The Aurora Site, also known as the "Old Fort," "Old Indian Fort," "Murphy Farm" or "Hill Fort" site, is a sixteenth-century Huron-Wendat ancestral village located on one of the headwater tributaries of the East Holland River on the north side of the Oak Ridges Moraine in present-day Whitchurch–Stouffville, approximately 30 kilometres north of Toronto.
This Huron ancestral village was located on 3.4 hectares (8.4 acres) of
land and the settlement was fortified with multiple rows of palisades. The community arrived ca. 1550, likely moving en masse from the so-called Mantle Site located nine kilometres to the south-east in what is today urban Stouffville. The Aurora/Old Fort site is located at the south-east corner of Kennedy Road and Vandorf Side Road, east of the hamlet of Vandorf in the town of Whitchurch–Stouffville. The Aurora site was occupied at the same time as the nearby Ratcliff site.
The Rouge River
trail, used by the Huron and then later by the French to travel between
Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe / Georgian Bay, ran through the Aurora
site.
Perhaps the busiest and best documented of these routes
was that which followed the Humber River valley northward ... although
another trail of equal importance and antiquity and used earlier than
the former by the French, extended from the mouth of the Rouge River
northward to the headwaters of the Little Rouge and over the drainage
divide to the East Branch of the Holland River at Holland Landing.
The Aurora/Old Fort site was indiscriminately looted by collectors
throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. An 1885 report
on Whitchurch Township notes that two thousand interments took place on
the site, and that another smaller burial site was found two hundred
yards from the site beside a large pond.
The self-trained archaeologist William Brodie wrote two
archaeological reports on his findings at the Old Fort site (1888; 1901)
dating back to his first visit in 1846. In reference to the Old Fort site, Brodie wrote in 1901:
To say that a ton of archaeological material was collected from the
County of York sites, is a moderate estimate. Some of it is in European
museums, some in the States, and some of it in Laval University,
some of it is still in the hands of amateur collectors, and a little of
it has been secured for the Provincial Museum, but the greater part of
it, once in the keeping of private collectors, is gone, being collected
and lost, as private collections often are.
A complete map of the site was produced in 1930 by the amateur archaeologist Peter Pringle.[7]
The Aurora/Old Fort site was completely excavated in 1947 and 1957 by the University of Toronto. The 1947 dig was the first student excavation by the university, and it was led by John Norman Emerson. Emerson's doctoral work was largely based on the excavations of the Aurora/Old Fort site.
This excavation contributed to the conclusions of archeologists
and anthropologists that the Wendat coalesced as a people in this area,
rather than further east in the St. Lawrence River valley, as was
thought at one time. Findings in the late twentieth century at the Ratcliff Site and in 2005 at the Mantle Site have provided more evidence of sixteenth-century settlements by ancestral Wendat in this region.
In the early 1900's, Sir Henry Pellatt acquired a property in King City
and named it after his wife Mary. Sir Henry was the founder of The
Toronto Electric Light Company in 1883, and also built Casa Loma in
1914.
In the 1940s, when Archbishop McGuigan heard about the work a group of Augustinians were doing in Nova Scotia. He had been interested in opening a spiritual center within the archdiocese, and so he invited the order to start a foundation in King City.
The Augustinians took over an 814 acre estate located on the north-west corner of Keele Street and 15th Sideroad in King City that was originally developed by Sir Henry Pellatt (of Casa Loma fame). The lake on the site, known as Lake Marie, was renamed as Marylake, and the property was dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. The buildings were converted to become a monastery and retreat center. In addition, the Order operated a dairy farm.
On August 15, 1943, 12,000 people attended the dedication of the chapel and blessing of the statue of Our Lady of Grace. On November 11, 1961, the Augustinians were given the care of Sacred Heart Parish in King City. In 1964, a new monastery and shrine were dedicated.
