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Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915) is remembered for accomplishments of sweeping scope and magnitude. His work as a surveyor laid much of the groundwork for a network of railways that stretched from Halifax to the Pacific Ocean, and his invention and promotion of universal time played a major role in standardizing timekeeping around the world. Fleming’s remarkable career is also significant for contributions of a much smaller and more local scale. The Blue Barracks of Fort York holds an important artifact that commemorates Fleming’s connection with Toronto’s waterfront: a model of the western entrance to Toronto harbour built by the surveyor and engineer in 1850 to demonstrate that nature was quickly taking away the unrivalled advantage of a sheltered bay that had drawn John Graves Simcoe to establish a permanent settlement on its shore less than sixty years earlier.
Sandford Fleming left his native Scotland in April 1845 livelihood as a surveyor in Canada West. He to pursue his initially stayed with family in Peterborough before settling in Toronto in 1847. Part-time surveying work helped Fleming develop connections with the city’s prominent engineers and architects, including John Howard, Kivas Tully, and Frederic Cumberland. The bulk of his income came from employment with Scobie and Balfour, printers and lithographers, and after 1848, much of Fleming’s time was spent drawing and engraving the large topographical plan of Toronto published by Hugh Scobie in 1851. It was left to Fleming to fill in many of the details not included in initial surveys for the plan. His early diaries, which were edited by Jean Murray Cole and published by Natural Heritage Books in 2009, reveal a growing involvement with Toronto’s waterfront. He surveyed the Garrison Reserve in July 1848, as well as sections of the lakeshore in early 1849. Work went on regardless of the season; in January 1850 Fleming was on skates, taking soundings through the ice covering the bay. By April he was attempting to track down a pamphlet on the harbour’s development, the result of a curiosity that extended well beyond the requirements of mapmaking. This time in Fleming’s life was also marked by growing prominence within his professional community despite his relative youth (Fleming was in his early twenties during his years in Toronto). He was among a group of ten individuals who met in the office of Kivas Tully on 20 June 1849 to start an association of surveyors, engineers, and architects who would exchange ideas through scientific papers and discussion. This initiative became the Canadian Institute, and by March 1850 it had settled into a schedule of weekly meetings (now the Royal Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Science). Sandford Fleming was a frequent speaker at its meetings, and on the evening of June 1, he spoke for nearly an hour on “Toronto Harbour – Its Formation and Preservation.” Box 183, Toronto, M5A 1N1 3 The Fife and Drum / Website: www.fortyork.ca
The text of his presentation was published in 1853-1854 in The Canadian Journal: A Repertory of Industry, Science, and Art; and a Record of the Proceedings of the Canadian Institute. Fleming attributed Toronto’s prosperity “to the unequalled excellence of this harbour” at a time when water borne transportation was essential for exporting staples and importing manufactured goods. An examination of old charts, however, revealed a serious problem: nature was quickly closing the harbour’s only entrance. Wind and waves eroded the Scarborough Bluffs and lake currents carried the sediment westwards. The currents were slowed by the delta of the Don River, leading to the deposit of more than twelve hectares of sediment along the peninsula that bordered the harbour’s southern edge since Joseph Bouchette’s survey of 1792. About 8,410 cubic metres of sand were added to the shoal at the northern tip of the peninsula each year, reducing the navigable channel through the harbour’s western entrance from 439 metres in 1792 to 110 metres in 1850.
Toronto Harbour, showing the Form and Position of the Shoal in 1850.”This clay relief model, measuring approximately 44 by 52 centimetres, shows Garrison Creek, Fort York, and various structures in this vicinity, the Queen’s Wharf (built in 1833 in an attempt to constrict and accelerate the water passing through the western entrance so that sediment would be scoured from the channel), and the tip of the peninsula to the south. Fleming added lines to indicate the northerly edge of the shoal in 1792, 1828, and 1835, as well as his estimate of its location in 1865. Navigation through the channel would be impossible, cutting off Toronto from its connection to regional and international trading unless the groyne or breakwater was constructed as shown on the model.
Fleming discussed several potential solutions for nature’s attack upon the commercial viability of Toronto harbour and its port, including a breakwater along the south edge of the entrance channel and revival of a proposition, first put forward in 1835, to construct an eastern entrance to the harbour (storms finally delivered this remedy in 1858 when the peninsula was permanently breached). His remarks were well received, and sparked much discussion. Buoyed by this interest, Fleming petitioned the City and the Toronto Board of Trade so that he could Sandford Fleming. Model of the lay his concerns before those (Courtesy of Christopher Baker, who could effect solutions to the harbour’s problems. Council deferred the matter to its Committee on Wharves and Harbours, and when the Board of Trade called a special meeting to hear Fleming’s views, only its secretary turned out. Fleming was ahead of his time. The harbour would be studied for several more decades before his breakwater was finally constructed, and a new Western Channel constructed in deeper water to provide a final solution to the steady northerly march of the sandy shoal. The hydrological forces that challenged Fleming and other civil engineers are captured in his “Model of the Entrance to 4 The Fife and Drum
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