Robert Askelon Rayner

Lot 10, Con. 2 West. Dufferin St. and Wilson Ave. Robert Askelon Rayner, toll-gate keeper at Dufferin and Wilson Avenue. Photo taken prior to 1885. Road building and maintenance was done by contract to private individuals. They received the toll fee and out of this were supposed to maintain the road in good condition. Mrs. Anderson (then Rosamond Rayner) recalls being left in charge of the toll gate one day by her father who operated the gate. The road was in very poor shape and two Englishmen broke a spring in their carriage trying to navigate the road. She replied that the road was not as bad as the two drunken Englishmen who had the contract to repair the road but didn't put any of the toll into repairing the road. Without knowing it, she was talking to just those two 'drunken Englishmen'. When the toll-gate was later removed, the road was maintained by statute labour by the local farmers. This toll house was on the south-east corner of Wilson and Dufferin and projected four feet over the road. Information from Percy Mulholland.