Shangri-La steps into a 19th-century footprint
SUSAN GRIMBLY
September 22, 2007
As the city's condo boom continues apace, so does discovery of Toronto's underpinnings.
Construction began this spring on a super-luxury 65-storey tower at the corner of University and Adelaide.
Before one can build, of course, one has to dig a hole in the ground. And an archaeological dig is mandated by the city's Planning Act, if there is reasonable cause to think there might be something interesting to find down below the modern world.
What Ron Williamson, chief archeologist of Architectural Services Inc., discovered in July, when his team began investigating the site in depth, was a "remarkable signature of early Toronto's development."
Print Edition - Section Front
Section M Front Enlarge Image
The Globe and Mail
You could call John Bishop, a butcher, one of Canada's early developers. He built five Georgian houses for Toronto's elite at this site in the early 1800s. These, the first brick residences in Toronto, were known as Bishop's Block. One of the owners was attorney-general Robert Jameson.
His wife was Anna Brownell Jameson, author of Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (a 19th-century Canadian travel book), who sailed from London, England, to join her husband in Upper Canada in 1836.
What Mr. Williamson and his team are looking at most closely is the back lots, where the owners had their water features: the cisterns and privies.
The exciting thing is that the artifacts they are uncovering are intact. "It's just so rare," says Mr. Williamson.
Among the relics are things like five complete coconuts, many pieces of a child's tea set whose pot is "a mere few centimetres big," and pieces of a wood domino set covered in deer-antler veneer.
Sad story, though. The excavation will likely continue to mid-October. And after it's all been revealed, photographed, and the artifacts removed, the site will be bulldozed to make way for (scriptwriters couldn't improve on this) a parking lot for the Living Shangri-La Toronto five-star hotel-condominium. Perhaps Mr. Bishop - a developer, after all - would approve.