A Toronto Album

Glimpses of the City That Was

Mike Filey

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781550029567
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Fotografie

Mike Filey's collection of pictures of Toronto from the earliest days of photography had gained a reputation as one of the most interesting visual archives of the city's history. This classic look at old Toronto portrays scenes of public life from 1860 to 1950, illustrating how dramatically the urban fabric and environment have changed. There are photographs of the beaches and the islands, of mud streets and gas lamps, of steam engines and trolley cars, amusement parks and the everchanging waterfront. Especially striking are the early photographs of downtown and the aftermaths of the fire of 1904.

Out of print for over 20 years, A Toronto Album has sold over 50, 000 copies in various editions. It will appeal to Torontonians young and old - and to anyone interested in the evolution of one of the world's fastest growing cities.

1 Looking west along King Street from Yonge, c1860

This record of life in the city of Toronto begins around 1860, because it was about that time that photographs were first taken in Toronto. The first photograph taken — of a tavern at Yonge and St. Clair — may have been by a George Thompson in 1853 on his way to Niagara. It is not always easy to give an exact date for some of these early photographs. The dates of the first three in this book, probably taken on the same day, can be deduced by the absence of streetcar tracks (laid down along King and up Yonge by September 1861), and the address given for Mr. Staunton’s store in contemporary city directories.

The year 1860 can, however, be interpreted as a date of some significance in the evolution of the city. By then the forces were stirring in men’s minds, down on the water-front and elsewhere, that were to destroy much of the early classical form of the city, which we see in these photographs, leaving us today with little to recognize in them except the names of the streets. If scenes like these remind people of Georgian Dublin, a later Toronto could remind people of Belfast. This should not be surprising, since in 1850 there were more Irishmen than English, or Scots, or native Canadians, and the tendency for the mayor to be an Orangeman held for about a century.

2 Looking north up Yonge Street from King, c1860

Toronto was founded in 1793 at the head of Toronto Bay, near the mouth of the Don River. To the east of the mouth of the Don lay an area of marsh, to the west a shallow shoaled harbour, practically enclosed by a long sandbar. This harbour was the reason for the original settlement and is still the prime natural resource of the city.

Roman legions would probably have recognized that first little town for what it was — a colonia, an outpost of military empire laid out in straight lines. Bounded by Berkeley and George, its main east-west axis was King Street. Its natural direction for expansion was west along King Street, and plans were made for its growth in that direction. A fire in the St. Lawrence area in 1849 and the prosperous times around 1850 produced a street lined with a variety of wholesale and retail establishments, mostly built of yellow brick. This commercial expansion affected the lower reaches of Yonge Street in the same way. Yonge was the main route to the north and much of Toronto’s agricultural hinterland. By 1860, King and Yonge was Toronto’s main intersection.

The carriage above is parked outside the store of Mr. Harry Piper, who later became an alderman, started Toronto’s first zoo, and distributed flowers by the cartload among the poor children of his ward.

3 Looking south down Yonge to the bay from King, c1860

One can see, at the end of the street, the masts of a schooner lying in the bay, but not the train tracks, which had been recently laid along the waterfront. The streets here are still without cobbles, stones, or asphalt, though there seems to be (see photograph 1) a cobbled crosswalk and a pile of stones that are perhaps intended to make another across King; the sidewalks are merely planks. Under the street there were some rudimentary sewers and waterpipes. Above, there were a few overhanging signs, but the “age of wire” had also recently begun: the poles are probably carrying messages to many parts of North America (and after 1866 to Europe) in Morse code. An electromagnetic telegraph company had been formed in Toronto in 1846. Another technological improvement the city was trying to introduce was the use of manufactured gas for street lighting. Gas had been available since the early 40s, but it was still expensive. In 1861, the City Council decided to discontinue the lighting of about one half the street lamps and to have the remainder extinguished for eight nights per month during the time of moonlight.

