I Remember Sunnyside

Mike Filey

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9781459713383
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Geschichte

First published in 1982, I Remember Sunnyside is a mine of golden memories, bringing back to life an earlier Toronto, only hints of which remain today.

Like the city itself, Sunnyside was an everchanging landscape from its heady opening days in the early 1920s to its final sad demolition in the 1950s. The book captures the spirit of the best of times a magical era which can only be recaptured in memory and photographs. It also presents the reality of a newer Toronto where change, although necessary, is sometimes regrettable.

One

Early Toronto Amusement Parks

Amusement parks have been around for centuries. In the mid-1600s, what were known as “pleasure gardens” made their appearance in France, and soon, thereafter, in other cities on the European continent. The “pleasure gardens” were really nothing more than grassy clearings where beds of flowers, tree-lined pathways, the occasional fountain, and other visual embellishments were laid out to entice “pleasure seekers” to come eat, drink, and be merry. Many such gardens added various participation sports, such as lawn bowling, shuffleboard, and tennis. As the years went by some gardens introduced circus acts to further entice and entertain their customers. It wasn’t uncommon to see a juggling act or two, tightrope walkers, and, of course, the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Even the world-famous International Air Show at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto had its forerunner as part of a pleasure garden’s itinerary. Visitors to these pleasure gardens 300 years ago marvelled at the hot-air balloon ascensions and parachute jumping attractions that lacked only the noise and speed of our modern air shows, but, in their time, were every bit as exciting and nerve-wracking. Some gardens introduced music and dancing, and some even succumbed to the “evils” of gambling and liquor.

In England, the pleasure garden really started with the “evils” of liquor. Many of these early entertainment complexes grew up around pubs and taverns. One of the best known was Vauxhall Gardens in London, which opened in 1661, and quickly became an international tourist attraction, offering all the features of the continental style of pleasure garden, including music, sports, air shows, and fireworks. For almost two centuries, Vauxhall was the epitome of pleasure gardens. It closed forever with a mighty fireworks festival on July 25, 1850. While Vauxhall was headed downhill, over in Vienna, the Prater was gaining in popularity. The Prater was originally a game preserve created by Emperor Maximillian II, and in 1766 was turned over to the citizens of Vienna by Emperor Joseph II. In 1873, a World’s Fair was held at the Prater and for the first time a collection of primitive (by our standards) but, nevertheless, incredibly exciting rides or “amusement Machines” were introduced to the patrons of a century ago in an area called the Wursetelprater. These rides included a German carousel, a wooden wheel (the forerunner of George Ferris’ Ferris Wheel that came along several years later at the Chicago’s World Fair of 1893), and the extremely popular Russian Mountain ride which consisted of small two-passenger cars rolling down an inclined track from a high point to a low point, much like a century-old version of a simple roller-coaster. In addition to amusement machines, the Prater featured a fun house, several games of chance, many food establishments, drinking outlets, and much more that transformed the typical pleasure garden into the noisy, rollicking amusement park that had, amongst its membership, our very own Sunnyside.

Long before Sunnyside Amusement Park emerged on the scene in Toronto, several smaller, but no less exciting, amusement parks fascinated the local clientele. In 1843, the Privat Brothers, Peter and Joseph, opened on Toronto Island an early version of a Walt Disney World complex that included a hotel (without the Disney monorail) and tiny amusement park. This park was the first of its kind not only in Toronto, then called York, but in the entire province we now call Ontario. When I say it was a tiny amusement park, it was just that: a wooden carousel-type ride, a swing, a ten-pin bowling alley (five-pin was to be devised by Torontonian Tommy Ryan many years later), and a small zoo. This recreational facility was reached by a five-horsepower ferryboat (powered by five real horses), and only existed for a few years.

The next park, and the first of any major size in the city, was also on Toronto Island, this time at the westerly end, the portion known as Hanlan’s Point. This park was developed by several entrepreneurs, including world champion sculler Ned Hanlan, and a fascinating fellow named Lawrence Solman, who, in addition to his Toronto Island interests, was also involved with major league baseball, the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Mutual Street Arena, and, eventually, with Sunnyside Amusement Park. Hanlan’s Point was a well-equipped park with a large carousel, scenic railway, a gentle version of a roller-coaster, swing-around rides, shooting galleries and other games of skill, a tea garden and dance pavilion, and a succession of grandstands where baseball and lacrosse were played and in later years where many company and church picnics were held. Hanlan’s Point flourished from the 1880s until the economic climate soured in the late twenties, culminating in the park’s closure a few years later. Often given as reasons for the death of Hanlan’s Point were the removal of the Maple Leaf Baseball Team to the new stadium at the foot of Bathurst Street in 1926, the development of the Island Airport, the advent of the automobile that permitted family trips further afield than ever before, and, of course, the 1922 opening of Sunnyside Amusement Park on the mainland.