The Marylake Augustinian Monastery
The Marylake Augustinian Monastery, also known as Marylake Monastery, Marylake Shrine, or simply Marylake, is an Augustinian monastery in King City, Ontario, Canada. The campus is nearly 1,000 acres (4.0 km2),
residing on Keele Street, just north of 15th Sideroad (Bloomington).
It
is part of the Province of Saint Joseph, the Canadian province of
Augustinians which operates under the jurisdiction of the Chicago-based
Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel.
Marylake is the chief foundation of the Augustinians in Canada, and is now well known as a spiritual centre for the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto.
Marylake generally refers to the complex which includes the property,
the monastery and shrine, and which operates a retreat centre.The shrine is named the Our Lady of Grace Shrine, whose title is taken from an Augustinian shrine in Lisbon, Portugal. The monastery motto is One mind and one heart unto God.
In 1999, the mendicant order established a school on the property, St. Thomas of Villanova College. It uses the house system, with houses such as St. Augustine, St. Nicholas, St. Rita, and St. Monica.
Mendicant Orders
Mendicant orders are, primarily, certain Christian religious orders that have adopted a lifestyle of poverty, traveling, and living in urban areas for purposes of preaching, evangelization, and ministry, especially to the poor. At their foundation these orders rejected the previously established monastic model. This foresaw living in one stable, isolated community where members worked at a trade and owned property in common,
including land, buildings and other wealth. By contrast, the mendicants
avoided owning property at all, did not work at a trade, and embraced a
poor, often itinerant lifestyle. They depended for their survival on the goodwill of the people to whom they preached.
The term "mendicant" is also used with reference to some non-Christian religions to denote holy persons committed to an ascetic lifestyle, which may include members of religious orders and individual holy persons.
Originally, the property was the farm and summer home of Sir Henry Pellatt, and it was named for his first wife, Mary.
It has been owned by the Augustinians since 1935.
Henry Mill Pellatt
Major-General Sir Henry Mill Pellatt, CVO (January 6, 1859 – March 8, 1939) was a Canadian financier and soldier.
He is notable for his role in bringing hydro-electricity to Toronto, Ontario, for the first time, and also for his large château in Toronto, called Casa Loma,
which was the biggest private residence ever constructed in Canada.
Casa Loma would eventually become a well-known landmark of the city. His
summer home and farm in King City later became Marylake Augustinian Monastery.
Pellatt was also a noted supporter of the Boy Scouts of Canada. His first wife, Mary, was the first Chief Commissioner of the Girl Guides of Canada.
Pellatt was born in Kingston, Canada West (now Ontario), the son of Henry Pellatt (1830–1909), a Glasgow-born stockbroker in Toronto,and Emma Mary Pellatt (née Holland). His great-grandfather was the famous glassmaker Apsley Pellatt.
Pellatt had three sisters and two brothers, Fred Pellatt
(grandfather of Toronto-based freelance writer John Pellatt) and Mill
Pellatt (father of Mary Katherine Pellatt).The latter brother was paymaster of the Toronto Electric Light Company,
a job obtained for him by Pellatt. His sisters were Mary Kate, Marian
Maria and Emily Mountford Pellatt. One of his nieces, Beatrix Hamilton,
was married to Canadian economist and humourist Stephen Leacock.
He was educated at Upper Canada College
before leaving in 1876 to join his father's stock brokerage company,
Pellatt and Osler, as a clerk. In 1882, Pellatt's father and Osler
parted ways, and Pellatt completed his apprenticeship and became a full
member of the stock exchange. In the following year, Pellatt's father set up a partnership with his son under the name Pellatt and Pellatt.
Pellatt married twice, first to Mary Dodgson in Toronto in 1882
and, after Mary's death in 1924, to Catharine Welland Merritt in Toronto
in 1927 (which lasted until her death in 1929). With his first wife, he
had one son, Reginald, who was born in 1885. Colonel Reginald Pellatt (1885–1967) married but had no children.
