Mike Filey's Toronto Sketches, Books 10–12

Mike Filey

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781459735453
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Mike Filey brings the stories of Toronto, its people and places, to life. Mike Filey's column "The Way We Were" first appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun not long after the paper's first edition hit newsstands on September 16, 1973. Now, almost four decades later, Filey's column has had an uninterrupted stretch as one of the newspaper's most widely read features. In 1992, a number of his columns were reprinted in Toronto Sketches: "The Way We Were." Since then another eleven volumes have been published to great success, with over 5, 000 copies sold. Includes:
- Toronto Sketches 10
- Toronto Sketches 11
- Toronto Sketches 12

Toronto Sketches 10

Contents

A Watery Commute

Cronyism Has Always Existed Here

Toronto Under Siege

Touring Motel Alley

What’s in a Name?

Safety Back in the Day

Swimmingly Good Times

Gas Price Wars Revisited

Babe a Hit in Toronto

Rose by Any Other Name

A Shining Example

Gooderham, Worts, and All

Lights, Action, Drive!

Our Changing Skyline

On the Waterfront

Hooray, Simcoe Day

TTC Testing LRT Bidders

Ex Marks the Spot

Red Rockets of Yesteryear

Taking a Flight Back in Time

She’s the Belle of Lake Ontario

A Grave Story Indeed

Stagnant Gardens

When Joy Came to Town

Goodbye Dominion, Hello Metro

New, Old Electric Railway

Landmark of Learning

Lest We Forget

Toronto in Transition

A Toronto Kingpin

Tracking the Past

Bag to the Future

Oh, How We’ve Grown

A Surprise Demolition

Birth of Sunday Sports

Historic Snow Days

Bridging the Gap

Historic “Snow Fight”

Yorkville — the First ’Burb

Postcards from the Edge

Casa de Toronto

Street Smart?

Big Time in History

Central Prison of Horrors

Motor Ride Back in History

A Time for Talkies

Original “Mr. Fix-It”

Tough Act to Follow

Night Toronto Burned

Full Steam Ahead

John Lyle’s Vision Shaped in T.O.

Royal Reception

The Dating Game

Ahead of its Time

Sky’s the Limit

Pomp and Pageantry

Keeping Us Amused

Streetcar City

Toronto in the Dumps

Here She Is, Miss Toronto (1926)

University’s Magnificent Beacon

The Day Noronic Went Up in Smoke

The Word on the Street Is …

Island Tunnel that Would Never Be

A Revolutionary Condo Concept

Home Sweet Home Aboard Red Rocket

Let’s Set the Record Straight

Let’s Head Back in Time

You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry …

Flying Saucer of the Great White North

Shedding Light on Queen’s Wharf Lighthouse

Toronto’s Ever-Changing Skyline

The Rise of the Big Smoke

Rolling Billboards of the Past

They Were a Cut Above

Mike Filey’s column “The Way We Were” has appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun on a regular basis since 1975. Many of his earlier columns have been reproduced in volumes 1 through 9 of Dundurn Press’s Toronto Sketches series. The columns in this book originally appeared in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Appended to each column is the date it first appeared as well as any relevant material that may have surfaced since that date (indicated by an asterisk).

A Watery Commute

Every once in a while I get stumped for a subject for my AM 740 morning feature. Then, like a gift out of the blue, a suggestion will be made that we do something that’s never been done before. Take, for instance, the notion of connecting Etobicoke and Scarborough with downtown Toronto by ferry or the concept of a Toronto to Hamilton commuter boat, a sort of a GO Boat as Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield called it. New ideas? Hardly.

Though not exactly a Lake Ontario commuter service such as the TTC is intending to investigate, Torontonians were able to travel to and from the mouth of the Humber River in old Etobicoke Township as far back as the 1870s. Usually the trips were for pleasure, with one of the main destination points being John Duck’s Wimbleton House hotel on the west bank where the river emptied into the lake. Here he constructed a dock to accommodate the various steamboats that frequently arrived from the big city, often filled to capacity with pleasure seekers. To make an outing to the Wimbleton House even more exciting, John Duck opened a zoo that came complete with bears, raccoons, deer, mink, and a collection of other animals that inhabited the Etobicoke hinterland.

Duck’s place wasn’t the only destination for the Toronto-based steamers. Long Branch, Oakville, and Bronte also drew big crowds, while Lorne Park was especially popular with its Hotel Louise, amusement park, tennis courts, and picnic grounds. When the province built the Toronto-Hamilton highway during the first war the (we now call it Highway 2), the steamboats gave way to quicker and more reliable travel by automobile and the roads have been plugged ever since.

Artist Clarence Duff sketched this charming view depicting the steamboat wharf at Lorne Park in 1898.

