Yes, famed English writer, Charles Dickens author of the classic A Christmas Carole visited Toronto between May 4th to 6th, 1842 and stayed at the former American Hotel at Front Street and Yonge Street.
Toronto back then had a population of about 30,000 people.
Here’s what Charles Dickens wrote about that visit which started at Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“Our steamboat came up directly and soon bore us to the mouth of the Niagara; where the stars and stripes of America flutter on one side and the Union Jack of England on the other. Thence we emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea; and by half-past six o’clock were at Toronto. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas; the houses are large and good; the shops excellent. There is a good stone prison here; and there are, besides, a handsome church, a court-house, public offices, and many spacious private residences.”
In 1842 the commercial center of Toronto was at King Street and Yonge Street and the grandest store at that time was Michie’s opened a few years before by George Michie (pronounced Mickey) at 5 King Street West.
Michie offered his customers a varied list of products including silk stockings, original art, exotic bamboo furniture, rare oranges, French wines, imported liquor, and spirits from his native Scotland.
Just down the street from Michies were two immense shopping emporiums the Golden Lion and Golden Griffin, each topped off with a monumental lion and a griffin respectively on their roofs high above King Street.
These stores, founded in 1842 the year Charles Dickens arrived, would become a mainstay of smart Victorians wanting the latest European fashions and home wares. Both of these stores were demolished in 1902 to make way for the building of the King Edward Hotel.
Michies lasted until 1947 and by the 1970’s the original Michie’s store became home to the Nag’s Head Pub and is now the site of One King Street West. Another store that was around during Dickens’s visit was Victoria Row.
Parts of this block long women’s emporium still stands today on the south side of King Stret between Leader Lane and Church Street and its facade is now being incorporated into the new Google Headquarters.
Did Dickens’s himself ever ventured into these wondrous new stores?
Toronto in the 19th century for all its perceived pretentions of being an upstanding British Empire city, had a dark side that even our great author couldn’t help seeing first hand. On that famous tour of Canada Dickens was appalled with our prison system and the way prisoners were kept.
It must have been bad as England at that time wasn’t exactly a model of prison reform either.
A year after his Toronto visit Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol on December 19th, 1843 and would go on to becoming an holiday classic in books, on stage, as well as TV and movie adaptations.
A Christmas Carol also popularized the phrase Merry Christmas as well as Bah Humbug. I often wonder if Dickens was inspired by anything he saw while in Toronto that would make it’s way into his most famous Christmas story?
Did Dickens while walking down King Street have a chance meeting with a rather nasty old man who would give him the inspiration for ol’ Ebenezer Scrooge or did he bump into a good-natured man tipping his hat just like the mild mannered Bob Crachit would have done?
I think this everytime I find myself on a snowy December eve roaming down the same streets the great man himself would have strolled in 1842.
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, “God Bless Us, Everyone!”