Much of Pellatt's fortune was made through investments in the railway and hydro-electric industries in Canada, including the Toronto Electric Light Company. He also made significant investment in the Cobalt Lake Mining Company during the Cobalt silver rush of 1903. Later in around 1915, using riches from his Cobalt Lake Mining Company, he invested in the fledging McIntyre Mines in Timmins Ontario. However, legislator Adam Beck
launched a campaign against the great industrialists of Canada,
proclaiming that hydro power "should be as free as air". Through
legislative process and by whipping up anti-rich sentiment, Beck was
able to successfully appropriate Pellatt's life work and take his
electric companies from him. Beck then led a populist revolt to raise
Pellatt's taxes on his castle, Casa Loma, from $600 per year to $12,000.
The strain of losing all of his income, coupled with the large increase
in property taxes for his castle, led him to rely solely on his real
estate investments, which were unsuccessful due to the beginning of World War I.
After the province expropriated his electrical power generating
business, and his aircraft manufacturing business was appropriated by
Beck as part of the war effort during World War I, Pellatt was driven to
near-bankruptcy, which forced him and Lady Pellatt to leave Casa Loma
in 1923. They therefore moved to their farm at Marylake in King City.
Pellatt later built Bailey House in Mimico,
at the bend in Lake Shore near Fleeceline, overlooking the commercial
stretch on Lake Shore (the house later became a Legion Hall and was
demolished to make way for a roadway). He subsequently moved in with his
chauffeur, Thomas Ridgway, and it was in this house that Pellatt died.
After he died on March 8, 1939, thousands of people lined Toronto
streets to witness his funeral procession, and he was buried with full
military honours. He is interred at Forest Lawn Mausoleum, north of Toronto.
The Agricultural School
An agricultural school was established on the grounds in the 1930s by the Basilian fathers, and in 1942 the Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal McGuigan, "invited the Augustinians to establish a shrine and to offer a program of weekend retreats for lay people"
He expressed that it was his own personal dream that it was his hope
that this shrine at the Marylake Center would become not only an
important place of pilgrimage in honor of our Blessed Mother Mary in
this area, but that one day it would officially become the center of
Marian devotion for all Ontario.
The success of this program resulted in the construction of the shrine
in the 1960s, which was dedicated on November 30, 1978 by Cardinal Carter.
The building consists of split fieldstone native to Marylake, based on designs by J. Stuart Cauley.
Marylake held its first mass in 1945. It is the site for a yearly June pilgrimage by 3,000 Danube Swabians for an open-air mass paying "homage to Germans expelled from Eastern Europe".
In October 2012, the Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins,
declared Marylake as one of four official archdiocesan sites of sacred
pilgrimage for the Year of Faith. On February 3, 2013, in a Solemn High
Mass, the Very Reverend Bernard Scianna, O.S.A., Ph.D., Prior Provincial
of the Canadian and Midwest Augustinians,
officially blessed and designated the main entrance to the shrine as a
holy door open to all who come to Marylake seeking the special graces of
the Year of Faith.
The Rosary Path at Marylake
The Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine (Lay Apostolate) gained approval
from the Augustinian Friars to place an environmental sculpture of the
Rosary at Marylake In 2014, ground was broken to build the largest
rosary path in North America. In August 2016, Cardinal Collins blessed
and Opened the rosary path. The Corpus of The Great Crucifix which is at
the beginning of the rosary path was created by the world-renowned
sculptor Timothy Schmaltz. In 2016, Mary's Way of the Cross was added to
the pathway, and in 2017, large (7' X 4') glass panels created by
Stuart Reid were added to the Way of the Cross.
The rosary path at Marylake was conceived by architect Ted
Harasti of Toronto. After receiving a Marian locution on a retreat in
1974, Harasti made it his quest to build the rosary path at the request
of the Blessed Mother Mary.
