FORT ALMOST DIDN'T MAKE IT

By MIKE FILEY -- For The Toronto Sun

City fathers wanted to use land for expressway!

Occasionally, I'm asked my opinion on what is the most historically important site in Toronto.

Without hesitation my answer is Fort York, or to give it its more correct title, the Garrison at York. (The term Fort York, now Historic Fort York, didn't come into regular use until the 1930s when major restoration work for the city's centennial in 1934 turned the fort into a historic site.)

The reason for this assertion is simple. In the latter years of the 1790s the threat ofAmerican hostilities against Britain and her North American provinces were increasing. Anticipating trouble, the Governor of Upper Canada (now Ontario), John Simcoe, decided to establish a naval shipyard within the safety of Toronto Bay. Here vessels would be built to protect the young province against the imminent threat of invasion from south of the border.

Co-incident with the establishment of this shipyard, the Governor also ordered his Queen's Rangers to build a garrison, or fort, to protect the yard and nearby community where the workers and their families lived. This little community, which Simcoe called York, has grown into today's Toronto. The fort has become Historic Fort York.

While nothing physical remains of the old townsite (we still have some of the original street names -- King, George, Frederick, Ontario, Princes, now misspelled Princess), several 1813 structures at the garrison still stand.

These structures witnessed the bloody attack on our community by American forces in late April1813 that resulted in hostile forces occupying the town for nearly a week. A second invasion later in the year and another in the summer of 1814 were both repulsed. America would go on to lose the war it had started.

Canada's defenders consisted of British and Canadian troops with native allies. This was the enemy that U.S. President Madison described as a bunch of pushovers.

Some may be under the impression that once the garrison at York had survived the assaults in 1813 and 1814 and things had settled down, the fort's future was assured. Not so.

Although major work had taken place in the early 1930s to restore the fort, followed by serious attempts to market the site to citizens and tourists, the fort was soon faced by a new assailant. This time the aggressor was the Metropolitan Toronto government.

In the mid-'50s construction had begun on the Lakeshore Expressway. Work started at the Humber River and progressed east to Jameson Ave. The next stretch, Jameson to Spadina, was designed so one of the elevated highway supports would sit in the military cemetery just west of the fort, while a section of highway would soar over the southwest corner supported on two pillars built right into the fort's ramparts.

This proposal, which was supported by city newspapers, was met with outcries from historical societies. Metro Chairman Fred Gardiner (whose name would eventually be given to that cross-waterfront highway) tried to calm things by recommending the fort be moved south to the water's edge in Coronation Park. After all, Simcoe had built it on the water's edge in 1793 so there should be nothing wrong with putting it back there, albeit several hundred yards from its original site.

"Nothing doing," cried the preservationists, a view supported by the federal government based on a little-known covenant between the city and Ottawa signed in 1909 and still in force. In that year, the government had sold to the city much of the land along the waterfront between Dufferin and Bathurst streets (known as Garrison Common) for $200,000 plus the city's agreement to maintain the fort as it was in 1816. In addition, the land on which the fort and the cemetery stood would remain public parkland forever. Game over. The fort stayed put and the engineers altered the route of the highway instead.

On May 22-23 the fort will be the site of Fort York Festival '99 featuring musket drills,dancing, fiddlers, jesters, food and, for the first time, re-creations of Napoleonic battles and cavalry charges.

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