Toronto Sketches

The Way We Were

Mike Filey

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 1992
• ISBN:
  9781459710931
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Mike Filey's "The Way We Were" column in the Toronto Sun continues to be one of the paper's most popular features. In Toronto Sketches Filey brings together some of the best of his columns.

Each column looks at Toronto as it was, and contributes to our understanding of how Toronto became what it is. Illustrated with photographs of the city's people and places of the past, Toronto Sketches is a nostalgic journey for the long-time Torontonian, and a voyage of discovery for the newcomer.

A Street by Any Other Name . . .

June 9, 1985

While the origins of a great number of Metro Toronto’s street names are relatively easy to deduce (pretty words, catchy words, simple words), there are a few names that we’ll probably never discover the reasons for since the story behind the selection years ago was never documented. I can think of several that seem so obvious yet, so far, the reasons remain obscure; Pharmacy, Martin Grove, McNicoll and Robina, to name just a few.

Scattered around Metro are many streets whose names have come about as a result of an association with a historic event in the city’s past. Take Temperance Street, for instance. Running between Yonge and Sheppard streets in downtown Toronto, this little thoroughfare was cut through the property of Jesse Ketchum who, as a young man of 17, moved to the fledgling Town of York from New York State, eventually settling on the farm of his brother near the busy little community of York Mills, several miles north of the little town.

At the age of 30, Jesse moved into town and bought a tannery on the west side of Yonge Street just south of Queen. In 1845, he laid out a street through his property and, because of his aversion to the consumption of liquor (his father had been an alcoholic) named the new thoroughfare Temperance Street. Land deeds drawn up for property on the new street decreed that liquor would not be sold in any building fronting on the street. It was only natural that the street took the name Temperance.

In the Queen Street/Broadview Avenue part of town there’s a small thoroughfare called Sunlight Park Road. Back in 1886, the city’s first professional baseball team began playing at a baseball field that was located just east of the mouth of the Don River and south of Queen Street. Because of the field’s proximity to the Sunlight Soap factory (now Lever Brothers) and with the ever-present smell of Sunlight soap in the air, the name Sunlight Park was a natural.

For a time, we also had Baseball Place in the same part of town. However, with the expansion of a Japanese car dealership on Queen Street just west of Broadview Avenue, that name disappeared in the name of progress.

One of Etobicoke’s major north-south streets is Kipling Avenue. The assumption has always been that it was named for the famous English author, Rudyard Kipling, but why and when remains a mystery. Some investigative work has produced the following details that may (or may not) shed some light on the events leading up to the street’s name.

Jesse Ketchum (1782–1867).

Toronto’s first extensive industry was Ketchum’s tannery that occupied theYonge/Queen/Bay/Adelaide block.

Sketch from Toronto’s 100 Years.

In 1907, Kipling visited Toronto as part of a North American tour. On his itinerary was a visit to the Woodbridge Fair where he was to officially open the event. At the last minute he was forced to cancel his visit to the fairgrounds, but it’s not difficult to imagine that the trip to Woodbridge from the city might have included using some portion of what was called in those days, simply, the Second Line. Perhaps someone dubbed it Kipling’s road (to Woodbridge) and the name stuck even though Kipling never made it to Woodbridge.

If you have any interesting stories about how some of the streets in and around Metro Toronto got their names, I’d be glad to hear about them. Perhaps they’ll even find a place in a new book I plan to write listing the origins of as many Toronto street names as I can find.

Yuletide in Little York

December 24, 1989

Well, the big day is almost here. Soon family and friends will gather to exchange gifts, enjoy fabulous taste delights and share all the good feelings that this special time of year brings, feelings that we wish could prevail all year long.

It goes without saying that our Toronto, the Toronto of 1989, is very much different than the city our parents or their parents knew. Better? Perhaps. Different? Without question!!

Back in the 1930s and 1940s, a gentleman I’d like to know more about, Mr. Percy Ghent, contributed a multitude of stories to the old Telegram newspaper, stories that focused on the changing face of his Toronto.

One of those stories is particularly interesting, especially when read at this time of year. Ghent’s Christmas offering first appeared on December 23, 1933, the year before Toronto celebrated its 100th anniversary as a city, and in it Percy took his readers on an imaginary trip around his hometown as he believed it might have looked 100 years earlier.

