At Dupont looking South	At Lane # 0702 looking north

Patrick McGregor (1816 - 1882) was a Toronto Lawyer who built his "mansion" at # 2 Vermont Ave. probably in 1870s, making it a uniquely large home for the Seaton Village area. His two lots stretched from Bathurst, west across Ontario St. (present day Palmerston Ave.) to Hope St. (now Manning Ave.) It should be listed and restored and preserved as a heritage building.

According to the records provided by Mr. Paul Leatherdale, Archivist, The Law Society of Upper, Canada, Osgoode Hall:

"Name: MacGregor, Patrick (or McGregor)
Death date: 1882-01-28
Admission date: Easter Term 1834
Called to Bar: 1857-08-24
Sworn in: 1857-11-17
Practice location: Toronto (Ont.)
Other information: Died at the age of 66.

It's odd that there is such a long gap between his admission as a student and his call to the Bar (over 20 years). It is usually 5 years between the two. We have no idea what he was doing in between."

Some answers arise in a publication called Heritage Considerations for Seaton Village: Part II Plan, written by the Community History Project, 1992:

Referencing Cotterell's Map of Seaton Village 1878: within Farm Lot 26:

"Patrick McGregor owned lots 9 and 12 complete; ... (he) was not a market gardener at all, but a barrister. He was a Scot who arrived in Canada in 1833 and was for a time, Headmaster of the Kingston Grammar School where one of his pupils was Oliver Mowatt. He returned to Edinburgh and took his M.A. then emigrated to New York where he worked again as a Headmaster until summoned to Canada by Mowatt. In 1857 he was admitted to the Canadian Bar. He continued his scholarly pursuits and published books of translations, on logic and mathematics. When he died in 1882, he was 66 years of age, and was President of the Gaelic Society of Toronto. His wife Marion, continued to live in their large brick house on Bathurst Street, now numbered 2 Vermont, and still standing."

The lane leading to parking area of the "multi-unit building" would recognize his contribution to early Toronto. It has been the residence of poet and diplomat Kenneth Porter Kirkwood, (1899-1968) in the 1920's while he attended U of T. In the early 1960's, novelist and fiction writer, Austin Clarke (b. 1934) lived at this address. See: Toronto: A Literary Guide; by Greg Gatenby, McArthur and Company, Toronto, 1999, p. 345.

While a McGregor Road exists in Scarborough, using his full name should avoid confusion for EMS workers.