Victoria Memorial Square
Early Years
Part of the Fort York National Historic Site, this park shelters the city's earliest known cemetery to be established by British authorities. In 1794, shortly after the founding of the fort and the Town of York, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe ordered this burying ground laid out in a clearing a short distance from the fort. Simcoe's own infant daughter Katherine was the first to be buried here. At least 400 others - many of them soldiers with their wives and children - were laid to rest in the cemetery before it was closed in 1863.
By then much had changed. In 1837, a plan of subdivision extended the city's street grid westward into the area. The cemetery, oriented by compass to magnetic north (unlike the roads), was enclosed within a new 2.4 ha public square named after Princess Victoria. Victoria Square was mirrored by Clarence Square to the east, and linked to it by an exceptionally wide boulevard called "Wellington Place." Intended to create a prestigious neighbourhood, the subdivision plan called for churches to be built in Victoria Square. However, only the Anglican Church of St. John the Evangelist was ever constructed.
From Burying Ground to Public Park
As the neighbourhood around Victoria Square filled in, .8 of the square's original 2.4 ha were lost to private development or used for the extension of Wellington Street. The cemetery itself suffered vandalism and use as a cattle pasture until the 1880s, when the City moved to protect it by converting it into a public park. The surviving grave markers were removed to the park's western edge, the uneven grave sites levelled, and walks laid out. In 1899, a marble tablet explaining the significant of this place was erected by the Canadian Club of Toronto as part of the city's first series of historical markers. The remarkable monument in the centre of the park was completed in 1907.
By the mid-20th century, the area surrounding the park was dominated by industry, and Victoria Square's history was largely forgotten. Beginning in the 1990s, the move of new businesses and residents into this area transformed it yet again. In 2007, a plan was approved to rehabilitate the park and celebrate its past. Today, hundreds of graves remain largely undisturbed beneath the grass of Victoria Memorial Square.
Plaque via Alan L. Brown's site Toronto Plaques. Full page here.