CHEWETT, James Grant (1793-1862), son of William Chewett, the Deputy Surveyor for Upper Canada, was born in Cornwall, Ont. and was brought to York (now Toronto) at the age of four years. He learned the skill of drawing while working in his father's office and became a deputy surveyor in 1819. He succeeded his father as Surveyor General in 1832 and made substantial contributions to mapping the province until his retirement from that post in 1841.
His name has been frequently and incorrectly linked with the design of the provincial Parliament Building, Front Street West, TORONTO, ONT., built 1829-33 and only recently confirmed as the work of the Kingston architect Thomas Rogers, for whom Chewett acted as the local site supervisor and clerk-of-works. His business relationship with Rogers was an amicable one; in 1832 Rogers asked Chewett to supervise the construction of another Toronto work, his new design for St. James Anglican Church, King Street East, TORONTO, ONT. (burned 1839). Although never as prolific and as ambitious as Rogers, Chewett nevertheless did possess some skills as a draftsman and delineator. In 1828 his Palladian design submitted in the competition for the Newcastle District Court House was awarded Second Premium. The winner, Archibald Fraser, was asked to incorporate Chewett's facade design into his own scheme. The drawings for this Court House by Chewett survive and can be found at the Ontario Archives, York University, Toronto (OA, D. Coll., 1212-17). In 1831 Chewett prepared a design for the York Town Hall & Market in Toronto, but the project was never realised.
When his father retired in 1832 the younger Chewett became Deputy Surveyor General for Upper Canada and also took an active role in the financial development of the city. He served as alderman in Toronto in 1838-39 and became the first President of the Bank of Toronto in 1856, a position he held until his death in Toronto on 7 December 1862 (obituary The Globe [Toronto], 9 Dec. 1862, 2; biog. History of Toronto and the County of York, 1885, ii, 29; biog. and port. Annual Reports of of the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, 1921, 112-17; biog. and list of works Dictionary of Canadian Biography, ix, 1976, 128-9; inf. Stephen A. Otto, Toronto)