Dear readers,

I’m very happy to announce that Along the Shore was sent to print on Thursday, May 1, 2013, and will be available in bookstores on Canada Day (July 1). What a journey! With the help of ECW Press’s ace editorial team, my manuscript on the history and geography, landscape and people of the Toronto waterfront is now a book of some 430 pages, with over 250 images, including printed ephemera, the work of well-known and emerging Toronto artists, cherished family records and photographs, and archival holdings. Feel free to click on the front cover to Along the Shore and browse through the Introduction, which should give you a flavour for what is to come.

All the best,

Jane

Hello everyone, I’ve been very busy these past few weeks, gathering the images and writing the captions for the over 250 paintings, drawings, photos, and maps that will appear in full colour in Along the Shore. I wanted to share this interesting photo with you that I found as I raked through the Toronto Reference Library Baldwin Room’s incredible image collection.

TRL, TEC 433 T

Some of you may be wondering about its relevance — it’s a picture taken of the defunct Toronto Evening Telegram Reporter’s Office, by an unknown photographer in 1904. The man on the right hand side of the door was one of the most influential writers on the marine history of the Toronto region and the Great Lakes in the first half of the twentieth century. His name was Charles Henry Jeremiah (C.H.J.) Snider.

Rising through the ranks of the Telegram’s offices to the position of Editor, Snider’s interest in the Great Lakes was wide and varied — he authored a series of books on the marine battles and skirmishes fought on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812, and also discovered a vessel sunk during the course of that conflict, the Nancy, a British supply ship. An experienced sailor, he was also an accomplished marine artist, and provided many illustrations for John Ross Robertson’s classic series on old Toronto, Robertson’s Landmarks.

“J. W. Steinhoff”, 1876-1899 C.H.J. Snider TRL, JRR 2654 Cab. IV

Above is Snider’s rendering of the steamer J.W. Steinhoff, that plied the waters of Lake Ontario from the downtown docks of Toronto Harbour to Victoria Park, an early pleasure ground and later amusement park, located at the east end of the present day Beach district.

Rather than presenting the reader with a straight recitation of fact and academic argument, Snider relied heavily on oral tradition to tell stories, many of which were published in his well-loved column, “Schooner Days”, which ran in the Evening Telegram from 1935 to 1956. His work included the first hand information he gleaned from aged captains of schooners, stonehookers, and steamers, Great Lakes sailors, and others who had an intimate knowledge of the inland seas of North America and the Toronto waterfront.

Snider’s work has been quite influential to me in writing Along the Shore. I believe, for many of us, that it is the telling of the story that creates memory and makes history relevant to us in our everyday lives. The anecdotes and experiences of those who previously occupied the Toronto waterfront — the First Peoples, the pioneers, the sailors and swimmers, the waterfront entrepreneurs, and those who eked out a living at the water’s edge, are a vital part of the historical narrative that grounds us in the past — a past that might seem otherwise too distant and irrelevant to matter much in our busy lives today. So thank you C.H.J. for your stories, and for helping us to connect to our own place at the water’s edge, along the shore.

Happy New Year everyone! I’m very happy to share with you the photo and blurb about Along the Shore: Rediscovering Toronto’s Waterfront Heritage that appears in ECW’s spring catalogue. The publication date for the book is July 1, 2013, so hope you can join me then!

http://www.ecwpress.com/alongtheshore

Photo: Keith Ellis, 2011

In the mid twentieth century, the elimination of all Toronto Island homes was mandated to make way for a massive city park. During the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of residences were bulldozed into the earth, along with the community’s eclectic “main street” — Manitou Road on Centre Island (full-time residents still reside on Ward’s and Algonquin Island today).  What is little recognized is that the humble abodes of many Islanders were not the only collateral damage to the implementation of the “uber-park”; Toronto’s built heritage also suffered a significant blow as the wrecking ball tore into the former elegant summer homes and mansions of Toronto’s leading families, along with, to name a few, Ward’s Hotel, the Pierson Hotel, and English’s Boathouse - all flattened in the name of “progress”.

Miraculously, the Anglican church St. Andrew-by-the-Lake escaped the forces of destruction, and remains not only a fully operating church, but a vibrant focal point for the life of the community. In a sense, its story is intertwined with the story of the Island itself.  In the spirit of the season, I thought a short excerpt from Along the Shore might be appropriate.

Photo: Keith Ellis, 2011

Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto describes services held at the church in the late nineteenth century: “The first thing noticeable was the unconventional style of dress characterizing many persons there . . . This variety of dress, taken with the plainly furnished chapel, the open windows, through which the breezes came laden with vigour and health, the sound of the surf on the shore and the gay laughter of little children playing on the sand made the room pleasant, cool, airy and bright.”

