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 on King Street. If the concept of virgin forest in the downtown core seems hard to grasp, just remember that there were less than three hundred people living in the town of York when the McBrides arrived. In addition to his duties as a Queen’s Ranger, John found it necessary to supplement his income in other ways and, once more, he and Hannah proved up to the task.
John and Hannah found employment almost immediately. He worked as a doorkeeper for both the Executive and Legislative Councils in the town of York, and, together with Hannah, provided catering services for the House of Assembly — a full workload indeed.
John died in 1801. It seems unlikely that he even had the chance to clear his land in Downsview. As was the reality of life then, early settlers didn’t have the luxury of taking time to grieve; they just kept their heads down, kept their faith, and depended on hard work and family to get them through the dark hours. After John was gone, Hannah used her catering skills to open a tavern. Thankfully, the tavern was a great success as many members of the Legislature respected the McBrides and became regular customers.
Hannah sold Lot 4-3W in Downsview in 1803. Records do not indicate whether the Crown’s requirements had been met, but rules were broken, of course. In this case, it seems possible that the Crown may have taken Hannah’s situation into consideration and allowed the sale on compassionate grounds. The family’s close relationship with Simcoe is some indication of how well-connected they were. Alternately, she may have paid someone else to do the work after John’s death. The remaining two Downsview lots were willed to son Hugh McBride, who sold them by 1829.
Son John McBride II was the next to be the recipient of a Crown land grant. In 1830, he was granted Lot 17-1E, a 195-acre lot, which runs from Yonge Street over to Bayview Avenue, a quarter-of-a-mile north of Sheppard Avenue. John II and his wife Eleanor had actually moved to this area sometime around 1806, buying fifteen acres of Lot 16-1E in 1814 and an additional forty-two acres of the lot in 1817. They were apparently not the most peaceful of settlers. In fact, they were summoned by the court to answer a charge of assault and battery brought by their neighbour Jacob Kummer (later Cummer), shortly after they had arrived. John McBride II was found innocent, but Eleanor was put on probation for a year and fined for her part in the misadventure. Members of the McBride family also competed in sanctioned fights, including the War of 1812, where they repaid the Crown’s generosity by laying their lives on the line for their new home. This time, at least, they were on the winning side.
Following the War of 1812, John travelled to Ireland on a government-sponsored mission to recruit new settlers for Upper Canada. He was in Ireland for over a year, in the company of three First Nations friends who were also part of the mission. By all accounts, their trip was a great success and resulted in many enthusiastic Irish settlers immigrating to Upper Canada. Still, the venture was overshadowed, in the minds of many, by the accomplishments of John McBride’s horses.
It seems that John and his three travelling companions had to drive a horse-drawn farm wagon from North York to New York City to book passage on a ship sailing for Ireland. Realizing that they would be gone for a long and undetermined length of time, John sold his two horses in New York before setting sail. Imagine John’s surprise then, when he returned to his farm near Yonge and Sheppard over a year later to find the team of horses waiting for him. They had broken free from their new owner in Manhattan and found their way home — all the way to Willowdale.[1] Manhattan is an island. Never underestimate the power of your fellow animals.
John McBride II’s farmhouse was moved from his original 1830 land grant to sit next to its more modern neighbours on Spring Garden Road, as shown here in 1964.
Photo by Patricia Hart, North York Historical Society, NYHS 905.
Townhouses now cover the spot where this house stood on Leslie Street until 1970, on the former farmland of John McBride III.
Photo by Dorothy Milne, North York Historical Society, NYHS 849.
John McBride III (1806–65) was born right around the time his parents moved to their farm on Yonge Street. By the time he was in his mid-twenties, however, the soil on the farm had become so light that when John III planted his potatoes, the wind would blow the topsoil right off the tops of the mounds. This was likely a result of the excessive removal of trees, the roots of which would normally anchor the soil. His solution was to buy the farm directly to the east on Lot 17-2E, which reached from Bayview east to Leslie and included the original site of the farmhouse that would be built by his son David in 1860. The house still stands on Bayview. John III built a house on the east edge of the lot, now on Leslie Street.
By all accounts, John III was a thrifty and industrious farmer. He also had a good head for business. When he died in 1865, he held the deeds
