History  

http://www.historyoftoronto.ca/genealogy/pickard.html

Thank you to Blair Kissack and Peter Walsh for researching our neighbourhood history.

John McGill was born in Auckland, Scotland. He came to North America to serve under Simcoe with the Queen’s Rangers during the American Revolution. Afterward, he settled in New Brunswick, where he married CatherineCrookshank, sister of George Crookshank. The McGills moved to Upper Canada in 1792 and John was put incharge of supplying the army. By 1799, as Commissary General of Upper Canada, he had received a number of land grants, including a town lot and park lot 7. During his tenure, he also served as Receiver General, from 1813 to 1819. McGill preferred to live on his suburban estate, so he had his home - McGill Cottage - built there in 1803. He paid the carpenters with land that he owned in Scarborough. McGill’s lot was east of the Playter park lot. McGill Cottage faced down to Lot Street, between present-day Bond and Mutual Streets. “Situated in fields at the southern extremity of a stretch of forest, the comfortable and pleasantly-situated residence erected for him for many years seemed a place of abode quite remote from town,” wrote Henry Scadding in Toronto of Old. The house was a spacious one-and-a-half-storey Regency cottage with an attractive centre gable and a broad verandah. The prettily treed grounds surrounding the house later came to be known as McGill Square. The remaining southern part of the property was a working farm. Behind the house, woods stretched up to modern Bloor Street. Hunting parties frequently ventured into McGill’s bush in search of deer, snipe, and other small game. Catherine and John had only one child, who died in infancy. Catherine died in 1819. Without an heir, McGill drafted an interesting will: his nephew, Peter McCutcheon, of Montreal, was to inherit the entire property, on the condition that he change his surname to McGill. John died in 1834. In 1836, Peter McGill began selling off portions of the property, in one of the earliest subdivisions around York. Church Street, named for St. James Church, was finally extended north of Queen. The segment next to Lot Street was one of the first subdivisions in the city to include laneways flanked by dense row housing. Slightly north, larger lots were subdivided between 1840 and 1842, and Shuter, Crookshank, Gould and Gerrard Streets were opened up. A number of Streets were named for McGill connections: Gould for Nathaniel Gould, an officer of the British American Land Company and a friend of the captain; Shuter for Gould’s co-director, John Shuter; Gerrard for a family friend; Ann Street for Ann McGill, later renamed Granby Street and Crookshank for Catherine’s relatives. Mutual Street was surveyed by John Howard as a shared road between the McGill property and the Jarvis estate. McGill Street, which bisects the old property, came much later and was actually named for Ann McGill, wife of Bishop Strachan, rather than for Captain McGill. Most of the homes erected during the 1850’s were middle-class houses built on speculation. An exception was architect William Thomas’ Oakham House, which he built in 1848 on land purchased from the McGill estate. McGill Cottage was suddenly at the centre of a genteel suburb.

Although much of the northern section was intact into the 1850’s, a large block was purchased by the Province in 1850 for a normal school. Under the direction of Egerton Ryerson, it became Ontario’s first training institution for elementary school teachers. The site is now part of Ryerson Polytechnic University.

Peter McGill died in Montreal in 1860, but his brother lived at McGill Cottage until 1870. In that year, McGill Cottage and the two acres surrounding the house were purchased by the Wesleyan Methodists. Here they built Metropolitan Church, now Metropolitan United.

Notable excerpts....
 
"...In 1868 they bought a lot on the east side of Church St. near 
 McGill, where William kept dairy cows to supplement his income as a 
 cooper. As it turns out he was far more successful at this secondary 
 occupation than at the trade for which he had apprenticed - at the 
 height of his success he had 25 head of cattle. This is quite 
 something to imagine today when walking past the original site on 
 Church, which is now a parking lot!"/
 
*"William John Pickard* was apparently the one who inherited his 
 father's entrepreneurial gift. He married Selina Beckett in 1886, and 
 they had six children, the first one stillborn. The others were 
 William (b. 1888), Olive Blanch (b. 1890, d. 1905 from "valvular 
 disease of the heart"), Ethel Irene (b. 1895), Margaret Annie (b. 
 1897), and Clara Louise (b. 1901). W.J. and Selina lived beside his 
 parents on Church Street. W.J. started out working as a driver at a 
 Livery Stable, but soon switched to "cartage", as it was then called, 
 starting his own business in about 1895._* W.J. Pickard Limited Moving 
 and Storage* was incorporated in 1921 and became quite a successful 
 family business. It was located on the original Church St. property 
 until the 1970's."