the time, Chorley Park was considered dilapidated and outmoded and municipal funds were being spent demolishing heritage structures throughout the city to make room for modern buildings. The building was demolished in 1961 and the grounds of the estate were added to the civic parks system.
The only trace of Government House left is the bridge to the forecourt and some depressions in the earth that outline the rough footprint of its foundations. The once formal gardens have long gone fallow and, today, Chorley Park is a naturalized parkland.
Ontario's Lieutenant Governor uses an office and suite of rooms for entertainment in the Ontario Legislative Building, and lives in his or her private Toronto home or is provided a rented residence by the provincial government. [3] Since the closure of the last Government House, whenever the Sovereign is visiting Toronto he resides in the Royal Suite at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. [22]
John Graves Simcoe was a British Army general and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York, which is now known as Toronto, and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and also in the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada.
York was a town and the second capital of the colony of Upper Canada. It is the predecessor to the old city of Toronto (1834–1998). It was established in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe as a "temporary" location for the capital of Upper Canada, while he made plans to build a capital near today's London, Ontario. Simcoe renamed the location York after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, George III's second son. Simcoe gave up his plan to build a capital at London, and York became the permanent capital of Upper Canada on February 1, 1796. That year Simcoe returned to Britain and was temporarily replaced by Peter Russell.
The University of St. Michael's College is federated with the University of Toronto. It was founded in 1852 by the Congregation of St. Basil and retains its Catholic affiliation through its postgraduate theology faculty. However, it is primarily an undergraduate college for liberal arts and sciences.
Yonge Street is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. Ontario's first colonial administrator, John Graves Simcoe, named the street for his friend Sir George Yonge, an expert on ancient Roman roads.
Fort George was a military fortification in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. The fort was used by the British Army, the Canadian militia, and the United States Armed Forces for a brief period. The fort was mostly destroyed during the War of 1812. The site of the fort has been a National Historic Site of Canada since 1921, and features a reconstruction of Fort George.
Fort York is an early 19th-century military fortification in the Fort York neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The fort was used to house members of the British and Canadian militaries, and to defend the entrance of the Toronto Harbour. The fort features stone-lined earthwork walls and eight historical buildings within them, including two blockhouses. The fort forms a part of Fort York National Historic Site, a 16.6 ha (41-acre) site that includes the fort, Garrison Common, military cemeteries, and a visitor centre.
Exhibition Place is a publicly owned mixed-use district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located by the shoreline of Lake Ontario, just west of downtown. The 197-acre (80 ha) site includes exhibit, trade, and banquet centres, theatre and music buildings, monuments, parkland, sports facilities, and a number of civic, provincial, and national historic sites. The district's facilities are used year-round for exhibitions, trade shows, public and private functions, and sporting events.
Peter Russell was an Anglo-Irish military officer in the American War of Independence and a government official, politician and judge in Upper Canada.
Osgoode Hall is a landmark building in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The original 2+1⁄2-storey building was started in 1829 and finished in 1832 from a design by John Ewart and William Warren Baldwin. The structure is named for William Osgoode, the first Chief Justice of Upper Canada.
New Fort York, later the Stanley Barracks, is a former British and Canadian military base in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the Lake Ontario shoreline. It was built in 1840–1841 to replace Toronto's original Fort York at the mouth of Garrison Creek as the primary military base for the settlement. Unlike the older fort, many of the new fort buildings were made with limestone instead of wood. A protective wall was planned for the new fort but was never built. The fort was used by the British army until 1870, and the Canadian military subsequently used the fort to train troops for the Second Boer War, World War I and World War II. It also trained one of the first regiments of the North-West Mounted Police. The Canadian military stopped using it after World War II and the fort was demolished in the 1950s. Only the Officers' Quarters building remains on the site.
The Ontario Legislative Building is a structure in central Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It houses the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and the viceregal suite of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and offices for members of the provincial parliament (MPPs). The building is surrounded by Queen's Park, sitting on that part south of Wellesley Street, which is the former site of King's College, which was leased from the university by the municipal government of Toronto in 1859, for a "peppercorn" payment of CAD$1 per annum on a 999-year term. The southern portion of the site was later handed over to the provincial government.
The Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada was the elected part of the legislature for the province of Upper Canada, functioning as the lower house in the Parliament of Upper Canada. Its legislative power was subject to veto by the appointed Lieutenant Governor, Executive Council, and Legislative Council.
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The Toronto Normal School was a teachers college in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Opened in 1847, the Normal School was located at Church and Gould streets in central Toronto, and was a predecessor to the current Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The Royal Ontario Museum, the Ontario College of Art & Design and the Ontario Agricultural College all originated at the Normal School's campus and the provincial Department of Education was also located there. Officially named St. James Square, the school became known as "the cradle of Ontario's education system". The school's landmark Gothic-Romanesque building was designed by architects Thomas Ridout and Frederick William Cumberland in 1852. The landmark building was demolished in 1963, but architectural elements of the structure remain on the campus of Toronto Metropolitan University.
Colonel The Hon. John Simcoe Macaulay was a businessman and political figure in Upper Canada. In 1845, before retiring to England, he donated the land on which the Church of the Holy Trinity (Toronto) was built.
Government House in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, is the official office of the lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan. It was first constructed as a residence for the lieutenant governor of the North-West Territories, whose territorial headquarters were in Regina. When the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were created out of the Territories in 1905, Regina became the capital of Saskatchewan and Government House became the official residence of the lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan. It was vacated in 1944 and then returned to official ceremonial use in 1984.
Frederick William Cumberland was a Canadian engineer, architect and politician. He represented the riding of Algoma in the 1st and 2nd Ontario Parliaments, and he served in the House of Commons of Canada from 1871 to 1872.
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John Elmsley was Chief Justice of Upper Canada and afterwards of Lower Canada. In both of the Canadas he served as President of the Executive Council and Speaker of the Legislative Council. During the Hunter administration, he was the most powerful man in Upper Canada. In Lower Canada, from 1802 until his death he was second only in rank to the Lieutenant Governor.
