Entry in the Aberdeen Bon-Accord directory for James’ grocery and spirits shop
In the 1840s and early 1850s Charles’ father James Peterkin had been a grocery and spirits dealer in Woodside, Aberdeen. He also owned a second grocery shop not far away in the big city itself. According to Charles in his memoir, two years after the family arrived in Toronto his “father took a small grocery store on Richmond Street north side just east of York St. in which for nearly a whole year I was shut up and father would not let me go out neither in daytime nor evening and that did not suit me after the life I lived outdoors so long.”
The 1855 Assessment Roll for Toronto showing the properties on Richmond St. W. just east of York St., and James Peterkin “Huckster”.
It turns out that the “small grocery store” would have been little more than a stall with a bookbinder and a waiter as neighbours. According to the City of Toronto Assessment Rolls James Peterkin was at that location in 1855 for one year, occupation “Huckster”! Fortunately the meaning of “huckster” at that time did not imply that James was working on the edges of the law, as it does today. The OED defines the word as “a retailer of small goods, in a petty shop or booth, or at a stall; a pedlar, a hawker.” Ontario sources suggest that a huckster was an unlicensed trader, required to pay a special duty or tax. Several hucksters operated stalls in the St. Lawrence Market on Front St. For customers James may well have relied on law students at Osgoode Hall a block away at the top of York St.
James Peterkin (1797-1876) in a photo now in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The north-east corner of York and Richmond Sts. today, now occupied by the Sheraton Hotel. At the left can be seen the trees fronting Osgoode Hall.
Charles Peterkin's Journey 