In 1946, a small subdivision was created on the former Risebrough farm on the southwest corner of Bayview and Cummer, but this subdivision was different. Created and operated under the federal government’s Veterans Land Act (VLA), the oversized one-half-acre lots were designed to allow returning veterans and their families enough space to grow their own food. The lots featured frontages that ranged from 110 feet to 140 feet. One of 124 such communities in Canada, “Risebrough,” as the new community was called, was an immediate hit with the fifty families lucky enough to live there. The going was rough at first but as the new settlers persevered they soon created a way of life that made all of their efforts worthwhile.
Like most subdivisions, this one started out as a sea of mud, but as the new residents landscaped and developed their properties, a very different scene began to emerge. By 1949, all fifty families had moved into their new homes and were beginning to see the first produce from their gardens. In a way, the new community was like a collection of mini farms, where neighbours still had a commonality of purpose. Large projects, such as the construction of garages or additions to the houses were accomplished by all of the residents coming together to pitch in, much as the farmers before them had depended on barn-raising bees and the like to realize their dreams. The growing of fruits and vegetables was undertaken in a serious way, to the point that most families were able to harvest enough produce in the fall to get them through the entire winter.
John MacKenzie, who had spent most of the Second World War on corvettes in the North Atlantic, is a case in point. “We grow almost every type of vegetable,” he said, when quoted in The Willowdale Enterprise of October 20, 1949. “We put them in a cold storage bin in the basement and they last us all through the winter. Last spring we had enough potatoes left to cut up and plant for this year’s crop.”[2] The family only needed to buy butter, meat, and a few packaged items to get them through the winter. The MacKenzies won an award for having the best landscaped and developed VLA lot in Ontario. Although most of the veterans were employed in Toronto after the war, they couldn’t wait to get home at night to their plots and garden tractors. Orchards planted by the families soon yielded peaches, pears, plums, cherries, and apples. Fall was the time for harvesting and ploughing.
Looking northwest across Bayview Avenue, just north of Finch. The William Ford farm can be seen in the foreground, and several of the houses in the little suburb of Risebrough in the background. The Fords began farming this eighty-acre parcel in 1886. Today, this would essentially be a photo of the Bayview Arena, but here, in 1955, a well-kept working farm and the garden plots of Risebrough continue to stand their ground.
Photo by Ted Chirnside, Toronto Public Library, TC 117.
The package of house and lot cost an average of $7,200, although the veterans were only required to pay $5,200 back to the government. Amortized over twenty-five years, the mortgage payments were approximately $19.00 per month for a bungalow and $25.75 for a six-room, storey-and-a-half house. The 3.5 percent interest rate was the only figure that would appear even remotely familiar to present-day residents. Property taxes, which had started out around $40.00 a year in 1946, had soared to $55.00 three years later. To put things in perspective though, it should be realized that this represents a 38 percent increase. Imagine the outcry if that kind of burden were imposed on today’s property owners? It should also be remembered that a salary of $50.00 a week would have landed you squarely in the middle class during the immediate post-war years.
The MacKenzies weren’t the only family in Risebrough to win an award. Their neighbours, the Yules and the Ives, also won in the category of Veterans Individual Small Holdings. The community itself was judged the best in its class, out of all 124 similar communities in Canada. The federal government had high hopes for this type of initiative. Milton Gregg, the federal minister in charge of veterans’ affairs said, when he announced the competition in 1948, that “The small holding way of life has great potential for stabilizing our economy. It will command the interest of town planners in countries other than Canada.”[3] Sadly, this noble little initiative was no match for the overwhelming influx of humanity that would wash over North York for the next three decades.
When the first vegetable gardens were planted in Risebrough, North York had less than forty thousand residents. Twenty-five years later there were more than half-a-million people occupying the same space. The lovely idea of a reasonable number of people sharing the land in such a way that they could grow some of their own food was sacrificed on the altar of unfettered growth. The promise of increased tax revenue, which always sets municipal politicians to salivating, may look good on paper, but it is never enough to cover the costs incurred by a massive population explosion. Where there was once a dream of self-sufficiency, there is now welfare and food banks. Where there was once one unarmed police officer, there now are thousands in bullet-proof vests. Where people once enjoyed a little fresh air and elbow room, today’s citizens are now forced to endure smog alerts, gridlock, and road rage. If Roy had known it would come to this, he might have left the Model T in the barn.
Risebrough Avenue still exists to mark the place where a hopeful little subdivision was swallowed by a ravenous city, the frontages now divided two or three times over to cram in as many houses as possible. Seneca College occupies the Risebroughs’ original farm at Finch and the Don Valley Parkway. The rest of their farms are now covered by houses, apartment buildings, and shopping centres. One Risebrough farmhouse still stands in Scarborough, on the east side of Victoria Park, halfway between Steeles and Finch. It currently houses a mosque, which almost certainly means that it will only stand until enough money is raised to build a proper mosque. All of the family’s other farmhouses are gone, except for one, and what a neat little story that is.
In 1980, the farmhouse that Robert Risebrough II had bought at the corner of Bathurst and Drewry was slated for demolition, since the area was being re-developed. The exact build date of the house remains undocumented, although it is known that it was built on a ten-acre parcel of Lot 23-1W that had been severed from the lot in 1847. That was the year that Drewry Avenue was opened up from Yonge Street to Bathurst Street after William Durie bought the south half of the lot and subdivided it into smaller lots that ranged from five to thirty acres. The Risborough house started out as a simple frame worker’s cottage that was possibly constructed by James Hale, who owned the ten-acre lot from 1851 to 1861, although any positive determination is purely speculative. It does seem clear, however, that “Drewry’” is a mutation of William Durie’s surname.
William Durie was a retired English army officer when he came to Upper Canada in 1836. The thoroughfare that would ultimately bear a modified version of his name was initially known as “Pope’s Lane,” because of the preponderance of Roman Catholics who built houses there. The Risebrough house came into the family by way of the Wood family who had purchased the house in 1872. Six years later the house was owned by William Woods, who was Robert Risebrough II’s father-in-law. Robert and family took the house over in 1891 and were probably the ones who added the second storey. The house would remain in the Risebrough family until the late 1970s, the final residents being Charles Risebrough and his wife, Janet (McCorkell) Risebrough. By the time Charles died, on August 19, 1978, the house was surrounded by new development and stood on the last undeveloped corner in the area.
One day in 1980, while the vacant farmhouse waited for the bulldozers, it caught the eye of Bob Holland, who was then the head of the Industrial Arts Department at nearby R.J. Lang Junior High School. Bob immediately saw a tremendous opportunity to save a part of our history and give his students some real-world experience at the same time. In a scene that is not likely to repeat itself today, Bob convinced the developer to allow his students to carefully dismantle the house so it could be rebuilt and preserved at another location. The developer agreed and the North York Board of Education offered up their outdoor education centre near Bolton as a site for the reconstruction. The R.J. Lang students carefully dismantled the house, numbering each piece of wood to facilitate re-assembly. The pieces were then moved to the outdoor education centre, but before they could be put back together, the North