While these examples of water-borne traffic were popular, primarily during the warm summer months, there was a period of time starting in 1886 when there was, in fact, a regular passenger service in place between Toronto and Hamilton. That service was provided by several small ocean-going vessels, two of which were called the Macassa and the Modjeska. Operated by the Hamilton Steamship Company, each carried seven hundred to eight hundred passengers and had a top speed of twenty-three miles per hour. Contemporary accounts describe the trip as being as regular and speedy as a similar trip by train. The only drawback, however, was the passenger and ticketing facilities at the Toronto end of the voyage that were described as being somewhat chaotic due to the capital city’s unsettled waterfront question. Even back then they weren’t sure what was going on along Toronto’s waterfront.

Turbinia was the fastest passenger boat on the Great Lakes. The turbine-powered vessel provided a daily commuter service between Toronto and Hamilton for many years early in the twentieth century.

Increasing passenger traffic between the two cities eventually resulted in the formation of a new company, the Hamilton Turbine Steamship Company, and the introduction of a remarkable new passenger vessel, the Turbinia. As both the company’s and vessel’s name suggest, this new craft was powered not by reciprocal steam engines, as were used on the other passenger boats, but by three coal-fired steam turbine engines, giving the Newcastle-on-Tyne-built vessel a top speed of thirty miles per hour. It was said that Turbinia could easily outdistance any other steamer on Lake Ontario.

For a number of years, commuters had a choice of three craft on board which to make the Toronto–Hamilton trip, some of them doing the trip four times each weekday. The competition lasted until 1913 when all three vessels came under the control of the newly organized Canada Steamship Lines Ltd. Turbinia was requisitioned soon after the Great War broke out and for a number of years she saw service as a troop transport between England and France.

Returning to the Toronto-Hamilton service in 1923, Turbinia was now one of two on that run, Modjeska having been sold to an Owen Sound company. In 1927 Turbinia was re-assigned to the Montreal–Quebec City run. That lasted but a short time and in 1937 she was unceremoniously scrapped. The Toronto-Hamilton passenger boat service ended when the Macassa was withdrawn and, like her one-time running mate Modjeska, sent to Owen Sound.

Will passenger boat service between these two large communities ever return? Will there be GO boats? Stranger things have happened.

July 15, 2007

Cronyism Has Always Existed Here

The old photograph is from the City of Toronto Archives and was snapped on July 11, 1950. It looks north on Yonge Street over Dundas and was taken to document conditions prior to the TTC beginning preliminary work on the construction of this section of the new Yonge subway. Note the Peter Witt streetcar to extreme right of the view. Operating on the Yonge route it has diverted from lower Yonge Street (via Richmond, Victoria, and Dundas Streets) owing to subway construction in and around the Yonge and Queen intersection. At the northeast corner of the view is the Brown Derby Tavern that opened on this corner in December 1949. The Derby’s first ads identified it as the “Gayest Spot in Town,” a description with a much different meaning back then. Performers appearing at the Tavern’s “Tin Pan Alley” room were Gene Rogers, the Tune-Toppers, and Paula Watson. Further up Yonge Street is the Biltmore Theatre, Le Coq d’Or, The Friars, Steeles Tavern, The Edison Hotel, and of course, A&A Records and Sam the Record Man.

The second photo shows a similar view. Just out of the view to the right is Yonge-Dundas Square that was officially opened in 2003. At the northeast corner of the intersection, and still under construction, is the newly named Toronto Life Square (formerly Metropolis), that when completed will feature a mix of offices, shops, and restaurants, as well as a multi-screen theatre complex. The exterior of the structure will feature a thirty foot by fifty-two foot high-definition video display screen, the nation’s largest.

The two portraits depict the gentlemen for whom this intersection and, more recently, the nearby Square were named. To understand why the names of Sir George Yonge and Sir Henry Dundas were selected one must realize that John Graves Simcoe, our province’s first lieutenant governor, was eager to make sure that those people back in England who could influence his successes in the new world were recognized. What better way to do so than to name major thoroughfares in their honour? Sir George was a good friend and a member of the cabinet of King George III, the reigning British monarch when our city was established by John Graves Simcoe. Sir George was also an expert on the subject of Roman road building. A perfect person, in Simcoe’s mind at least, to honour in the name of this newly constructed military road.

Sir Henry Dundas was also a personal friend who served in various influential positions in the British government. Another obvious choice.

Today, many would criticize such obvious cronyism. However, to make sure his new responsibilities, the Province of Upper Canada (renamed Ontario in 1867), and a fledgling community he called York (the name was changed to Toronto in 1834) would succeed, Simcoe did whatever he could to get the help he would surely need. Street naming was one easy way to do just that.

October 28, 2007

Toronto Under Siege

When it comes to important dates in the early years of our community’s history, several immediately come to mind: September 19, 1615, Étienne Brûlé becomes first European to see the future site of Toronto; May 2, 1793, John Graves Simcoe, the province’s first lieutenant governor, visits an area on the north shore of Lake Ontario that he has selected as the site of his “royal” Town of York; August 1, 1805, a revised version of the still controversial “Toronto Purchase” agreement between the Mississa...