Pipe organ
The monastery has a pipe organ built from two 1928 Aeolian-Skinner Duo-Art organs, which were obtained in 1960 from the Eaton estate and Seagram estate.Work to combine the two organs began in 1968 and was completed in 1973; it was first played for midnight mass that year.[It has the original leather work, now cracked and torn, and has over 3000 pipes. Marylake plans to repair the organ and transform it to digital operation at a cost of C$100,000.
Filming locations
The 1960s TV series The Forest Rangers used Marylake as a filming location, as it was a good match for lake scenery from Ontario's north.
The Augustinians
The Augustinians, named after Augustine of Hippo (354–430), are members of either of two distinct types of Catholic religious orders, dating back to the first millennium but formally created in the 13th century, and some Anglican religious orders, created in the 19th century, though technically there is no "Order of St. Augustine" in Anglicanism.
Within Anglicanism, the Rule of St. Augustine is followed only by women, who form several different communities of Augustinian nuns in the Anglican Communion.
Within Roman Catholicism, Augustinians may be members of either one of two separate and distinct types of Order:
Several mendicant Orders of friars,
who lived a mixed religious life of contemplation and apostolic
ministry and follow the Rule of St. Augustine, a brief document
providing guidelines for living in a religious community. The largest
and most familiar, originally known as the Hermits of St. Augustine (OESA; Ordo Eremitarum sancti Augustini) and also known as the Austin friars in England, is now simply referred to as the Order of St. Augustine (OSA). Two other Orders, the Order of Augustinian Recollects and the Discalced Augustinians, were once part of the Augustinian Order under a single Prior General. The Recollect friars, founded in 1588 as a reform movement of the Augustinian friars in Spain, became autonomous in 1612 with their first Prior General, Enrique de la Sagrada. The Discalced friars became an independent congregation with their own Prior General in 1592, and were raised to the status of a separate mendicant order in 1610.
Various congregations of clerics known as Canons Regular who also follow the Rule of St. Augustine, embrace the evangelical counsels and lead a semi-monastic life, while remaining committed to pastoral care appropriate to their primary vocation as priests. They generally form one large community which might serve parishes in the vicinity, and are organized into autonomous congregations, which normally are distinct by region.
Charism
In a
religious community, "charism" is the particular contribution that each
religious order, congregation or family and its individual members
embody. The teaching and writing of Augustine, the Augustinian Rule, and the lives and experiences of Augustinians over sixteen centuries help define the ethos (principles) and special charism of the order.
As well as telling his disciples to be "of one mind and heart on the way towards God", Augustine of Hippo taught that
"Nothing conquers except truth and the victory of truth is love" (Victoria veritatis est caritas),
and
the pursuit of truth through learning is key to the Augustinian
ethos,
balanced by the injunction to behave with love towards one
another.
It does not unduly single out the exceptional, especially
favour the gifted, nor exclude the poor or marginalised.
Love is not
earned through human merit, but received and given freely by God's free
gift of grace, totally undeserved yet generously given.
These same
imperatives of affection and fairness have driven the order in its
international missionary outreach.
This balanced pursuit of love and learning has energised the various
branches of the order into building communities founded on mutual
affection and intellectual advancement.
The Augustinian ideal is
inclusive.
Augustine spoke passionately of God's "beauty so ancient and so new", and his fascination with beauty extended to music. He taught that "whoever sings prays twice" (Qui cantat, bis orat) and music is also a key part of the Augustinian ethos.
Contemporary Augustinian musical foundations include the famous Augustinerkirche in Vienna, where orchestral masses by Mozart and Schubert are performed every week, as well as the boys' choir at Sankt Florian in Austria, a school conducted by Augustinian canons, a choir now over 1,000 years old.
Augustinians have also produced a formidable body of scholarly works.
We observe few feature in the pictures. Some of the windows are half of their length underground. Was this mud flooded building? If so when? Why would somebody build in Canada windows that are facing nothing when you have square km of land. and the building is in top of a hill.
Similar round elements in top of exterior lighting devices outside the building. We observe two type of constructions in the towers of these buildings one is round and another is octagonal as if they were built in different eras. Are the stairs connecting the second floor of the building ?
