The Yonge Street Story, 1793–1860: An Account from Letters, Diaries and Newspapers by F.R. Berchem (review)

Book Reviews 189 trade, religion, pioneers, social service, feminism, the arts, ethnicity, the young, business, development, sport, labour, or politics. There is also a serendipity effect. Together, by happy accident, the collection as a whole can be read as evidence for the 'culture' ofthe city. Edmontonians , as demonstrated here, seem to have reconciled their evident differences in terms of a broad community consensus. A kind of tolerant homogenizing is a thread that runs through the whole collection, in the same way that a diversity of contributors has generated a singular product. JOHN TAYLOR Carleton University The Yonge Street Story, 1793-1860: An Account from Letters, Diaries and Newspapers. F.R. BERCHEM. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History 1996. Pp. 192, illus. $19.95 The story of Yonge Street is an imperial success story, the conversion of a line through the forests of a remote colony into the thoroughfare of a thriving metropolis. It is the story of the street itself: the first hazardous cutting, the politics of allocating lots, the ever-present concern about mud and swamp, the lobbying to improve the road's surface by macadamizing, the setting up of toll booths, the establishing of the first stage lines. It is also the personal sagas of men (alas, this book is singularly short on women) who settled along the way: Quakers seeking pacifist sanctuary from Yankee belligerence; John Montgomery building his various taverns; Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Moodie retiring on his estate (just in time to be killed in the Rebellion); or Benjamin Thorne founding a mill and losing his fortune (and his life by suicide). Yet the Yonge Street story is also tales of failed enterprises and shattered dreams. Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe envisioned a military road connecting a secure fortress on Lake Ontario to the upper Great Lakes: the road was used militarily but once, in a valiant but worthless 1813 expedition; the same year York was easily taken - twice. Simcoe also saw the street as a major route for fur traders, but Montreal merchants continued to prefer the Ottawa River passageway. William Berczy gave a year of his life to constructing the street, but was denied (perhaps cheated out of) his expected rewards. The Comte de Puisaye's French royalist emigres planned a pastoral paradise on Yonge Street, but could not stand the rigours of rural York County. And William Lyon Mackenzie attempted his coup d'etat by marching men down 190 The Canadian Historical Review Yonge Street; a would-be glorious revolution collapsed into ill-fated rebellion. Not surprisingly, the story of that rebellion is the book's most colourful episode, as it sketches the political moods leading up to the actual outbreak, the utter confusion of the few days of tension, Mackenzie 's escape, and Lount and Matthews's execution. Like many another portrayal ofthe Rebellion, its centre is Mackenzie, his passions and prejudices. It fails to convey how deep seated and widespread were the discontents of those who suffered from the mismanagements of a colonial administration. It also almost ignores the impact in Upper Canada ofthe concurrent Lower Canadian turmoil. Looking back on it, the Rebellion may resemble a comic opera, but those involved neither fools nor dupes - were in dead earnest. The book makes reference to many other occurrences on Yonge Street, but there are few stories of the common folk who arrived and settled, lived and died, farming land and raising families. Yet they were the people who populated the territory, transformed a wilderness, and created a province. Few references to the ordinary \Yere recorded in the newspapers on which the author relied. Such details were (and still are) devalued by journalists - and, no doubt, their readers. In this volume, the Yonge Street story becomes a vehicle for telling the story of Upper Canada. With the street for its focus, it tracks the entire pre-Confederation period, even though some major events, such as the catastrophic cholera epidemics of the 1830s, are unmentioned. Regretfully also, there is no reference to the state of the land and the ways of its people before Simcoe's arrival. The telling ofthese tales connected to the Yonge Street route amply demonstrates that the details of myriad human dramas...