This description dates from some fifteen years after the celebration of the first services at St. Andrew, which took place on July 27, 1884. At that time the church was located on the south shore of Centre Island, at the corner of what would in later years become Cherokee and Lakeshore Avenues. The church owed its inception to an Island summer resident, Bishop Arthur Sweatman (later Archbishop of Toronto and then Primate of Canada). It was built to meet the needs of a growing summer community that included the prominent Gooderham and Massey families, who were leading members of the congregation at St. Andrew.

Designed by architect Arthur Denison, who summered on the Island at that time, St. Andrew was a charming semi-gothic variation on the stick style of construction then prevalent on the Island. It was also conveniently located next door to the summer residence of Bishop Sweatman, which was also conceived by Denison and aptly named Happy-Go-Lucky.

Although modest and in keeping with its Island surroundings, the interior of Saint Andrew was then and still is now by no means commonplace. The original walls and vaulted ceiling remain clad in tongue and groove fir. Several windows in the chancel were made in 1885 by the renowned McCausland studio in Toronto, while another memorial window by N.T. Lyon pays tribute to the remarkable contribution that Islanders made during the First World War.

During the dark years of the late 1950s, when the communities of Hanlan’s Point and Centre Island were destroyed to make way for an Island park, St. Andrew was sold to the city but leased back to the Archdiocese for an indefinite period. In 1959-60, the church was moved to its present location on Centre Island, closer to Ward’s Island, along with its Roman Catholic counterpart, St. Rita’s. By 1974 the congregation had dwindled to about fifteen families and in 1979 the City of Toronto condemned St. Andrew, just four years after the Parish had celebrated its centennial. With a six-foot-high wire fence put up around it and the few remaining parishioners facing eviction, it seemed that the church was destined to be reduced to rubble, like so many of the other historic Island properties that had gone before it.

However, the forces of desecration that passed themselves off as “progress” were not to have the last word. In the first place, they had not reckoned with the determination of the Islanders themselves. Using wire cutters retrieved from one of the nearby homes, parishioners John Fowlie and Liz Amer cut through a section of the fence shortly after the church was condemned. The congregation went in and the Sunday services continued despite the eviction notice. The community continued to use its church through the years of uncertainty that followed. Eventually, in 1984, St Andrew was saved by an agreement between the city and the Anglican Archdiocese of Toronto. Reverend Michael Marshall, the present incumbent of St. Andrew and himself a former Island resident explains that the remaining Islanders never lost sight of the fact that St Andrew was “part of their heritage and legacy. They recognized the need to maintain their use of it, so it didn’t become a pawn in the struggle between the forces who would destroy the Island community and those who would save it.”

Sadly, St. Rita’s was indeed demolished, while its remaining parishioners attended separate worship services at St. Andrew. Items salvaged from St. Rita’s, such as its wooden oak pews, and the Stations of the Cross that now adorn St. Andrew’s dark paneled walls, all added to the richness of a setting that had developed there for more than a century. St Andrew now represented more than just itself. Perhaps unwittingly, this little church had become a symbol for a good and simple way of living and a repository for the relics of past Island life.

On Christmas Eve, Torontonians can still leave the city, cross the water, and walk along a quiet road to a tiny country church no more than minutes from the metropolis. From it emanates the spirit of the Island, past and present; it houses the memories of an earlier time, and is a testament to the enduring life of the community.

Along the Shore © Copyright Jane Fairburn, 2012.

Gwendolyn MacEwen at the Eastern Gap, Toronto Island, c. 1970.

I’ve been a little “incommunicado” of late, with the final edit of Along the Shore well underway. There’s another more in-depth blog post coming soon, but in the meantime, I thought you might want to have a look at the work of iconic writer and former Toronto Islander Gwendolyn MacEwen in Noman’s Land, a series of short stories published by Coach House Press in 1985. Toronto’s landmarks, ravines and waterfront areas are the backdrop for interior journeys through time and place, see: http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/nomans_land/.

MacEwen returns to the Island in “Nightchild”, where a boy plunges through thin ice on the Lagoon on Christmas Day. To read the story, click on: http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/nomans_land/13.html (the Island passages are just below the middle of the page, though other areas of the waterfront are also mentioned). Makes for interesting reading … j

On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel collided head on with the Toronto shore, and unleashed torrential rains that increased in intensity as the night progressed, sweeping boats, houses and corpses out into the Lake. When it was all over, more than eighty people were dead in Southern Ontario, the vast majority of whom were from Toronto and vicinity.

While the Lakeshore was the hardest hit waterfront district, suffering major property damage and loss of life, the Island passed through the hurricane relatively unscathed.

Search efforts along the Lower Humber River, from www.hurricanehazel.ca

In the early evening of October 15, Jimmy Jones, oblivious to the seriousness of the situation, left the protected Island Lagoon and headed into the Bay for the city with one passenger, Jack Gale, a reporter for the Toronto Star. They were in the Minnie D, a steady wooden round-bottomed vessel.

