ENGLISH ANCESTRY

---

*A note about references: Hovering your cursor over a reference number will produce a tooltip (if your browser supports them) denoting the reference being used, clicking on the reference number will bring up a popup window, with further details on the source of reference: Each individual reference number refers to one source, though it may be the source for multiple pieces of information and therefore used multiple times within this site.
  THE GREAT FIRE OF 1849
By Bruce Bell

....to whom all credit goes for this descriptive narration and the accompanying pictures
(for more information on Toronto's history and Bruce himself
click Bruce's name and it will take you directly to his fascinating site).


King Street E before the Great Fire of 1849 showing 122-124 King E on the right hand side
(View of King Street, Toronto, 1844. John Gillespie. Oil on canvas).
It seems that every major metropolis on earth has had at least one Great Fire in it's past and the resulting inferno is often looked upon as a turning point in that city's history. So great are these fires that we tend to capitalize the words Great and Fire when we write of them. The Great Chicago fire of 1871, the Burning of Atlanta during the American Civil War, The Great Fire of London in 1666, the Burning of Rome in 64 AD (supposedly set by Emperor Nero) and the Great San Francisco Fire that followed the earthquake in 1906 are just a few of the more famous blazes. There were also the great wartime firestorms that laid waste to Berlin, Coventry, Hamburg and the towns that sat helpless in the direct path of the opposing armies. These cities eventually did re-build and with the resulting re-construction made some of them even greater. More importantly however, the after effects of fire disasters have made urban areas safer, with newly adopted fire-prevention precautions and highly enforced building codes.

On the morning of April 7 1849 Toronto awoke to a blaze that nearly destroyed the entire city. What once was an agriculturally based city of about 35,000, was quickly being consumed in a rage of fire. The center of town bounded by King, Adelaide, George and Church Streets was to change forever and along with it, the entire future of the City of Toronto.


Map showing the area destroyed by fire. The black rectangle area in the centre is where 122-124 King E once stood. The red arrow points to where the fire started.
The fire started about one in the morning in a stable behind a then popular drinking establishment called Covey's Inn on the north side of King Street just east of Jarvis. It may have been a cow knocking over a lantern onto a pile of straw (like in the legend of the Chicago fire) or maybe a careless toss of a cigar or it could of been deliberate (half the fires in the 1800s' were set on purpose) no one knows for sure but it grew to become one hell of a fire storm.
The flames leapt from floorboards to tin roofs to wooden sidewalks, gathering fuel along the way. It wasn't until it reached St. James Cathedral with it's giant bell swaying high in the belfry (the city's fire alarm) that the residents awoke to the full impact of fire. The heat was so intense by the time it got to St. James that the giant bell rang out only a few times before it melted and came crashing threw the roof below.

In his account of the fire that destroyed the old St. James, Henry Scadding (Toronto's first great historian whose house still stands behind the Eaton Center) wrote in his book' Toronto of Old' (1873) the following passage...
"...To the west the whole sky was, as it were, a vast canopy of meteors streaming from the east. The Church itself was consumed, but the flames advanced no further. A burning shingle was seen to become entangled in the luffer-boards of the belfry and slowly to ignite the woodwork there. From a very minute start at that point a stream of fire soon began to rise and twine itself about the upper stages of the tower and to climb nimbly up the steep slope of the spire, from the summit of which it then shot aloft into the air, speedily enveloping and overtopping the golden cross that was there. The heavy gilt cross at the apex of the spire came down with a crash and planted itself in the pavement of the entrance below, where the steps as well as the inner walls of the base of the tower, were bespattered far and wide with the molten metal of the great bell..."

What saved the town west of Church Street was the patch of ground that surrounds St. James on its western side. The fire had nothing else to burn by the time it reached the church. Other buildings were constructed right next to each other without the protection of firewalls so that as far as the flames knew, the whole city was one big tinderbox building ready to be swallowed up. Taverns, Inns, book stores, clothing outlets, homes, newspaper offices, hardware stores, dry-good emporiums, liquor shops and the Market gone in one night of unbelievable terror. The heroic fire brigade did what they could, hand-pumping water from barrels a-top their rudimentary horse-drawn wagons. What few fire hydrants Toronto had, were in the other part of town. To make matters worse the Water Company building burnt to the ground, along side everything else in the fire path. The residents themselves formed a line of buckets stretching down to the lake in a desperate attempt to save what was fast becoming a lost cause. Every Great Fire is comparable to a Great Symphony.
Starting slow, building impressively, momentarily pausing as if to fade away and then out of nowhere, like in the final moments of Beethoven's Glorious 9th , comes a magnificent and dazzling crescendo. As the fires leapt higher into the night, people as far away as St. Catherine's could see the heavens over Toronto metamorphosis into a blazing, swirling hue of red and orange.
Toronto, the once and future capital of the region, whose rapid rise in industry and commerce was surpassing its older, more established Upper Canada neighbors, was just as rapidly transforming itself into a burnt-out heap of absolute devastation. If a fire of those proportions were to break out today the area bounded by Queen's Quay, Bloor, Parliament and Bathurst would be wiped off the map. The entire financial district of Bay and King, The Eaton Center, Union Station, The Royal York Hotel, City Hall, U of T, Queen's Park, Sky Dome, not to mention the thousands of apartments, condos and homes would be incinerated in an Inferno of Biblical proportions.


The same view today showing the entrance and trees of St. James park.
Amazingly there was only one victim of the fire of 1849, Richard Watson, a newspaper man trying to salvage what he could from the smoke filled office of his newspaper The Patriot. Toronto changed forever after that night. The present day St. James Cathedral was built atop the ruins it's predecessor. The old Market, that stretched from King down to Front, (home to Toronto's first City Hall) was razed to make way for the opulent St. Lawrence Hall and a new Market was constructed (forerunner to the present day North Market) was built behind it.
New laws such as, no wooden structures could be built in the downtown core and the building of brick firewalls between each building (many can still be seen today rising above the roofs of older buildings) were passed. There are, however, a few buildings that miraculously survived the Great Fire. The three little buildings, 107, 109 and 111 King St. East between the Sculpture Garden and Church St. still stand as does the southern side of King East between Jarvis and George St., making that section which includes a Starbucks and Arts on King, the oldest continuous use block of buildings in Toronto. In 1851, two years after the Great Fire, the railroad came to Toronto, an enormous building boom occurred and The City as we know it today was born. If we were then just considered an up-start colonial outpost by Empire standards before the blaze, in the few short years after, we were to become the richest, most powerful city in the country, after Montreal, but eventually even they would have to take a back seat.
At the turn of the new century Toronto suffered through another devastating blaze. The Great Fire of 1904 leveled the area bounded by Melinda (just south of King), The Lakeshore, Yonge and York Streets.
A total of 122 buildings went up in smoke putting 230 businesses out of commission and 6,000 people out of work. Miraculously no one died and once again Toronto re-built to become one of the greatest and most enviable cities in the world today.
A Bruce Bell History Project 2003