{Chapter Four}
The Bales Family Farms
Of all the pioneer families in North York, none was more politically active than the Bales family. By the fourth generation, family members had held the offices of school trustee, councillor, deputy reeve, and reeve; as well as Ontario MPP and provincial cabinet minister. It all began when John Bales of Cumberland and his wife, Elizabeth Scott, originally from Yorkshire, decided to leave England for the New World in 1819.
Shortly after their arrival in what became the Township of North York, John and Elizabeth purchased the western sixty acres of Lot 15-1W. Their farm occupied the southeast corner of present-day Bathurst and Sheppard. The eastern border of the farm was the massive valley of the West Don River. Their neighbours on the lot were John Sheppard, who owned the northeastern section, which reached all the way over to Yonge Street, and Andrew McGlashan, who owned the southeast corner of the lot, between Yonge Street and the river.
The house that the Bales’ built on their farm in 1822 still stands today, and a good thing too, for the house is apparently one of only a few of its kind to ever be built in pioneer Ontario. The one-and-a-half-storey house is built of logs and covered in rough-cast concrete — a combination of mortar and small pebbles. The symmetrical plan and elevation of the house echo the style of the rural English cottages of the Bales’s youth, and although this style and construction method are rare in Ontario, similar houses are quite common in New York State. A kitchen wing was added to the house sometime before 1850 to accommodate a growing family that would eventually include ten children. It goes without saying that the house was well built since it has already survived for nearly 190 years. The house still sits on its original site, which is now part of the north end of Earl Bales Park, not too far south of Sheppard Avenue. In 1833, John expanded the farm to 160 acres when he purchased one hundred acres of Lot 14-1W, directly to the south, the lot that had originally been granted to potter Thomas Humberstone in 1812.
In 1881, the farm was sold to the Grand Trunk Transportation Company, although no rail lines were ever laid anywhere near the farm. In fact, this part of Bathurst Street was long considered to be ill-suited to any type of travel owing to the extreme width and depth of the river valley.
John Bales’s house, the first farmhouse that the family built in Upper Canada. Ironically, the only one of their homes still standing, is shown here in Earl Bales Park on February 19, 2010.
Photo by Scott Kennedy
Maps from 1892 to 1910 show a stable period of ownership for the farms on the two lots, with George McCormack farming the northeast ninety acres of Lot 15-1W, which was formerly owned by John Sheppard, and the Shedden Company owning the Bales’s 160 acres at Bathurst and Sheppard. The Shedden Company, also spelled “Sheddon” on some documents, was formed in 1887 to operate flour mills in the area. As well as milling on the former Bales farm, the company also operated another mill a mile or so downriver in Hogg’s Hollow until 1897.
The farms would exist until the 1950s when the acreage to the east of the river valley was subdivided for houses, and the Bales farm, to the west of the valley, became the York Downs Golf Club. The club continued as a part of the community, preserving a tremendous amount of green space until 1968, when the land was sold to the City of Toronto and the club moved to a new facility near the corner of Kennedy Road and Sixteenth Avenue in Markham. The former golf course was then transformed into the current Earl Bales Park and Earl Bales Ski and Snowboard Centre — the steep hills are still in use and were just upgraded with a million-dollar-plus ski lift, paid for by the City of Toronto. Remnants of the golf course’s landscaping are still clearly visible on the park’s tableland along Bathurst Street.
So who exactly is Earl Bales? His story will appear as part of that fourth generation of Bales (later in this chapter). Several of John and Elizabeth’s children would marry and leave North York to farm elsewhere. Son Joseph, however, stayed put and started the branch of the family that would ensure the Bales name would not soon be forgotten.
In 1885, Joseph Bales bought a farm on Lot 15-1E from the Harrison family of York Mills. The northern border of the farm was Sheppard Avenue. It was bounded by Bayview Avenue to the east and Yonge Street to the west. The farm had previously been owned by members of other pioneer families, including Stillwell Willson, Jacob Cummer, Elihu Pease, and Christopher Harrison II. In 1888, Joseph bought the western half of Lot 14-1E directly to the south. He now had nearly three hundred acres of farmland at the corner of Yonge and Sheppard. In 1896, the land was passed on to his sons. Joseph Christie Bales settled on Lot 15-1E and his brother, Oliver Douglas Bales, settled on the western half of Lot 14-1E. Maps from 1910 show that the farms were still owned by the two brothers.
In the 1920s, Joseph and Oliver employed a family of gypsies to work on their farms. The gypsies were skilled blacksmiths who spent much of their time shoeing the Bales’ horses. On Sundays the little family would take their covered wagon, which contained all of their worldly goods, down to the river in Hogg’s Hollow where they would do their laundry and hang it up to dry under the old bridge that once spanned the river just north of the Jolly Miller. The horses and dogs enjoyed a well-deserved dip in the cool water while the family bathed and swam before moving to the sand beach that once existed where the Miller’s parking lot is today. There they would play games and enjoy a picnic lunch while their clothes dried in the summer breeze. When the shadows began to grow long they would pack up their wagon and trundle back up the hill to the Bales’ farms.
Once common in Canada, the nomadic gypsies quietly disappeared or were assimilated into conventional society as the twentieth century progressed. One of the last remnants of their presence in North York was an abandoned gypsy wagon that survived into the 1960s, abandoned by a little creek,[1] now buried, that flowed parallel to Bannatyne Drive on the former Harrison farm in York Mills.
By the 1920s, parts of the Bales’ farms were being sold for housing as the city pushed ever further northward. Initially, the sales were to individuals for construction of individual houses, but as the years progressed, the concept of the “subdivision” reared its inevitable head. This concept of simultaneous construction of massive numbers of houses in a given area would prove the death knell for all of the farms in North York, and yet the Bales’ farms would survive a lot longer than most of their neighbours’.
Brothers Joseph Christie Bales and Oliver Douglas Bales belonged to the third generation of their family to farm in North York, but they were the first members of their family to become active in local politics. Oliver served on the first North York Council from 1922 to 1923, along with James Muirhead, William Scrace, W.J. Buchanan, and Reeve R.F. Hicks. Joseph Christie Bales would also serve on council in 1927.
Above: The success of the Bales family farms is amply demonstrated by the style, size, and detail of Oliver Douglas Bales’s farmhouse on Yonge Street, south of Sheppard; shown circa 1910.
Photographer unknown, The North York Historical Society, NYHS 1024.
Left: Later additions and renovations to the Bales farmhouse, such as the enclosed sunroom and wraparound porch, give further indication of the Bales family’s continued success. The house is shown in 1959 on the corner of Yonge Street and the fledgling Highway 401, which had been built through this area four years earlier and was still only two uncrowded lanes in each direction.
Photo by Ted Chirnside, Toronto Public Library, TC 268.
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