Cover
Dedication
This volume of collected works is dedicated to Yarmila, my faithful spell-checker, image manager, typist, and wife of forty-seven years (and in case she reads this, these responsibilities are not in that order).
Publisher’s Note
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 11 of Dundurn Press’s Toronto Sketches series. The columns in this book originally appeared in 2012 and 2013. 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).
Here’s to Our Kennedys
May 6, 2012
What today are acknowledged as two of our city’s busiest thoroughfares, Kennedy and Ellesmere roads, began as a couple of dusty pioneer roads in the wilds of what had been established as the Township of Scarborough back in 1850. According to Scarborough archivist Rick Schofield, Kennedy Road was named in recognition of the Kennedy family, many of whom were prominent in the early development of the township. Two of the best known Kennedys were brothers Samuel and William, who owned several hundred-acre farms on the west side of Kennedy north of Sheppard. Other family members farmed on Church Street, a thoroughfare that was subsequently renamed Midland Avenue after the Midland Railway of Canada, an early transportation company that was to become part of the new CNR when the latter was established in 1923. Much of the Midland Railway’s original right-of-way through Scarborough still exists between Kennedy and Midland and is used by GO trains on the Stouffville route.
Another prominent member of the pioneer Kennedy family was Lyman Kennedy, who served as Scarborough Township Reeve from 1896 to 1901.
Looking north on Kennedy Road over Ellesmere Road in 1912. This image appeared on a postcard published by Henry and Clarence Herington, who worked out of an office in Trenton, Ontario. The brothers photographed and published numerous postcards of small Ontario towns. One of their biggest fans is Toronto Sun reporter Ian Robertson, who hopes to write a book about the family one day.
A similar view of the same intersection exactly one hundred years later. Note the slight bend in Kennedy Road, which still exists, possibly a result of a minor miscalculation by the early surveyors.
The name Ellesmere was selected for the small community that developed in the early 1800s in and around this same dusty crossroads by settlers who had arrived in the New World from Ellesmere, Shropshire, England. Helen Foster, the archive assistant with the Shropshire council government (great thing, this email and Internet stuff) says that the word Ellesmere, or more correctly Ellesmeles, dates back to the eleventh century. It’s believed that the Elles portion of the word refers to a Saxon personal name, while meles or mere refers to a lake defined as being “broad in relation to its depth.”
St. Clair Bridge Still Gives Us Trouble
May 20, 2012
For the longest time, the project that saw the upgrading of the TTC’s St. Clair streetcar route (which began service in its original form exactly ninety-nine years ago this coming August 15) was the brunt of all sorts of controversy. And while the provincial government’s environmental approval of the line was given in June 2005, the streetcars didn’t begin operating over the new dedicated right-of-way until the summer of 2010. Though some are still convinced that the project has not been a success, many others are beginning to appreciate what has been accomplished.
But there is still a shortcoming along the seven-kilometre-long route, and that’s the railway bridge between Old Weston Road and Keele Street, which continues to result in vehicular traffic congestion. Trains have crossed St. Clair Avenue at this location for more than one hundred years. Because street traffic in the form of horses and wagons was much less back then, a level crossing was sufficient. However, with the arrival of the motor car, combined with the westward expansion of the city, a bridge was the only answer to what was becoming a dangerous situation. Work on the present structure began in April 1931, and on May 14 of the following year the new “subway” (as such structures were known back then), built at a cost of $430,000, was officially opened, allowing the St. Clair streetcars to be extended to Keele Street.
An initial estimate to replace the structurally sound eighty-year-old bridge presents a figure close to $30 million! Now what?
On May 14, 1932, representatives of the TTC and the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways, along with various elected city officials (including Mayor William Stewart, who served from 1931 to 1934 and whose nephew Bill Stewart just retired as Toronto’s Fire Chief), join with members of the nearby community to celebrate the official opening of the new “subway” on St. Clair Avenue West. (Photo from the City of Toronto Archives.)
Cemetery Last Port of Call
May 27, 2012
Last month, in recognition of the one hundredth anniversary of the April 15, 1912, sinking of the White Star Line’s RMS Titanic with the loss of more than fifteen hundred lives, television stations, newspapers, magazines, and Internet sites worldwide featured all kinds of stories about the tragic event. For my part I devoted my April 15, 2012, Sunday Sun column (one hundred years to the day!) to the three Canadian survivors, Mary and Ethel Gordon and Major Arthur Peuchen, who now lie at rest in Toronto’s beautiful Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
The world was shaken by an accident that the experts were sure just couldn’t happen, then another enormous marine disaster occurred a little more than two years later when on May 29, 1914, the Canadian Pacific’s Atlantic steamer RMS Empress of Ireland, bound for Liverpool from the Port of Quebec City with 1,477 passengers and crew, was rammed by the Norwegian coal freighter SS Storstad in the St. Lawrence River not far from the town of Rimouski. The Empress sank in less than 14 minutes with a loss of 842 passengers and 172 crew members. Of the 842 passengers, 167 were members of the Salvation Army who were on their way to an international conference scheduled to convene in London, England, early in June. Many of those 167 were from Toronto. Two years after the disaster, in 1916, an awe-inspiring memorial to their memory was erected in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
The caskets of sixteen Salvation Army victims of the RMS Empress of Ireland marine disaster were laid to rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery on June 6, 1914. The total number of “Sally Ann” victims would increase to 167, many of them members of the band of the Toronto Citadel. (Photo from the Salvation Army Archives.)
As has taken place on the Sunday closest to May 29 every year since the sinking, a special service will again be held at the memorial. This year’s will commence at 3:00 p.m. and, of course, the public is invited.
Toronto businessman A.R. Clarke’s monument in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Note the reference to his being a victim of the RMS Lusitania tragedy.
As if these two marine disasters in such a short span of time weren’t enough, a third sinking of a large passenger ship was to rattle the world’s ocean-crossing public less than a year later when the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania