Our new house (on Balsam) … commanded a view right to the lake …What more could anyone want?
— Doris McCarthy, My Life
The sturdy brick house at 13 Hubbard Boulevard, which was our family home for the next thirty-eight years, not only commanded a view to the lake. It was at the lake! The entire street was only five blocks in length, its west boundary beginning at the bottom of Wineva Avenue, then running east to the foot of Balsam Avenue. If you tried to walk any farther south, you’d end up on the boardwalk. On its north side, some low-rise rental apartment buildings and fourplexes faced parkland. Our house, on the south side of Hubbard, running from Wineva to Hammersmith and linking Kew Beach and Scarboro Beach Parks, was on the only residential block adjoining the boardwalk. The block consisted of three fourplexes, our two-story family residence, and a small bachelor apartment building known as Hubbard Court, all owned by the City of Toronto. From the house’s broad front veranda, we looked out on our lawn with its enormous willow tree, the boardwalk, beach, and lake.
Our house at 13 Hubbard as it looked when we moved in. The sturdy willow tree and generous front veranda are apparent.
My family was totally unaware of the origin of the street’s name. No one paid much attention to civic history when the Second World War broke out. People were more concerned about safeguarding their future. So for them it would hold no interest that the street was named after Frederick Hubbard, the son of William Peyton Hubbard, who in 1893 was the first black person since Confederation ever elected to municipal office in Toronto. William Hubbard had an exceptional career while holding public office, being noted for his eloquence by the nickname “Old Cicero.” Because of his strong support of the introduction of hydroelectric power in Ontario, today Ontario Hydro grants financial awards to black students in Hubbard’s name. His son, Frederick, after whom the street was named, had no such illustrious history. However, he was the sole manager of that historic Scarboro Beach Amusement Park on whose site our house now stood. Over the years, my parents attempted to buy the city-owned property, but were always told that residential strip was eventually to be torn down and made into more public parkland. Ironically, city policy changed in 2001 when the city listed it for sale for $1.2 million and described it as “the last chance to own rare waterfront.” It sold three months later for $917,000!
Our front entrance faced the lake. Our house was situated on the exact location of the Scarboro Beach Amusement Park, which operated from 1907 until 1925 and had a boardwalk running along its southern perimeter. It would be a fashionable literary conceit if I could pretend my youthful psyche sensed echoes of now-vanished carousel music, the screams of delighted riders in the Shoot the Chutes water ride, or the gasps of pleasure as holiday-goers endured the torture of Bump the Bumps, the only free ride. However, it wasn’t until I was a married woman that I learned our house had been on this site. Who knew if we rested on the remains of the Tunnel of Love, or even more thrilling, of the rollercoaster? Yet I believe in good karma, and remain convinced that much of the happiness and laughter that were hallmarks of 13 Hubbard for most of the O’Donnell years sprang from the primarily joyous atmosphere of two previous decades. But I’m also a realist and understand Julia Kristeva’s dictum that the carnival contains sadness as well as joy.
My parents made an arrangement with Auntie Flo and Uncle Frank to share the living expenses. It was early 1940 and my overriding worry was finding the correct way home from school that first day. I did get lost the first time, but after that I was fine. Within a few days of living there, I’d investigated every nook and cranny of that two-story building separated from the boardwalk, the beach, and the lake only by our front lawn. The house had a stern appearance on the outside, its dark red brick partially relieved by an open upstairs veranda, enclosed by a white railing. That huge old willow that shaded our front lawn also bestowed a softer air.
Mom, Dad, Sue, Neilly, and I at back of 13 Hubbard. Behind us is Scarboro Beach Park.
The house was built to late 1920s standards. It was sturdy, designed to withstand strong winds that could sweep across wide Lake Ontario from New York State. The plan was a conventional side hall one. The front door faced the lake. You entered a hallway leading back to the kitchen. Beside the kitchen, on the east side of the house was a second door with a small porch with steps on both sides — like a “stile” in the nursery rhymes we read. This was the entrance we normally used. Attached to the back (the Hubbard Boulevard side) were a single-car garage and a driveway, long enough for two cars. The brick arch entranceway leading from the driveway to the side and front doors provided a quaint touch. Hubbard Court, a narrow, low-rise, yellow brick bachelor apartment building, ran along the house’s east side. On the west, the fourplexes began.
If you entered by the front door on the wide veranda facing the lake, on the left were French doors with leaded glass panels leading to a large living room with a bay window, and a tiled fireplace with a gumwood mantel bookended by two small, stained glass windows. Moving from the south-facing living-room window to the north-facing bay window in the dining room, you passed through two panelled and leaded glass “pocket” doors (which were seldom used). The dining room had an alcove in it, perfect for our newly acquired second-hand piano. Gumwood panels lined the lower three-quarters of the dining-room walls, lending a warm glow.
The main floor hardwood had been freshly sanded and refinished by the city’s property department. I heard my mother explain, “When Flo and I first came to look at the house the floors were in terrible condition. The tenants before us kept dogs! Otherwise the house was in pretty good shape.”
To get to the second floor, there were two steps to a landing with a mirrored closet door. Inside was a mailbox with a slot opening to the outside veranda. It proved to be my favourite hiding place for toys, candy, and pennies. Eight more stairs brought you to another landing, then three more stairs into the upper level’s centre hall. Two bedrooms on the right, two on the left. My little sister and I were put in the first room to the right, which faced Hubbard and my parents were in the second. From my bedroom window, I could climb out onto the garage rooftop when I felt daring and no one was around to see me do it. My aunt and uncle got the prime bedroom facing the lake front and my dad used the other lake-facing room as an office, keeping track of his sales. It was furnished with a desk and a fold-out studio couch where company could sleep. There was also an electric fireplace (never used) and two built-in wooden benches, too hard for sitting on, but handy for Dad to pile up with his files and papers. The bathroom completed our living space upstairs.
When my brother came along two years after we moved in, his crib was in my parents’ bedroom. After my aunt and uncle eventually moved into their own apartment, Neilly got my parents’ room and they moved into the big front bedroom.
Our huge basement was divided into three rooms, both walls and floors unpainted. It always smelled musty, because it was. The first room contained laundry tubs, a wringer washing machine, and storage shelves. The second room became the Ping-Pong room, with more shelves for storage. The third room housed the furnace and coal bin. It had a high window with a chute so that coal could be delivered from outside.
It wasn’t until I was a teen that I discovered another feature of our basement. It was a tiny partition beside our wringer washing machine containing a solitary toilet. A faded Union Jack flag hung lengthwise over the cubicle’s opening. Perhaps it was my father’s subtle payback to the English, by which he meant the Orange Lodge, who virtually controlled Toronto’s politics and business and excluded everything Catholic or foreign. That alcove was dank and dark and I never used it even after I learned of its existence.
The house had two verandas. One ran across the back, attached to the garage. None of us ever played on it because it was too exposed. Anyone walking or driving along Hubbard could have stared at us. My mother would stand on it to hang