Yonge Street
Famously known as “the longest street in the world” – until 1999, that is – Yonge Street is Toronto’s main artery, linking Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe.[1] Until 1998, the Guinness Book of World Records held Yonge as the longest street in the world until this was pointed out, and it has since been removed. The idea that Yonge was the longest street in the world came from what seemed to be a continuation of Yonge on Highway 11. If Yonge and Highway 11 were one and the same, the road would be more than 1800 kilometers long.[2]
Yonge Street was initially surveyed and cleared by the Queen’s Rangers under orders from Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe who recognized the military and commercial need for an overland route into the interior of the province. From its initial survey in the early 1800s until 1833, Yonge Street served as a rudimentary connection. In 1833, the government of Upper Canada made funds available to undertake the macadamization—an early form of asphalt paving—of Yonge Street (Statutes of Upper Canada, 3 William IV c. 37; 6 William IV c. 30; 7 William IV c. 76; 3 Victoria c. 53 sub. 57; Scadding 1873:388). Yonge Street was one of the first roads within Toronto to receive any kind of government-funded improvement. 1833 thus marks the first of a series of government-funded initiatives to improve Yonge Street and facilitate its use as a key north-south transportation route into and out of the city, as well as within it.[3]
Yonge Street was integral to the original planning and settlement of western Upper Canada in the 1790s, forming the basis of the concession roads in Ontario today. Once the southernmost leg of Highway 11, linking the provincial capital with northern Ontario, Yonge Street has been referred to as "Main Street Ontario". Ontario's first colonial administrator, John Graves Simcoe, named the street for his friend Sir George Yonge, an expert on ancient Roman roads.[4]
Behind the Name
In its earliest incarnation, Yonge St was a wild, tangled, muddy affair. By the time soldiers from the Queens’ Rangers, a British Army regiment, finished clearing it at the shores of Lake Simcoe on Feb 16, 1796, it barely deserved the title of ‘street’, it was a rough track connecting the obscure army town of York (now Toronto) to the Upper Great Lakes. A decade after the American Revolution, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe commissioned Yonge St. in 1793 as a military highway for British troops in the event the U.S. invaded.[5] With its foundations dating back to the end of the 18th century as a military road, Yonge Street borrows its name from Sir George Yonge, who served as the British Secretary of War around the time that the initial portion of the road was established, who was also a friend of John Graves Simcoe.[6]
Even though it was named after an expert on ancient Roman roads, Sir George Yonge, Yonge St. had little in common with the paved, rigorously marked, and ruthlessly straight roads of the Roman Empire.[5]
Sir George Yonge
Sir George Yonge was a British Secretary at War (1782–1783 and 1783–1794). Yonge was considered an expert on Roman roads: 'He was a man of letters, an F.R.S., and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, to which he communicated an excellent memoir on the subject of Roman roads and camps, in connection with some discoveries that had been made at Mansfied, in Nottinghamshire, and hence the peculiar fitness of naming Yonge Street after him, it being precisely such a road, and adapted to similar uses, as those he had been engaged in examining.'[7] He served as a Member of Parliament for his family's Rotten Borough of Honiton, Devon, from 1754 to 1761 and again from 1763 to 1796. He was quoted to have often said that he had inherited £80,000 from his father, acquired another £80,000 when he married and £80,000 from Parliament but Honiton had "swallowed it all," This was due to the huge briberies which were commonplace to influence the electorate in rotten borough elections of the time.[8]
He is said to have spent enormous sums upon his constituency, and in an attempt to establish a woollen factory at Ottery St. Mary, by which he was known to be a great loser.[9]
References
- ↑ Yonge Street through the years. yongelove.ca. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ mattsexsmith. WE ARE YONGE: EXPLORING 225 YEARS OF HISTORY ON ONTARIO'S OLDEST YONGE ST. Dec 4, 2018. gh360.ca. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ Historic Yonge Street Heritage Conservation District Study. Jan, 2016. PDF. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ Yonge Street. Wikipedia. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Doherty, Brennan. How Yonge St. began two centuries ago, to help ward off U.S. attack. Feb. 16, 2017. thestar.com. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ YONGE AT HEART. AUG 18, 2018. guidedtoronto.com. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ Engineering. Office for Advertisements and Publication. 1879. p. 389.
- ↑ Sir George Yonge, 5th Baronet. Wikipedia. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.
- ↑ YONGE, Sir George, 5th Bt. (1732-1812), of Colyton and Escott House, Devon. historyofparliamentonline.org. Retrieved Feb 14, 2021.