The site is located at the south side of the Oak Ridges Moraine and includes a kettle lake, a residual depression resulting from the retreat of the last ice age.Signs of native occupation abound in the area and are more widely known in adjacent townships with a few (35) identified in King. This is not because there was little settlement but as there has been less archaeology work in King ( lack of development until recently) than elsewhere.An Archaeology Report was prepared for the site by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority in October 2009. It was a stage one review of the area and it identifies the area around Lake Seneca as an area of high probability for archaeological remains of native occupation to exist.To the east of the site a system of rivers and streams was a significant canoe route between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe with a major portage required around what is called the Carrying Place.The native nations who occupied the area shifted in time and their history is complex. They Included the Huron and Neutral Nations. These later moved north. Other Algonquian speaking groups also used the area such as the Anishinaabe whomigrated eastward from the east coast, the Ojibway, Mississauga, and Cree.
In the late 18th Century after the American Revolution, the Crown began a series of land purchases and the establishment of specific land reserves for the local Natives.Such a reserve was created in this area for the Mississaugians in 1783, however this was altered by the Toronto Purchase.The area was included in the surveying of the Province in the County of York, and defined as King Township.
1800The lands were surveyed first in 1800 but this continued up to 1859. Lots were laid out on a line / concession grid. There are 12 concessions running west from Yonge Street of 1.25 miles and 7 side-roads running east west. Lots of c. 200 acres were created within this grid.18101820
Thomas Ferguson, part lots 4-5, Con 2. Born In Ayershire Scotland he became a weaver. He emigrated to Canada in 1820 to continue on as a weaver and farmer. In 1820 the property was totally bush land, he cleared the farm, made money as both weaver and farmer and died very comfortable.
1830
The Presbyterian Church began in 1834 as a shared use in a log building constructed as a school house
1840
Eversley Presbyterian church was constructed in 1843 on land purchased from Joseph Wells on Lot 9 Concession 3. This is still standing. The modest single storey church was constructed of stone rubble in a simple gothic style.Also in 1843 a new red brick building was constructed for the school, replacing the old log cabin. This school was further replaced by a buff brick school in 1883In 1847 Jon Ferguson owned lot 10 Concession 3 and on it built a saw mill. The dam for the sawmill created a mill pond out of the swampy depression south of the lake. The Mill pond extended north across the side road and connected to the lake. This depression can still be seen in the landscape.Thomas Ferguson second son of elder Thomas, bought last parts of lots 12, 13, and 14. con 3. Ferguson left the forest around the lake when he cleared for the farm.The lake was known as Ferguson Lake, later known as Lady Eaton Lake.All the kids went fishing here on May long weekend. He stocked the lake with carp and felt later he had made a mistake!
!850-1860
A store was opened in Eversley which included a post office in 1865. This was one of the first Buildings in the Hamlet
1870
In 1878 Job Wells and his brother James build a very successful cheese factory on the south west corner of lot 10.
1880
The now “old” red brick schoolhouse was replaced by a buff brick school which still survives as a part of a local private junior school / daycare.1910In 1912, Sir Henry Pellatt purchased over 1000 acres extending to and across Keele St. It also included a small kettle lake which he called Mary Lake after his wife. It is still known as Marie Lake.Pellatt installed a small railway for his guests convenience and this included a small station where the Horse Barn now stands and generally to service the estate. This was connected to the Grand Trunk Railway. With the encouragement of Sir. Henry Pellatt the Eaton family begin the acquisition of lands that will become the Eaton Estate. The initial purchase is the Ferguson Farm in 1919 and included lots 11 and 12, concession 3.. The assembly continues and the entire lake is included in the acquired lands. It had been called Ferguson Lake, but this was renamed Lake Johnda after their son (John David).
