Writing in 1832, Joseph Bouchette reminisced about his first sight of Toronto harbour in 1793:
I still distinctly recollect the untamed aspect which the country exhibited when first I entered the beautiful basin, which thus became the scene of my early hydrographical operations. Dense and trackless forests lined the margin of the lake, and reflected their inverted images in its glassy surface. The wandering savage had constructed his ephemeral habitation beneath their luxuriant foliage—the group then consisting of two families of Messossagas—and the bay and neighbouring marshes were the hitherto uninvaded haunts of immense coveys of wild fowl.
Governor John Simcoe had “formed extensive plans for the improvement of the colony, [and] had resolved upon laying the foundations of a provincial capital.” Bouchette recalled four decades later that “in the space of five or six years it became a respectable place...
Germaine Warkentin taught English at Victoria College at the University of Toronto from 1970 to 1999. As one of her retirement-year courses she devised “Reading Toronto,” the basis for this article. She is editor of “Northrop Frye, ‘The Educated Imagination’ and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963,” for The Collected Works of Northrop Frye, forthcoming from University of Toronto Press.
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