4 The south side of Front Street, looking west from Yonge, c1880

It was only in the 1850s that Toronto commerce began to be conducted in the single currency we have now. An exchange, where ownership of all sorts of goods was traded, was erected in 1855, and to facilitate credit and trade further new banks opened their doors — though others had to close theirs. Three that survived and grew were the Bank of Toronto (from 1855), the Bank of Commerce (from 1867), and the Dominion Bank (from 1871). Trust companies, insurance companies, and mortgage and loan companies opened offices to use the capital and credit accumulating in the city, and to help stabilize the ups and downs of business. By 1875 or so, Toronto had become a financial as well as a commercial centre, though still a puny rival to Montreal.

Toronto had been an alternate capital (with Quebec, Montreal, and Kingston) in the province of Canada, but in 1867 it became the full-time capital of the new province of Ontario in the new Dominion of Canada. The new dominion was also a customs union, and to Ottawa now went all the money garnered by customs and excise duties. These duties provided by far the largest source of government revenue (and continued as such until the 1930s when income tax, initially introduced during the First World War as a temporary measure, began to produce more). Its receipts were shared with the provinces. An imposing new Customs House at Yonge and Front (on the left in this photograph) was erected in 1876, symbolizing these new fiscal arrangements.

5 Looking west on Front Street from Church, 1885

Not all the city was of a noble Georgian character. The east side of York Street north of King, leading to “one of the stateliest specimens of classical architecture Canada can boast of, Osgoode Hall,” was a disgrace: “dingy and rotten wooden shanties, and dens of old clothes sellers and recipients of stolen goods. There old Fagin and Moll Flanders have their lair; thither, at forbidden hours, Dick Swiveller and Thomas Idle resort for their surreptitious dram.” Also on York Street was the Crompton Corset factory, the first establishment in Canada to “manufacture corsets on a large scale” — 8,400 corsets a week along with hoop skirts and bustles.

6 Looking east on Adelaide Street East, c1880

In 1867, the running of postal services had been entrusted to the federal government; in those days one of its most important functions. An impressive building in the latest romantic style — it looks now as if it could have been an opera house — was erected in 1871 as Toronto’s Eighth Post Office. It was located on Adelaide Street looking down Toronto Street. Occasionally such Italian edifices could fit in well enough with the “late-flowering Georgian” style, as Eric Arthur calls it, but in the boom years after Confederation there began that process of random destruction and ever larger construction which spelled the end of the order and harmony of scale that once characterized the downtown city. The effluvia of engines, steam and later internal combustion, destroyed the colour.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, horses provided the main source of power, apart from steam engines in foundries, ships, and locomotives. Horses even propelled an early ferry, the Peninsula Packet, across the harbour to the “Island,” as it was usually called even when it was still a peninsula; horses plodded round a windlass geared to the sidepaddles, and the vessel crossed in about forty-five minutes.

Stables were located around the St. Lawrence Market, and cartloads of hay were a common sight on the streets.

7 Looking north on West Market Street to the St. Lawrence Hall and King Street, c1875

The Police Commissioners’ by-laws in regard to horse traffic included the following: Any licensed hotel-keeper may obtain a license to run an omnibus to steamboats and railway stations, and vice versa . . . [but] no licensed tavern or saloon keeper shall be entitled to a license.

No owner of any licensed cab shall drive about the streets during the day-time any notorious bad characters, or women of ill-fame.

No driver of a cab shall appear on any stand or place for hire on Sunday. No person licensed under this By-law shall abuse or ill-treat, or permit to be so, any horse or horses used by him.

All licensed cabs shall drive at the rate of six miles per hour at the least. No person shall gallop . . .

Owners and occupants of livery stables shall not wash their horses in the streets and shall not permit more than two cartloads of manure to accumulate or remain at any one time between the first day of May and the first day of November.

8 A Yonge Street toll house, before 1870

The city limits from 1834 to 1882 were formed, roughly speaking, by the Don River to the east, Bloor Street in the north, and Dufferin Street to the west. North...