Accommodation, refreshment and stagecoach stop.

Details of Site Location: The southwest corner of Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue.

Boundary History: The hotel occupied a large lot at the corner, behind which were grounds that, loosely defined, stretched to the boundary of St. Michael’s Cemetery, and south to near the St. Charles’ School and entrance to the cemetery from Yonge.

Current Use of Property: Commercial building.

Historical Description: The hotel had several names: O’Halloran’s was first and third, Seller’s was second, and the Deer Park Hotel was last. In 1836, Mike O’Halloran Senior built the two-storey wooden hotel facing Yonge. It had three windows and two doors on the main level, and five windows on the second level. Brick chimneys were at either end. A driving shed behind the hotel had a ballroom on the second floor. Yonge Street travellers used the hotel as a stopover while they were en route to places north. But the primary users were the Catholic community, who retired to the hotel for liquid sustenance after burying their dead in the cemetery. During the 1837 Rebellion, when the hotel was only a year old, a large group of rebels would spend the day there, and then would go around the corner to the original route of Yonge (now Poplar Plains Road) and force the wife of postmaster Howard to cook a meal. This poor woman had to accommodate the rowdy rebels for several days. During the famous December march down Yonge Street, the rebels seem to have stopped at every tavern and O’Halloran’s was no exception. Mike Senior turned over the hotel to D. Sellers, who, in turn, handed it on to Mike Junior. Life around the hotel was lively, with sleighing parties and hoe-downs in the ball­room over the driving shed. Patrons of the hotel became used to feeding wild deer that came out of the Heath farm to the northwest and the farther Baldwin lands called Mashquoteh. Eventually, as the Deer Park community began to grow north of St. Clair, the hotel was renamed Deer Park Hotel. The Honourable George S. Henry, a Premier of Ontario and a patron, wrote a letter to J.V. McAree of the Globe and Mail, describing how a hotel ostler prevented a body-snatching at the hotel by some young bucks who stopped for refreshments. In 1915, the intersection of Yonge and St. Clair was a muddy morass. When paving of the streets began, commercial development followed. St. Charles’ School moved away, and the hotel was torn down, along with some later houses built along the south side of St. Clair.

Relative Importance: The hotel was a focal point for the Deer Park area for all of its existence, and an important resting point for travellers on Yonge, who had to face the rigours of travel on a street that still had tree stumps in its centre in the 1830s and 1840s.

Planning Implications: A plaque is merited by the hotel as a social centre in its time, and could be mounted on a wall facing Yonge Street.

Reference Sources: Toronto Reference Library; John Ross Robertson, Landmarks of Toronto; E.C. Guiller, Pioneer Inns and Taverns (1954).