Toronto Local History 3-Book Bundle. Scott Kennedy
Road. The Shepards’ store was abandoned once again.
Today, the building is home to the Beecroft Education Centre, named after Beecroft Road, where it now stands. The doors are all locked and there isn’t so much as a plaque to tell passers-by this incredible story that embraces 150 years of our history. The northwest corner of Yonge and Sheppard was finally built upon in 2012, over fifteen years after the store was rolled away. It is now home to a 7-Eleven and a McDonald’s. Perhaps that is all we need to know about the current state of land-use planning and respect for Canadian history in the new city of Toronto — but what about that extra “p” in Sheppard Avenue?
It seems that there was another family in Lansing at the time, known as “Sheppard,” “Shepherd,” and “Shephard.” Record-keeping and literacy were a little rough-hewn in those days and such discrepancies were by no means uncommon. Most sources use “Sheppard” for the “other” family, as shown here. No one knows for sure which family the avenue was named after, and the prevailing opinion seems to be that it could be either/or.
In 1824, Thomas Sheppard bought the eastern 150 acres of Lot 15-1W, on the southwest corner of today’s Yonge and Sheppard. That same year he built the Golden Lion Hotel, also referred to as the Golden Lion Inn, right on the southwest corner of the intersection. The Golden Lion was a large, square, two-storey frame structure with covered verandahs on both floors. There were large stables and barns to the south of the hotel and drive sheds to the north that could accommodate a dozen horses and horse-drawn vehicles. Upstairs were accommodations for twenty guests. Downstairs was a mud-brick kitchen at the back, and a tavern on the main floor. Thomas Sheppard’s brother, Paul, was a noted wood carver, who carved the wooden spires of St. Paul’s Anglican Church in L’Amoreaux (at the corner of Warden and Finch Avenues in Scarborough) and the original St. James’s in the town of York. He created a spectacular mascot for his brother’s new hotel when he carved a life-sized lion from a single pine stump.
The golden-coloured lion seemed to have a mind of its own, since some pictures show it on the second-floor balcony while others show it on the main floor, outside the front door. After many years of loyal service, it was replaced by another golden lion carved by Paul Sheppard around 1840, this time from oak with a flowing mane sculpted in plaster. (Dates given for this second statue range from 1833 to 1845.) The Golden Lion Hotel was an extremely important part of the community, hosting all sorts of events, from political meetings to dances, where Thomas and his sons, all accomplished musicians, provided the music in a dance hall that was built over the drive sheds. The dances would attract people from as far away as the town of York, some eight miles to the south, when a trip of that distance could have taken the better part of a day. Travellers of all stripes made frequent use of the Golden Lion and the other hotels up and down Yonge Street as a welcome respite from the gruelling road conditions. A common lament sung by farmers of the day went something like this:
“Here I am
On my way to Zion
I find my sons
In the Golden Lion.”[3]
The Golden Lion Hotel as it appeared in the early 1900s, with the second Golden Lion statue guarding the front door.
Photographer unknown, North York Historical Society, NYHS, 1080.
Thomas retired as proprietor in 1851. A John Meek took over as proprietor and ran the hotel until Thomas Sheppard’s death in 1857. Thomas’s son Charles inherited the farm and ran the hotel until 1869, at which point his sister Fanny and her husband, Cornelius van Nostrand II, took the hotel over and served as proprietors until 1870. That was the year that Charles sold the farm and hotel, keeping only the house he had built on present-day Sheppard Avenue in 1865.
In 1875, Charles sold the house to Mrs. Ann Carruthers. The storey-and-a-half clapboard house with the lovely bargeboard trim stood at 25 Sheppard Avenue West — a familiar and welcome sight to local residents making their way home on the TTC, since the house stood directly opposite the bus terminal where it offered a tantalizing glimpse into our past until it was destroyed by fire in 1988.
The Golden Lion Hotel continued to operate into the early twentieth century when it was purchased by the Reverend Thomas Webster Pickett and converted to a residence. The reverend converted the tavern into a meeting room where a Methodist Sunday School would meet and the roots of the Lansing United Church took hold. In 1902, the reverend’s daughter, Anna-Keitha, married George S. Henry of Oriole Lodge Farm near Leslie and Sheppard. After the Picketts left the building, it served as the first municipal offices for the new municipality of North York, which was created in 1922. Six years later, the venerable old building was dismantled. Anna was given the golden lion, which lived on the verandah of Oriole Lodge until it was donated to the Sharon Temple Museum, just north of Newmarket, in 1953.
When the North York Historical Society was formed in 1960, the lion was returned to North York and can currently be found prowling the sixth floor of the North York Public Library.
{Chapter Two}
The McBride Family Farms
A drive north on Bayview Avenue warrants a glance at the last house on the right, before arriving at Finch. It looks like an old house to be sure, but in these days of smoke and mirrors, appearances can sometimes be deceiving. Not here, however. Not this house — this house is over 150 years old, older than Canada itself, and built by a family who came to Upper Canada nearly 220 years ago. The McBrides were part of the very first wave of settlement in Upper Canada and they constructed a home that remains a private dwelling, well into the twenty-first century. The McBride family actually “bookend” the entire scope of European settlement in Upper Canada right up to the present day — defining them as a family with very few peers.
The house didn’t always stand on Bayview. It was moved there in the 1970s, from its original location to the southeast, to save it from demolition when Burbank Drive was extended north of Burleigh Heights Drive. A debt of gratitude is owed to the people who saved this house and also to those who have maintained it for the last forty years, for they have preserved a priceless piece of our heritage and tangible evidence of this family’s amazing journey.
Patriarch John McBride, his wife Hannah, and other family members left Ireland in the 1770s, bound for North America. They settled in Pennsylvania, a state often referred to as “a cradle of freedom,” but one that probably wasn’t the best choice for immigrants with Loyalist tendencies. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, the McBrides predictably fought with the British troops against the revolutionaries.
Little historical evidence exists to detail their efforts but the end result would become a common experience. Defeated Loyalists were clearly not welcome in the post-revolutionary United States of America, and, though many chose to move north of the border where they were welcomed with open arms, the McBrides returned to Ireland. There, John McBride was approached by John Graves Simcoe, his commander in the Revolutionary War, who had just been appointed the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. Simcoe enlisted him as a sergeant in the Queen’s Rangers and enticed him to emigrate to Upper Canada with the promise of generous land grants. John McBride would not be disappointed and he would not disappoint.
This house, built by David McBride in 1860, still stands on Bayview Avenue, where it was moved in the 1970s. Photo dated January 2013.
Photo by Scott Kennedy.
Upon arriving in Upper Canada in 1796, John was granted six hundred acres near the corner of present-day Bathurst and Lawrence, encompassing Lot 4-2W, Lot 5-2W, and Lot 4-3W, making him only the third landowner in what is now Downsview. Sergeant McBride, like many other military officers who received land grants, did not immediately set to clearing and fencing his land as required by Crown regulations. Rather, he served his adopted land in a more practical fashion by working with the Queen’s Rangers to clear the forest from the area that is now downtown Toronto, where he had also been granted a small lot