Pioneer Information
Born in Rathen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Mundie studied architectural drafting and landscape gardening in his homeland, before immigrating in 1850 to Hamilton, Ontario, which was home to a sizeable Scottish community. He arrived at a time when an increasingly prosperous citizenry and the construction of public institutions and gardens were opening the door to landscape gardening as a profession. Mundie initially designed several gardens and conservatories for private estates on Hamilton Mountain, but his first major commission came in Toronto, where, in 1853, he laid out the grounds of the Toronto Normal School on Gould Street, which included a botanical garden and land for experimental agriculture. The campus soon became a popular destination for the public, and was re-named St. James Square. Mundie was also commissioned to design the grounds for Trinity College, then on Queen Street in Toronto, and he established a residence in the city in 1854. Several projects followed, notably a master plan (completed by Edwin Taylor) for the grounds of the University of Toronto, which included a botanical garden south of University College. Mundie also designed a glass conservatory for railroad magnate Joseph C. Morrison’s residence (known as ‘Woodlawn’) on Yonge Street, and in the later 1850s he laid out the public cemetery (now Victoria Lawn Cemetery) for the Town of St. Catharines, Ontario, whose curving roads and Picturesque plan echo those of other rural cemeteries designed in the U.S. during this period. Mundie was a founding member of the Hamilton Horticultural Society in 1850, and he died eight years later in Hamilton at the age of 47.