During the Hanlan’s Point era another park entered the picture. Situated in the Beaches area of eastern Toronto, Scarboro Beach Park opened in 1907 as a small amusement park to serve the eastenders and to continue the traditions of its predecessors, Munro and Victoria Park. Five years later, the park was purchased by the Toronto Railway Company which expanded the facilities and ran it as a profitable trolley-park at the end of a streetcar line which promoted not only increased passenger traffic, but extended usage of their streetcar fleet in the evenings and on weekends.

A short eighteen years later Scarboro Beach, too, was bulldozed into oblivion.

When sections of the old Dundas Highway became almost impassable during the spring and fall, Lake Shore Road became a popular route to the head of the lake. As a result, several hotels were constructed at the mouth of the Humber River to serve the needs of the travelling public. Soon these hotels became popular summer resorts served by the steamers Annie Craig and Waterdown, which ran from the city to a long wooden pier just west of the Humber River. Hotels such as Devins’, McDowell’s, Octavius L. Hick’s Royal Oak, and John Duck’s Wimbleton House (the latter shown in this sketch) provided not only dining and lodging facilities but entertainment in the form of dancehalls, bicycle tracks, fishponds, and small menageries. John Duck took over the roadhouse pictured above from one John Strathy in 1873 and ran it until he died in 1891. For the next two years, Duck’s widow operated the hotel, which by then had new amusements such as swings and a simple merry-go-round. In 1901, Catherine Crow acquired the operation. She ran it until fire destroyed the hotel in 1912, and hence the area became known as Crow’s Beach in the early years of this century. Unfortunately, it became a “Gentiles Only” bathing beach several years later. Today the Palace Pier condominium complex and several taverns and motels are situated on the site of Toronto’s early amusement strip.

Victoria Park (above), located on a fourteen-acre wooded lot just south of Queen Street, near the present R.C. Harris water filtration plant (and at the foot of a modern thoroughfare, appropriately named Victoria Park Avenue), was another popular amusement park at the turn of the century.

It was developed in the early 1880s and financed by several prominent citizens of the day, including Alderman John Irwin, Bob Davies, and P.G. Close, and was managed by J.H. Boyle, who in later days became a prominent real estate agent in the city. The area taken over by the entrepreneurs was about six miles east of the young city and was already a popular picnic area for eastenders, who called the place “yellowbanks” because of the colour of the sandy bluffs nearby.

Each summer thousands of fun-seekers from the city would be brought directly to the little wharf at the park on the steamers Chicoutimi and Steinhoff from berths at the foot of Yonge Street. Once at the park, visitors ate their sandwiches in one of the many picnic shelters, drank their favourite beverages in the restaurant, danced in the rustic wooden pavilion, or climbed to the top of the lookout tower to survey the rural setting of the park.

Appropriately, Victoria Park always opened on Victoria Day, and visitors would stream to the park by boat, carriage, and even horse-drawn streetcar once the tracks of the old Kingston Road Tramway Company were extended down Blantyre Avenue.

Attractions at Victoria Park were numerous. Foot races were popular, with such well-known professional runners as Duke McGarry, Arthur Sparks, and Tom Chambers pitted against local citizens. These competitions created great excitement and resulted in much exchanging of money as wagers were won and lost. Another feature was tight-rope-walking exhibitions, and it was an exciting day when Harry Leslie, who had crossed the Niagara River on a tightrope, visited the park to show his skills.

Less exhausting events included donkey riding and several games of chance, the latter supervised by the local county constables Bob Melbourne and Robert Burns. They had their hands full one day when the well-known fighter Paddy Ry was set on by a gang of local toughs. During the brawl, several of the instigators were tossed bodily over the bluffs by strongman Paddy.

Other parks sprang up in competition with Victoria Park; Long Branch and Lorne Park being two. These latter parks were not as well patronized as Victoria Park and became, instead, popular summer resorts. Victoria Park passed out of existence before the turn of the century only to be resurrected a little farther to the west some ten or so years later, when Scarboro Beach Park opened in 1907.

A Toronto (not to mention a Canadian) tradition for more than a century, the Canadian National Exhibition began in 1879 as the Toronto Industrial Exhibition. From the very start, in addition to the display buildings, military band concerts, and horse shows, there have been various amusement devices to entertain the stout-of-heart. In those early days of the fair, the hand-cranked wheel (it wasn’t called a Ferris Wheel until George Washington Gale Ferris patented his version in the early 1890s) was a crowd pleaser. In 1894, one year after the World’s Fair with its “Midway Plaisance” was held in Chicago, the Ex introduced a multitude of amusement devices, including “Ferris wheels (photo right), carousals [sic], swings, and other amusements for young and old.” However, the Exhibition directors announced they would not tolerate “gamblers, fakers...