Creators of the Classic City: The McDonald Surveyors

Stratford’s first city hall was a two-storey structure that doubled as a market building. It also housed a music club, a debating club and concert hall. Police and fire departments were accommodated there, as was the town’s first library.

John McDonald, the six-foot Scott called “StoutMac,” mapped the area and laid out Stratford itself with one of the most attractive plans in Upper Canada.

He was part of Tiger Dunlop’s survey party in May 1827 and highly respected. His job was to map the Huron Tract along with Mahlon Burwell, whose surveys had already opened up much of Upper Canada. John McDonald would become the architect of the whole Huron Tract.

In 1834 he created the Stratford town plan. He placed the geographic centre of town at the meeting point of four townships: Downie, Ellice, North Easthope and South Easthope. That was not far from where Erie and Ontario streets intersect today. He then created three main roads radiating from the centre and named them for the Great Lakes to which they led: Huron, Erie and Ontario. Steadily, more streets were laid out and from and around those three core streets.

Donald McDonald was trained as a surveyor by his cousin John McDonald. Donald worked with John when he was just 16 on numerous surveys and many of the standard maps of the Huron and neighbouring districts were prepared by him.

In 1839 Donald McDonald became an engineer and surveyor in his own right and worked on some early Canadian company maps, including the 1839 map which was a copy of John McDonald’s 1834 map of Stratford that envisioned a city of 35,000 settlers.

In 1855 Stratford was interested in placing a new town hall in the triangle bounded by Wellington, Downie and Grange streets. Donald had the foresight to grasp opportunities from his involvement with surveys. He had a sound knowledge of the area and a good idea of the future prospects. When the small triangular site was up for sale, he took pains to track down its owner and buy it. He sold the land to the municipal council of Stratford with the stipulation to preserve the character of the downtown core.

Market Square was eventually extended southward in 1887 when Donald’s widow Francis, then living in Los Angeles, conveyed for the sum of one dollar a 30-foot strip of land between Wellington and Downie streets to the municipality, again contingent on it being used only as a marketplace. As well, the city was required to replace the pavement fronting the business places on the separate square.

Donald prospered in his first two decades as a young surveyor. In the late 1850s, as the Reform party candidate, he successfully challenged his former superior, Thomas Mercer Jones, for a new seat in the legislative council. He represented the constituency of Tecumseh, which took in 333 municipalities in Huron. In the confederation year, 1867, he was appointed to the senate.

In the triangle of land sold by McDonald to the city, the first town hall was erected. It was a two-storey structure that doubled as a market building. It also housed a music club, a debating club and concert hall. Police and fire departments were accommodated there, as was the town’s first library.

There were stores and butcher stalls on the bottom floor. As a natural outgrowth of the new town hall, the market came to be the social and political hub of the town. The hall was hailed as one of the finest buildings of its kind in Canada.

“Creators of the Classic City” is an ongoing Times series written by Paul Wilker, co-author of the e-book of the same name by him and Gord Conroy. Interested readers can find the free book online at https://online.fliphtml5.com/ypken/pqiv/.