Table of Contents
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Local Politics at the End of Victoria's Reign
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In 1880, village council moved its meeting room from
the
Robin Hood
Hotel to the second floor of the new
Palmer Block,
pictured on the right, at the northwest corner of Yonge and
Arnold streets.
The
fire engine
house was located on the north end of this building. |
Richmond Hill's
municipal council reflected the settled pace of village life through the last
two decades of the nineteenth century. After its 1880 move from the
Robin Hood Hotel
to the new
Palmer Block (later
called the
Lorne Block, and today
the Central Guaranty Trust Office at 10132
Yonge Street), council
resumed its regular routine of monthly meetings, patronage appointments, tax
levies, and annual elections. Council minutes reflect continuing attention to
such perennial concerns as sidewalk maintenance and fire protection,
poundkeepers, and "nuisance" inspectors.
Most of
Richmond Hill's
leading business and professional men sat on council for a year or two, then
stepped down to make way for others. Such public service was seen as one's
civic responsibility, and at the same time reinforced an upper-middle-class
male domination of village life. Usually, these village fathers moved on and
off council with relative ease and anonymity - although minor issues
occasionally erupted, like Reeve
James
Langstaff's 1880 comic-opera run-in with poundkeeper
Richard Jordan
over a stray Langstaff cow!
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Council acts on a ratepayers' petition and proclaims May
13, 1897, as Arbor Day. |
Yet beneath the apparent lassitude, successive councils
responded to
Richmond Hill's needs
through the last two decades of the old century. In a gesture of support for
the east side of town, Council authorized the opening of
Lorne Avenue and the
southerly extension of
Church Street in
1882. In a vote of
support for new techology, it erected kerosene-burning street lamps and laid
the village's first asphalt sidewalk in 1889.
Council could also swing into action when members
sensed a threat to community morality - the debate over a billiard room licence
in 1885, or the passing of bylaws regulating bicycle riding in 1897. Some
problems, however, seemed incapable of easy solution - like the perennial
question of a dependable water supply for fire-fighting purposes.
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Richmond
Hill High School in its 1897 building at Yonge and
Wright streets,
later part of the municipal building of the Town of
Richmond
Hill. |
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Certificate showing that
Gertrude
Lynett passed her entrance examination in 1889 and would be allowed to
proceed from
public
school to
high
school. |
At times of crisis, Council attempted
rescue operations - too little, too late to save the
Patterson farm
implement business from leaving the district in 1886, but with great
success when a new
high
school was needed ten years later. The old
high
school building on the McConaghy site burned in December 1896, and the
following year a new
Richmond Hill
High School was erected farther north (and further removed from the
temptations of village taverns) at the corner of Yonge and
Wright streets.
Council also took on new,
permanent responsibilities during this period of rising civic activism
throughout North America. In 1884, for instance, it established the
village's
first board
of health and appointed
Dr. William J.
Wilson as medical health officer. That same year it purchased land east
of
Yonge Street for a new
public park, later
building an agricultural hall, curling facilities, oval racetrack, and
bandstand. And in 1892, after years of
debate, council established a
"Lock-Up House" for petty
criminals, vagrants, and other "undesirables" apprehended by the village
constable.
As council dealt with these everyday matters, major
events beyond the control of the local government continued to shape life in
Richmond Hill.
Shortly after four o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, January 22, 1901, news
of Queen Victoria's death reached the community by telegraph. Both the
town bell - now located at the
public
school - and the
Presbyterian Church bell began tolling, flags were silently
run up at half-mast on the
high
school and
public
school buildings, and a "feeling of reverent sadness pervaded the
village."
13
Queen Victoria had been a pervasive spirit in
Richmond Hill for as
long as most residents could remember. For more than sixty years, her 24th of
May birthday served as the community's grandest and most glorious secular
celebration - a school holiday for the children and a
Spring Fair for young
and old. But Queen Victoria was more than a once-a-year presence. Her portrait
hung on most living-room walls. Her name was reverently invoked at religious
and patriotic gatherings as the guiding spirit of both Christian morality and
the British Empire.
Now she was gone, after more than six decades as Queen
and Empress, residents of
Richmond Hill grieved
her death and mourned the passing of an era. On Friday, January 25, a memorial
service was held at the
public
school, and Saturday, the day of her funeral, was declared a public
holiday. On Sunday, the community's churches held memorial services. At its
next meeting,
Richmond Hill Village
Council moved "an expression of universal grief at the bereavement that has
befallen the British Empire by the demise of a Sovereign universally admired
and beloved by all her subjects."
14
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The old order passes - a credit
sale of farm stock and implements at
Elgin Mills in
October 1894. |
Gradually, over the next few years, the stuffiness and
moral propriety of the Victorian Age gave way to the more high-spirited and
fun-loving Edwardian Age, personified by the new monarch, King Edward VII. Even
before Victoria's death, however,
Richmond Hill had
glimpsed aspects of the faster-paced twentieth-century world.
In the spring of 1899, almost two years before,
residents gawked at the first "horseless carriage, run by gasolene" to pass
through the village.
15 And for almost four years,
Richmond Hill had
been served by an equally exciting new transportation phenomenon - the
electric railway.
The
electric railway
and the automobile would shape the new century as the stagecoach and steam
engine had influenced the old.
Notes
13.
Ibid.,
January 24, 1901.
14.
Richmond Hill Village Council,"Mbnutes,"February 15,
1901.
15.
The Liberal,April 27, 1899.
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Copyright © Richmond Hill Public Library Board, 1991
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