A Walk Down History

In 1819, the Reverend Alexander Macdonell, a Scottish priest and a Vicar General of the Diocese of Quebec, for Upper Canada, was named Auxiliary to the Bishop of Quebec and Titular Bishop of Rhesaena, and in 1826 Upper Canada was erected into a separate diocese and Bishop Macdonell was named first Ordinary with the title of Bishop of Kingston. As Vicar General and later as Bishop, he made many missionary tours through the country which is now the Province of Ontario.

The following are some of the priests most likely to have made missionary visits to Scarborough in the years following the building of the church at York. They were stationed either at York or appointed to visit the outside missions.

• Reverend James Crowley, first resident pastor at York, arrived in September 1824 and remained until March, 1826.
• In May 1827, the Reverend Angus Macdonell, nephew of the Bishop, was sent as pastor of St. Paul’s.
• In August of 1828, Reverend William J. O’Grady came to York, at first assisting Father Macdonell and then being named pastor and later Vicar General.
• We learn from a Register of the Baptisms performed by the Reverend Edward Gordon in the Townships above York, during his mission of three years and five months, that he performed a baptism in Scarborough on January 20, 1833, that of James Cavanagh, son of Francis Cavanagh and Lucinda Jones, sponsors being Daniel Doyle and Jane Mullin; but most of Father Gordon’s missionary labours were, as he said, in the Townships above York. A list of these places gives some idea of the distances he had to travel; York town and township, Toronto township, the Gore of Toronto, Etobicoke, Vaughan, Markham, Scarborough, Whitchurch, East Gwillimbury, King, Tecumseth, Adjala, Trafalgar, Streetsville, Holland Landing, Thorah, Brock, Georgina, Newmarket, Esquesing, Chinguacoucy, Caledon, Mono, Albion, Niagara, St. Catharines, Lake Simcoe, Deep Cut, Mara, the Narrows (Orillia) Mulmer, Dundas Street, Yonge Street. What a job a parish priest had in those days!
• Reverend William P. McDonagh, who came to York in September, 1833 and was stationed at St. Paul’s for several years, wrote to Bishop Macdonell at Kingston in March, 1837: “I have taken the census of this place as correctly as I could, the total amount between males and females is, two thousand one hundred and nineteen. There are upwards of one hundred and fifty in Whitby and Pickering, whose names we have not got as yet, until some reasonable opportunity offers for going to those distant Townships.”
• Father Thomas Gibney, writing in the following month, remarked on how busy he and Father McDonagh had been during Lent and reported that while he had not had time since his arrival to visit the townships between Toronto and Port Hope, that Father McDonagh had paid these townships a visit.
• The Reverend Michael R. Mills, sent by the Bishop in the summer of 1838, to make a missionary tour of the townships around Toronto and Lake Simcoe, reported as follows, “I send an account of the number of Catholic inhabitants of the different townships which I lately visited and I am happy to say that all, except perhaps about ten, have been to Easter Communion. The above I believe tolerably correct. I know that I am not above the mark.”