Photo: The Cannon of Whitney Block

The last time I saw a pair of naval cannons on display they were mounted in front of New Westminster City Hall, overlooking the Fraser River and presumably our last line of defense against the Americans. There are another pair in Toronto, in front of the Queen's Park Crescent entrance of the provincial offices at Whitney Block and pointed at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, presumably in case those MPPs get a little too rowdy.

In fact, they're war prizes; the two cannons were taken off the French warship Prudent when it was burned on the last day of the Siege of Louisbourg - July 26, 1758. To put it another way, the cannons at Whitney Block are nearly forty years older than the single oldest surviving structure in the entire City of Toronto. Funny what sort of history you can stumble upon downtown.

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