1920
The Eaton family completes the assembly of farms to create an estate of c. 696 acres. They use the old Ferguson House as a weekend retreat, and work on the development of the working farm and cattle for a dairy operation.
Eaton First Store: 1869
Timothy Eaton came to Canada from County Antrim (now in Northern Ireland) in 1854. He was part of the large wave of Irish migration
during the 1840s and 1850s, and joined his eldest brother and sisters
in Upper Canada. With his brother James, he entered into the dry goods
and retail business, first in Kirkton, then St. Mary’s, Ontario.
Eventually, Timothy and James began quarrelling over their business
practices, and Timothy left for Toronto.
In Toronto, Timothy and wife Margaret paid $6,500 for a dry goods
retail operation. In December 1869, they opened a store that accepted
cash only, at a fixed price, breaking with expectations of bargaining
and credit sales. While not the first to do this in Canada, it was a
bold decision for a new business. To attract customers, Eaton emphasised
both quality and low prices, and also placed well-priced items in front
of the store or just inside the doorway. He also developed a novel
“Goods Satisfactory or Money Refunded” policy in 1870 — if the customer
wasn’t happy, he would refund their money. Eaton also distinguished
himself from competition by seeking to cut out wholesalers as much as
possible. Most retailers relied on wholesalers who brought goods from
manufacturers; Eaton went to the United Kingdom and Europe himself and
bought directly from suppliers.
Timothy Eaton, died suddenly of pneumonia in 1907, and John Craig took over as
company president. Eaton’s expanded under John Craig’s watch, with new
mail order and distribution centres reaching Saskatoon and Regina, Saskatchewan and Moncton, New Brunswick between 1916 and 1920.
Eaton’s grew at a rapid pace during the 1920s as consumer demand grew.
Timothy Eaton’s nephew, Robert Young (R.Y.) Eaton, took over the firm
after John Craig’s death, from influenza, in 1922. The expansion included purchasing the Montréal retail firm Goodwin’s Limited. Through the decade, department stores were opened in Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta; Saskatoon and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; Hamilton and Port Arthur, Ontario; and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The company further grew after purchasing a small chain of retail
stores, Canadian Department Stores, giving the company a presence
throughout Ontario, including Chatham, Belleville, and Huntsville.
So basically Lady Eaton Build it since her husband died in 1922. Something is wrong here.
The Official Story according To Wikipedia
Eaton Hall is a large house in King City, Ontario, Canada, built in the Norman style for Lady Eaton in 1938-39 on a 700-acre (2.8 km²) parcel of land (partly the Ferguson farm). Lady Eaton and her husband, Sir John Craig Eaton acquired the land in 1920 and 1922 on recommendation from their friend Sir Henry Pellatt, who owned the nearby Mary Lake property. Lady Eaton moved into Eaton Hall three years after selling her city mansion, Ardwold. The house is adjacent to a body of water named Lake Jonda (a combination of the first three letters of her son John David Eaton's first and middle names), and nestled within the temperate forests of King Township. Upon completion, it contained 72 rooms. It became a beloved gathering place for the Eaton Family, owners of the Eaton's department stores based in Toronto.
Site plans and surveys for the property dating from 1921 to the 1930s all refer to its location being in Eversley.Design was started in 1932 by architects Peter L. Allward and George Roper Gouinlock, son of architect George Wallace Gouinlock (later by firm Allward and Gouinlock). Construction was completed in 1939 and was supervised by John W. Bowser of the Aurora Building Company.Its construction incorporated stones sourced from the nearby Humber River.
A history of the estate, Eaton Hall: Pride of King Township, was published by The History Press, an imprint of Dundurn Press in June 2015.
Flora Eaton was a member of the Toronto Hunt Club.In 1929, it split into the Eglinton Hunt Club and the Toronto and North York Hunt Club.
Hunters of the latter held regular outings, meeting for breakfast at
Eaton Hall, riding in the adjacent Pellatt Estate, then ending the day
with an afternoon tea at Eaton Hall.
