Tour of the Toronto Necropolis

Today Mom, Dad and I went to the Necropolis. We were on a tour with the staff and volunteers from Mackenzie House.

The first stop we made was at George Brown's grave. George Brown started the newspaper called the Globe. It's now the Globe and Mail. He was involved in politics and he was even Premier of Western Canada for a couple days. The style of grave is called a Wolf Stone because his body is buried under the length of the stone so wolves wouldn't be able to dig it up.

When people needed more land in "Muddy York", they decided to move the bodies from the Potters Field which was at Yonge and Bloor. They moved most of them to the Necropolis and some were moved to Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

The reason why we came on this walk today was that we wanted to learn more about the Toronto Rebellion in 1837. We saw the grave site of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews.

They wanted to have a better form of government and they died because they were involved in the Toronto Rebellion.
They were both hanged.

Bruce Beaton played the part of Samuel Lount and he let us know some of the things that Samuel Lount might have been thinking as he was coming closer to his execution.
Samuel Lount was blacksmith. He was a good man and he stopped Mackenzie from burning down Sheriff Jarvis' house. He tried to go to the US after the rebellion, but he was caught and accused of treason.

He was buried in the old Potter's Field but Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews' bodies were moved to the Necropolis.

The people who were involved in the rebellion were pardoned, but it was too late for Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews. Here are pictures of the monument that was built to commemorate their deaths.

 The broken column means that their lives were cut short.


As we were walking through the Necropolis, Mom took this picture of the chapel. I liked the fall colours.

This wall shows some of the people who are buried at the Necropolis.

This is another view inside the cemetery.

I was surprised to see Bruce Beaton again. This time he played the part of William Lyon Mackenzie's son-in-law, George Lindsey. He talked about what life would have been like with the Mackenzie family.

And afterwards he played the part of George Mackenzie (William Lyon Mackenzie's son) who died in a railway accident in the United States.

We learnt a lot about William Lyon Mackenzie's family life here.

After the tour, we took a stop at Jack Layton's grave.

And we also stopped off in the chapel for a couple minutes.

Here is a picture of the outside of the chapel.

I want to say a special thank you to Chris and Alex for leading the group and a big thank you to Bruce Beaton for acting out the roles.

Here is a link to Heritage Toronto's website about William Lyon Mackenzie

http://heritagetoronto.org/the-private-life-of-a-very-public-man/