and Finch, part of Lot 20-2E. The property included the right-of-way for the Canadian National Railway line, the tableland between Leslie Street and the East Don Valley, and part of the valley lands as well. When Donald took possession, a house, stables, garage, and large barn were already standing on the property. It would be his conversion of the Johnson family barn into a magnificent home and the longevity of the house that would alert people to his existence many years later.
Donald’s new property proved a boon to his fellow hunt-club members who were being hounded by the burgeoning city to find new places to pursue the inedible, since development was rapidly claiming their old haunts. They were welcomed at Donald’s, however, and must have enjoyed the area, since several years later the Eglinton Hunt Club bought the former Samuel Kennedy farm, directly to the north, from R.Y. Eaton, to serve as their new headquarters.
Donald was also a charter member of the first North York Planning Board, which was established on September 25, 1946, to oversee the development of North York. He, like his fellow board member Earl Bales, would also serve as chairman of the board. While in that role in 1950 and 1951, he ruled that septic tanks would not be permitted in any new subdivisions, a very drastic change to what was then common practice, and one of many signs that North York’s days as a farming community were coming to an end.
When Donald died in 1952, he left an estate in the neighbourhood of $600,000. He had no heirs or survivors, other than his mother in Ohio, so his will directed that his estate be divided among a number of his favourite causes. The University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario were beneficiaries of his generosity, but the bulk of his fortune went to funds he had set up to see to the care and education of needy children and to provide financial assistance to young adults who would otherwise not be able to attend college or university.
After his death, the little farm was bought by a Reginald Hall. The farmland was subdivided in 1960, and a subdivision centred on Alamosa Drive and Appian Drive was constructed. Mr. Hall continued to live in the converted barn until 1973, when it was sold to another family. The house continued to be inhabited until 2001 when the children, who inherited it, put it up for sale, hoping someone would want to restore it.
After a year passed and no one wanted the barn as a home, it was sold to Bayfin Homes. The developer bought it in February of 2003 and demolished it on May 6 of the same year. Jonathan Winberg, project coordinator for Bayfin, went the extra mile when he donated some of the 120-year-old timbers to Black Creek Pioneer Village. Two new rather ordinary-looking homes were then built on the site of Donald Springer’s converted barn. It seems unlikely that anyone will be writing their story in the twenty-second century.
{Chapter Seventeen}
From the Macaulays to James Dean
This farmland had it all — a judge, a mansion, an innkeeper, a doctor, a reverend, a reverend-doctor, a succession of farmers, and even its own James Dean. Today, it is pleasant, leafy, and residential. Lot 25-2E was always beautiful, bordered on its western edge by the same stretch of the East Don River that runs through Mazo de la Roche’s Windrush Hill and on its eastern border by the German Mills Creek. It stretched along the south side of Steeles Avenue from Bayview Avenue to Leslie Street. Like most of this part of North York, it was beautiful, rolling land with deep river valleys and fresh forested vistas around every turn. Farmhouses and farmland survived here until 1972. Today, although all that is left are stories and photographs, it is still quite possible to conjure up a feeling of what must have been.
It was most unusual for the Crown to grant farm lots to women in the eighteenth century, but there weren’t many women like Elizabeth Macaulay. A childhood friend of Elizabeth Simcoe — the wife of Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe — the former Elizabeth Hayter had married Dr. James Macaulay in 1790, after he had served as a surgeon in Simcoe’s regiment during the American Revolutionary War. In 1791, the two families travelled together from Britain to Upper Canada and settled in Newark, today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake. In 1792, the lieutenant governor decided to move the capital of Upper Canada to York.
The Macaulays accompanied the Simcoes once again, and, when they arrived in York, Dr. Macaulay was charged with creating the new town’s first hospital and medical board. He also asked for, and was granted, an astonishing amount of Crown land, including 1,600 acres for himself, 1,200 acres for Elizabeth, and 660 acres for each of the couple’s children. Part of the land granted to Elizabeth was the two-hundred-acre Lot 25-2E on Steeles Avenue.
The family’s first home, named Teraulay Cottage after a combination of James’s and Elizabeth’s family names, was located in the town of York, on the site where the Holy Trinity Church would later be constructed. Other family members also built homes nearby, and soon the area running from Yonge Street to Osgoode Hall was known as Macaulaytown — the first suburb in Toronto. James and Elizabeth witnessed the dawn of a whole new society, yet they could never have imagined what the little cluster of log cabins that was once the town of York has exploded into today. Macaulaytown is now covered by the Eaton Centre, Old City Hall, New City Hall, office buildings, and hotels. After Elizabeth died in 1809, James would marry Rachel Crookshank, another Loyalist and close friend of Elizabeth Simcoe. Rachel’s brother, George Crookshank, is featured in the chapter on Lot 24-1E. Dr. Macaulay retired to York in 1817, after spending twelve years in Quebec overseeing hospital construction and serving as medical examiner. He died in 1822.
The Macaulay children capitalized on the head start that their parents had offered them and built on the family’s accomplishments in most impressive ways. Youngest son Allan was the first missionary to be put in charge of St. John’s Anglican Church in York Mills. Born in 1804, he was still a young student studying under Dr. John Strachan, then Archdeacon of York, when he was ordained as Reverend Allan Macaulay on October 28, 1827. His primary duty was to establish regular Sunday services at St. John’s, the second church to be built in this part of Upper Canada after the initial log St. James’ on King Street, which opened in 1807. He was also part of the consecration of the second limestone St. James’ on September 2, 1828. Tragically, Allan was plagued by ill health of an unrecorded nature, which, despite his bravest efforts, sometimes prevented him from conducting the Sunday services at St. John’s. On those Sundays he would still try to drag himself out of his sick bed to at least attend the services, even if he was too ill to perform them. He died in 1830 at the age of twenty-six.
The Macaulay sons were all educated at Dr. Strachan’s schools in Cornwall and York, and although not all of them entered the clergy as Allan did, his brother William would leave a religious legacy in one small Ontario town that resonates to this day.
Shortly after William Macaulay was ordained, he moved to Picton, where he founded the local Anglican congregation and became the community’s early spiritual leader. Prince Edward County was a favourite with United Empire Loyalists at the time, and William, as the son of a prominent Loyalist, had been granted much of the land that now comprises the town of Picton when he was just nine years old. Though well-born, he was generous to a fault, donating land for two churches and the courthouse, as well as personally surveying the new streets that were laid out in the town. Actually, he really wasn’t much of a businessman, and, though he also worked as a miller and operated a wharf back when Prince Edward County was a major shipping centre, his lack of killer instinct soon landed him in financial difficulty. He was known to sell his land below market value when he was dealing with a deserving farmer who was short of cash. He also allowed tenant farmers on his land to fall far behind in their rent, as he had great faith in his fellow man and believed that, ultimately, all would turn out well. The construction of his own rectory brought him to the edge of bankruptcy and resulted in his older brother, John Simcoe Macaulay, being given his financial power of attorney. William was now free to concentrate on his ministry, knowing that his other affairs were in capable hands.
The rectory, when completed around 1839, was considered the finest house in the county. The red-brick, neo classical-style