As Jones approached the open water, he was surprisingly faced with increasingly high easterly waves, waves that drove the boat into deep troughs where it shuddered, as if breaking apart. Jones let up on the throttle and gave the boat her way, and as Gale thrashed around on the bench seats, at times clinging on to the deck-head for dear life, they ploughed forward toward Toronto. When they reached the foot of York and Queen’s Quay, street signs on cement poles were being tossed around in the roadway. With ferry service from the mainland cancelled around 7 pm., a group of increasingly numerous and worried Islanders started to gather, unsure of whether to run for cover or beg Jimmy to just take them home. Says Jones of the experience:

They all just stood there, waiting to see what I would do, if I would take the chance and head back home. The Minnie D could carry twenty-three passengers and she was our most solid vessel, but I’d never seen anything like this before. At midnight I filled her to capacity, and with the rain coming down in sheets on Queen’s Quay, I decided make a run for it. I knew that going back would be easier because the winds were out of the east, so I just pointed her towards Hanlan’s and let the wind push me . . . We boiled into Hanlan’s and I thanked my lucky stars.

When asked if he would do it again, his answer is definitive, “I don’t think so. I was twenty-four years old in 1954.” Twenty years later, memories of the crossing had not faded. Jones found himself at an Island social gathering with John Fowlie, a passenger on the return trip, who, when asked if he had gone over to the Island during the hurricane, pointed directly at Jones and stated, “Yes I did. I came with that bastard over there.” . . .

While Hazel was by no means the worst storm the Island had ever seen, the aftermath of the hurricane would be felt in the years to come. As Sally Gibson notes in More Than an Island, Hazel became part of the official rationale for Metro’s drive to convert the entire space to parkland in the years that followed.

Chris Kasabov, a painter relatively new to the Toronto arts scene, recently asked me about other artists who have interpreted the city’s waterfront.

Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, immediately comes to mind. Mrs. Simcoe was an avid diarist who left us with an engaging account of the social and natural history of Upper and Lower Canada in the late eighteenth century. She was also a talented artist. Her watercolours and sketches provide us with a fascinating visual record of these early days, and include many renderings of Toronto, then called York.

The sweltering days of mid-summer have come again early this year, and Torontonians are flocking to the city’s waterfront trails, parks, and numerous blue flag beaches in record numbers.

This renewed interest and activity at the shore is encouraging, and harkens back to the days in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when tens of thousands of Torontonians routinely traded the heat and grime of the city for a day, a week, or an entire summer at the waters edge.

During this period, numerous pleasure gardens, amusements parks, hotels, and inns were erected at or near the Toronto shore, from the Rouge River in the east to Etobicoke Creek in the west. Seasonal summer cottage and tent communities took hold around many of these early establishments, and in some districts were the forerunners to the full time communities still present along the shore today.

For more information on Toronto’s waterfront resort era, be sure to check out “Never Ending Summer: The Beaches Golden Era of Amusement Parks”, in the Beaches Living Guide, Spring & Summer Edition, 2012, (free in local stores and businesses).

Shoot the Chutes at Scarboro’ Beach Amusement Park, 1907, City of Toronto Archives

Many of us are drawn to the past, and in particular, local history, though few of us make it our life’s work. Those who do are keenly aware that the past informs the present, and that the stories revealed by our shared experience deepen our sense of place. Toronto Island resident Albert Fulton was one of those people.

Albert Fulton spent the better part of his life chronicling the oral, visual, and written history of two communities in Toronto: Wychwood Park and Toronto Island.

During the course of writing Along the Shore, I had the privilege of spending many hours pouring over Albert’s extensive Island collection, which is now housed, along with the Wychwood Park material, at the City of Toronto Archives.

The Island archival information is divided into a number of categories, among them the Presentation albums, which meticulously detail the property history of each of the homes on Algonquin and Ward’s Island. Also of interest are the Toronto Island Resident’s Association (TIRA) records, that outline the lengthy fight of residents to remain on the Island, and the deal that was ultimately struck that allowed them to stay. I found the series of over 700 subject files particularly useful, on topics as diverse as geology and the formation of the Island, to First Nations presence, and shipwrecks.

Both of these collections will undoubtedly deepen our understanding of Toronto and add to our sense of place. Well done Albert, and thank you.

I am told that the Island material is currently being catalogued, and will be available to researchers in late spring of this year, though some photographs from this holding are now on display at the New Acquisitions Corner at the Archives, http://www.toronto.ca/archives/

Thanks so much to all those who have read and commented on my blog posts. I also have a Facebook page up and running, that gives more frequent, smaller “bites” of information on the history, landscape and people of the Toronto waterfront. Please feel free to “Like” that page, and visit it as often as you want! In the meantime, here is the Facebook post from last Friday, March 30, 2012.