His story brought to life the hustle and bustle throughout York, as Toronto was then known, on Christmas Eve in the community’s last full year as a town. On March 6, 1834, the Town of York became the City of Toronto. Now, 56 years after his story was first published, Percy Ghent’s story is even more entertaining.

I’d like to share with my readers Mr. Ghent’s entertaining story, “Yuletide in Little York.”

Yuletide in little York – what was it like here during the festive season a century and more ago? What was it like, say, on December 24, 1833, when the town boasted less than 10,000 souls, but was sticking out its chest with pride at the prospect of becoming a real grown-up city in the New Year? Henry Scadding and other historians of Toronto’s infancy have left such detailed records of the scene that it is easy to make a tour in fancy, a sleigh ride if you like, around the little town; and the sights are well worth seeing.

That giant sign above the Steamboat Hotel on the bay shore, for instance, is one of the star attractions. Over the upper veranda of the hotel, it extends for the entire length of the building and on it is a steamboat of almost the same length. Smoke belches from the stacks and the bow wave breaks in spray, and there’s a foamy wake from sidewheel to stern.

At Front and John streets stands the Greenland Fishery Inn. Its famous sign depicts whaling vessels capturing one of those sea monsters. All on Yonge Street, and all with their quaint old signs, you’ll find the Bird In Hand, the Sun Tavern, the Golden Bull and the Red Lion.

On Front Street there’s the White Swan tavern, but if you prefer the Black Swan, it stands on King. They are all busy and boisterous. So are the Black Horse and Antelope Inns on Church Street, and a long list of others elsewhere in town.

But we are quiet, sober folk who would like to know what the merchants in York are offering for sale this Yuletide season, 1833. John Betteridge has a shop on King Street with a window of small square panes. He’s busy, too. Turkeys, we learn, are a dollar apiece, but you can get a plump goose for 50 cents or 2 chickens for the same price. Beef? Four to eight cents a pound, according to cut. Mutton is a dime a pound, and for the same modest sum you can buy a dozen eggs or a pound of cheese. Butter is 15 cents a pound and people are beginning to ask when this outrageous price will come down. Tea and sugar are luxuries out of the reach of ordinary folk. Good tea costs $4 a pound. Folk in York will never stop drinking cheap beer and whiskey unless the price of tea goes down, a citizen tells us, and if they want sugar in their tea, he adds, it costs 50 cents a pound.

York’s second market and Town Hall located on the south-west corner of King and Jarvis streets. It was on the second floor of this building that the Council of the Town of York met in 1833, the date of Percy Ghent’s Christmas tour. Following incorporation of the new City of Toronto in 1834, this building became the City Hall until a new structure, a block to the south, was opened in 1845.

Sketch from Toronto’s 100 Years.

Mrs. Lumsden has a little shop on King Street too. There’s an array of long clay pipes in the window, and papers of pins just as long are hanging behind the square panes. Children are Mrs. Lumsden’s steady customers. They’re not keen about the clay pipes, of course, nor the pins. But look at the gingerbread cookies! Scores of them, Gingerbread men, prancing ponies, fishes, parrots, dogs and gingerbread hearts with a sprinkling of fine pink sugar on them. One price for every delightful design – a half-penny. Or a cent. Both are in circulation. For a dollar you could buy a whole sackful of juvenile joy.

Any music in York to brighten Christmas? Of course there is. Here comes the band now. It belongs to the Volunteer Artillery Company, and the man carrying the gorgeous standard struts ahead of the trumpets and drums. That standard was presented to the band by the ladies of York last June. They wanted to encourage the bandsmen. You see, the citizens of York, like those of the bigger Toronto, had a special affection for a good band. They used to go out in crowds to hear the band of the 66th Regiment. During the exile of Napoleon the 66th was stationed at St. Helena, but whether the martial airs of Britain blared forth by the trumpets had any charm for the Emperor is not on record. But they thrilled the citizens of York and there was gloom in town when the regiment left for home and England at the end of 1833.

There are Christmas travelers in York, too. At the coach office citizens are booking seats for journeys afar. Stage coaches on runners await passengers and a chilly and arduous trip over bumpy roads awaits them. What says the notice posted ...