During WWII, the property was used as a convalescent hospital and rehabilitation centre for the Royal Canadian Navy from 1944 to 1946.
After Lady Eaton's death in 1970, the land was sold to Seneca College, which was then a provincially
funded college of applied arts and technology. It established its King
Campus operations on that land in 1971, using Eaton Hall as its
administrative facility. In 1977, a new facility was built for the
expanding college, and Eaton Hall became a Management Development Centre
until 1991, at which time it was converted to a public hotel and conference centre.
Eaton’s, founded by a Northern Irish immigrant, was closely tied to the
idea of Canada as part of the British world and empire. The firm
celebrated the links between Eaton’s, the railroad, and Canadian
industrial and economic development. For instance, advertisements cast
the company’s expansion into Winnipeg
as a major moment not just for the company, but also for Canadian
western expansion. The company took pains to emphasize the links
between Canadian and British identity and colonialism. Company stores
marked coronations and royal visits to Canada with lavish decorations,
Union Jacks and other icons of Britain; this was done for the visit of
the future King Edward VII in 1901, the coronation of King George VI in
1937, as well as King George’s subsequent visit in 1939. During the First World War, John Craig’s efforts to provide and promote contributions to the war effort led to his knighting in 1915.
Sir
John Craig Eaton is the original owner but didn't live long enough to
see its completion. Lady Flora McCrae Eaton was his wife; she lived
there. This establishment served to care for burn victims from World
War II. One of their sons hanged himself on the third floor in a
'circular' room (the room is located to the left of the elevator). Their
other son apparently drowned in the lake. Lady Flora supposedly walks
the halls; some staff members have seen her. One staff member said,
"...if you see her, say hi".
Filed for bankruptcy; assets were purchased by Sears Canada in 1999. Several stores were re-opened by Sears under the eatons brand, but all were converted to Sears stores or shut down in 2002.
In 1869, Timothy Eaton sold his interest in a small dry-goods store in the market town of St. Marys, Ontario, and he bought a dry-goods and haberdashery business at 178 Yonge Street in the city of Toronto.
The first store was only 24 by 60 feet (7.3 m × 18.3 m), with two
shop windows, and was located a fair distance from Toronto's then
fashionable shopping district of King Street West.
In its first year of operation, with Timothy Eaton responsible for
buying the goods to stock the store, and a staff of four, expectations
were low that a store with a no-credit and no-haggling policy would
succeed.
The business prospered, and Eaton moved the store one block north
in August 1883 into much larger premises at 190 Yonge Street. The new
store boasted the biggest plate-glass windows in Toronto, the first
electric lights in any Canadian store, three full floors of retail space
featuring 35 departments, and a lightwell
that ran the full-length of the store. The store's first telephone,
with phone number 370, was installed in 1885. In 1886, the first
elevator in a retail establishment in Toronto was installed in the Eaton
store (although only customers going up were invited to use the
elevator, thus requiring them to pass by the various store displays on
their walk down).
Eaton maintained the lease on the empty store at 178 Yonge Street
until its expiry in 1884 in order to delay the expansion plans of one
of his competitors, Robert Simpson. Over time, the competition between the Simpson's
and Eaton's department stores, facing each other across Queen Street
West, became one of Toronto's great business rivalries. The pedestrian
crosswalk on Queen Street West, just to the west of the intersection
with Yonge Street, was for years one of the busiest in Canada, as
thousands of shoppers a day comparison-shopped between Eaton's and
Simpson's.
By 1896, Eaton's was billing itself as "Canada's Greatest Store".
The store continued to expand in size, and new buildings were
constructed to house the mail order division and the Eaton's factories.
The number of people employed in Eaton's operations numbered 17,500 in
1911. In 1919, the Eaton's buildings in Toronto contained a floor space
of over 60 acres (240,000 m2), and occupied several city blocks between Yonge Street and Bay Street, north of Queen Street West.
Cargo Cult or Wireless Electricity?
