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Historicist: How the Peninsula Became the Island
Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.
“La baie et l’île de Toronto” (“Toronto Bay and Island”), Robert Irvine, c. 1815. Image from Wikimedia Commons
As crowds on Canada Day proved, the Toronto Islands are a popular destination for city dwellers to make a short escape. Even when they were physically connected to today’s eastern port lands via marshes and a long sandbar, the islands felt a world away. The story of how they were permanently detached 150 years ago involves abuse of natural resources and the destruction of an early leisure spot.
Long used as a fishing site for natives and early settlers, the first permanent structures on the peninsula were military storehouses erected in the mid-1790s. By 1809, the lighthouse at Gibraltar Point was put into operation, guiding vessels for the next century-and-a-half. The difficulties of getting to the peninsula by land (due to the problems of building bridges across the meandering Don River) and its distant appearance across the harbour from the main settlement caused early residents of York to refer to it as “the Island” long before this was physically true. The feeling of remoteness, coupled with little development (for most of the early 19th century, the only permanent residents were the lighthouse keeper and their family), made it an ideal location for recreational hikes and horse riding. This proved ideal for the likes of Upper Canada governor Sir Francis Bond Head, who escaped from his inept daily management of the colony to ride along the peninsula like the gaucho he had been in South America.
Engraving of Louis J. Privat’s House (the Peninsula Hotel), prepared for Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto Volume 2 (1896)
By the 1830s ferry services were running and the first hotels appeared. The largest of the early accommodations was the Peninsula Hotel, opened by Louis Privat in 1843. Along with his brother Louis Joseph, Privat gradually expanded the hotel’s scope into a full resort with its own ferry service (operating from the foot of Church Street) and an amusement area that included swings, a merry-go-round, a ten-pin bowling alley and a small zoo. The Privats sold the hotel to John Quinn in 1853, who further expanded the frequency of ferry services. Soon renamed Quinn’s Hotel, among the perks offered was an early morning bath service for local businessmen, who could hop on a steamer at 5:30 a.m. and be back in the city fully refreshed 75 minutes later.
As the peninsula was a sandbar it proved attractive to city contractors, who carted away large quantities of sand from the 1830s onwards to build the growing city. Combined with erosion from the lake, city officials worried about how secure the land was and made unsuccessful attempts to curb the outward flow of sand. The eastern narrows near Quinn’s Hotel were a great concern, especially after a storm produced the first major breach of the peninsula in February 1853. Over the next five years, temporary breaches were filled back in, while city harbour commissioners dithered over providing permanent protection or letting nature take its course to produce an eastern entrance to Toronto Harbour. While a weak breakwater wall was erected on the south side of the peninsula, Quinn sensed that disaster might happen to his property. After extensive storm damage in 1856-57 that washed away the back half of the hotel and permanently submerged the bowling alley, he undertook renovations and built a separate storage shed in case evacuation was ever necessary.
On April 13, 1858, the Quinn family was preparing for a party that evening for the workmen who had rebuilt the hotel. A severe storm approached and Quinn, accompanied by his seven-year old daughter Jenny, ferried the workers back to the mainland. The ferocity of the storm made a return difficult; by the time John and Jenny arrived back at the hotel, they found the rest of the family clinging to boards amidst rising waters.
The Globe filed a report on what happened:
THE ISLAND HOTEL WASHED AWAY
A disaster for which some time has been anticipated, occurred yesterday morning, viz, the washing away of Mr. Quinn’s hotel on the Island. The storm commenced early on the afternoon of the previous day and towards night the breeze freshened, and continued blowing steadily from the north-east. Such was the fury of the tempest on the bay that serious fears were entertained that the hotel would be blown down, but it withstood the violence of the hurricane. Towards morning the waves were breaking on the beach in rear of the house, and about five o’clock the water made a complete breach over the island, undermining the house and leaving it a total wreck, and at the same time, making a channel four or five feet in depth, which will make a convenient eastern entrance to the harbour for vessels of light draught. Mr. Quinn, who was anticipating the catastrophe, succeeded in removing his family, and the greater part of his furniture to a small dwelling which he had erected a short time ago, a little to the west of his late residence.
No lives were lost during the incident, though the shock affected Mrs. Quinn for the rest of her life—Jenny was sent away to live with relatives in Rochester for a year while her mother convalesced.
The breach proved permanent. By the end of May steamers were able to pass through the new eastern gap. Though plans have been put forward to physically link the islands to the mainland by tunnels or bridges, they remain a recreational outpost in the harbour.
Sources: The Globe, April 14, 1858 and More Than an Island: A History of the Toronto Islands by Sally Gibson (1984)