His name is written across the neighbourhood where his forest once stood. Alexander Street and Wood Street remember him. And there at the corner where Alexander meets Church, you’ll find a statue erected in his honour. He looks dashing and debonair. In one hand, he holds a top hat and gloves; in the other, an elegant cane. His long coat billows in the wind. He almost seems to smile. Today, he’s celebrated as a social pioneer, commemorated and celebrated. But in 1810, Alexander Wood was driven from the town of York, banished into exile. And more than two hundred years later, the true details of his life remain shrouded in mystery.
Wood arrived in Canada during the very same year York was founded, leaving Scotland to settle in Kingston for a while before making his way to the tiny new capital. When he arrived at the end of the 1700s, there were only a few hundred people living in town; York was still little more than a collection of modest wooden buildings nestled between the forest and the lake. Wood quickly established himself as one of the most successful merchants in the humble capital, serving an elite clientele. He imported all the best goods from London and Glasgow, bringing a small slice of British sophistication to the frontier. His customers included the most powerful people in town, including the lieutenant-governor himself.
In fact, some of them were more than just customers. Wood’s best friends included York’s most influential figures. He was particularly close with the Powells, spending much of his time visiting them at their home. He was good friends with Reverend John Strachan, too. “Our sentiments agree almost upon everything,” the priest enthused. Soon, Wood was appointed as a magistrate, helping to uphold and enforce the law. Some sources suggest he was also hired as inspector general of public accounts, taking on an important role in the colony’s finances. He was a respected leader and entrepreneur with a bright and promising future.
And then it all came crashing down.
The details are hazy, and the truth unclear. But it all started in 1810, when Wood claimed he was approached by a woman named Miss Bailey. According to his account, Miss Bailey told him she’d been raped. Since Wood was a magistrate, she hoped he would be able to bring her attacker to justice. There was one vital clue: during the assault, Miss Bailey had scratched her assailant on his genitals with a pair of scissors. If Wood could find the man with wounded privates, he would find the rapist.
And so, he approached a series of men, explaining they were suspected of the rape, and asking them to unveil their naked groin so he could check and see whether they bore the scratch that would solve the case. One by one, the men agreed. But none of them was scratched and none of them appreciated Wood’s intimate examination.
The story spread quickly through the small town. Wood’s investigation became a scandal. He found himself the object of ridicule — even fear. His business dried up; customers refused to come anywhere near his shop. A new nickname was hurled at him as he walked in the street; they called him the “Inspector General of Private Accounts.”
“I have laid myself open to ridicule & malevolence, which I know not how to meet;” Wood complained to Judge Powell, “that the thing will be made the subject of mirth and a handle to my enemies for a sneer I have every reason to expect.”
But it was more serious than just a bit of public ridicule. Many believed that by forcing the men to undress, Wood had seriously abused his position as a magistrate. An official inquiry into the affair seemed inevitable.
But Alexander Wood had powerful friends. Even though he was horrified by what Wood had done, Judge Powell stepped in and quashed the investigation, letting him go free as long as he promised to leave York and return home to Scotland. That autumn, the merchant packed up his things, left a clerk in charge of his shop, and set sail back across the Atlantic.
His exile didn’t last forever. Wood was able to return after a couple of years — and with the town distracted by the horrors of the War of 1812, it seemed for a while as if he would be able to slip under the radar just enough to carry on his life in Canada, returning to his store and his position as a magistrate. He even renewed his friendship with John Strachan, dining at the priest’s home every week.
Not everyone forgot, though. The Powells never forgave him. Many years later, when Wood was appointed to a panel assessing war claims, Powell refused to swear him in. The old scandal was stirred up once more. This time it ended up in court, where all the sordid details were rehashed for the official record. Wood won, but Powell refused to pay the damages — and the story would follow the merchant for the rest of his life. He would remain a bachelor to the end of his days, raising more than a few eyebrows in a province where homosexuality was not only illegal, but punishable by death according to the letter of the law. Even two centuries later, his notorious scandal is depicted on a plaque attached to the plinth of his statue. He kneels down to examine the exposed crotch of a man with his pants down around his knees, the bare bum polished by the passersby who rub it for luck.
The statue stands on what was once Wood’s own land. Upon returning to York, he bought a patch of countryside beyond the town limits. It was a big swath of old forest, which stood northeast of Yonge and Carlton Streets. Some say the townspeople adopted a derisive nickname for that forest — Molly Wood’s Bush — since molly was a homophobic epithet. In time, Wood’s woods were swallowed up by the city. The grand old trees came crashing down, replaced by homes and stores, restaurants and bars. Today, more than two hundred years after the scandal, Wood’s old land has become home to the heart of Toronto’s LGBTQ+ community. The Church Street Village now stands where those old trees once did.
Wood has become something of a historical gay icon, adopted as a seminal queer figure in the city. But the truth of his life remains a mystery. It’s hard to know what really happened back in 1810, whether Wood made an innocent but terrible mistake, abused his position, or concocted an ill-conceived cover story for consensual sexual relationships with men who were quick to distance themselves once the story went public. In a town where being honest about your sexuality risked not only social ostracization, but exile and even death, it’s impossible to know the truth.
We’ll almost certainly never know for sure whether Alexander Wood was actually gay. We’re not even completely sure what he looked like. The bronze statue that stands at the corner of Alexander and Church is based on the only image of him we think we have: a simple portrait that might not even be him at all. As Ed Jackson points out in the book Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer, the scandalous magistrate is, in many ways, an invention.
The story of Alexander Wood is far from the last time in the city’s history that someone’s sexuality would be shrouded in mystery. Thanks to the prejudices that ruled in the town of York back in the early 1800s — and in the city of Toronto for far too long after that — we know very little about queer pioneers in the city’s founding days. They were there, of course, but forced to live and love in secret. Wood has become a necessary legend, a quasi-mythical figure who stands in for all those we will never know. A confident, sophisticated gay man, top hat and cane at the ready, his coat billowing in the breeze, immortalized in bronze.