Osgoode Hall; Reminiscences Of The Bench And Bar - nouveau livre

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER. V. INCIDENTS CONNECTED WITH THE HALL AND ITS RECORDS. Aevo rarissima nostro simplicitas.?Ovid. The Osgoode mills of the gods do not always grind. July and August, and from the day before Christmas until 6th of January, are set apart as vacations in which pleadings are not to be filed and only necessary work is to be done. This palace of Minerva was several times taken possession of by the votaries of another deity. After the troublous times of '37, officers of the 93rd Highlanders were quartered in the cast wing, in 1838, and again in 1843. Some of their men occupied rooms in the central part of the building. They had a band stand in front of the Hall on the lawn, then a somewhat marshy piece of ground, and here the citizens flocked in summer evenings attracted by the music and the red coats. There is still an archway at No. 99 King Street west, which was in modern times known as the entrance to a theatre called Royal Lyceum, but when the 93rd Regiment was here, this was the opening to a paved court extending to Wellington Street, and, about this court the rest of the regiment were housed, and on it they were paraded and drilled to the sound of fife and drum. The 43rd Regiment of Foot had quarters, some at the Hall and some in Niagara, in 1838, and were succeeded by a Company of the 32nd Foot, whose band had " Big Charlie " as beater of the great drum. Big Charlie was a burly negro, a professional fencing master and boxer, and taught the manly art to young Canadians, among whom wae Mr.J. B. Robinson, then a sturdy youth, who lived to represent Toronto as Mayor, and M. P., and the Province as Lieutenant- Governor. The lessons were given, as he related, at the old Parliament buildings or at the residence of the Chief Justice. Big Charlie had a neat little ...