Prize Watch: Chalmers Award to Ian Radforth

The Champlain Society announces that the 2024 winner of its Floyd Chalmers Award for the best book in Ontario history is Ian Radforth for Expressive Acts: Celebrations and Demonstrations in the Streets of Victorian Toronto, a study of: 

occasions when crowds gathered in the streets of Toronto to demonstrate, contest, or celebrate. Vividly written and richly researched, his accounts include rowdy election days, beleaguered religious processions, rallies for troops who subdued the North-West Resistance, Street Railway Company strikes, and Viceregal and Royal visits.

Book Notes: White on the Beaches

Okay, Richard White is a good friend of ours, but I'm really liking his new book The Beaches: Creation of a Toronto Neighbourhood. 

Richard lives in and appreciates the Beaches neighbourhood of east Toronto, but he is also a historian of urban planning (Planning Toronto, etc.). The planner in him wasn't interested in merely celebrating the place, so there's some urban history data and analysis here, and you might learn a little about Sam Bass Warner's theory of street car suburbs and such. Nor is he inclined to preservationist "preserve this urban form at all costs" arguments that might come from residents' associations and such. 

He has a citizen's interest, you might say, in how cities and neighbourhood grow and change. He's just interested, and often amused, at the way this particular neighbourhood came to be the way it is. He notes that early in the 20th century, as the Beaches was growing fast, the idea of comprehensive town planning was beginning to be tried in places like Vienna:

But one suspects that Toronto city councillors knew as much about Viennese city-building as they did about Sigmund Freud.

You need not be an urban historian to share his interest, but you might come to learn a little about what urban history knows.

The cover art is by William Kurelek, probably better known for his prairie scenes and Ukrainian imagery. Who knew he lived in the Beaches for a while? Well, Richard White, anyway.

The "Beaches" and not "The Beach"? Torontonians familiar with that debate will want to see his assessment of what the "correct" title has to be.

 

History Speaks: Levine on Jewish Toronto

Next Wednesday, May 10, Winnipeg's prolific historian (and novelist) Allan Levine, author of a history of Toronto and a history of Canadian Jews, speaks in Toronto on "The Jewish Experience in Toronto" It is part of the Yorkminster Park Speakers Series -- a series that has welcomed quite a few historians, including me, in recent years.  If you are not in Toronto or unable to attend in person, it is available as a live webcast.

 

History of the fall of a fence.

Osgoode Hall, fence, and trees, c1868

The grounds of Osgoode Hall have been under threat almost as long as they have existed.  And they have existed a long time. The hall was first built by the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1832, and its grounds were soon encircled by wooden fencing. A handsome wrought-iron fence replaced the wooden one in the 1860s, by which time the Hall also housed the superior courts of Ontario. Ever since, the grounds have been a rare green oasis in the concrete jungles of downtown Toronto. 

And pretty much ever since, someone or other has seen a need to encroach upon the green space with some urgent developmental need. 

In the nineteenth century the University of Toronto thought itself entitled to encroach on the space for University Avenue, the route to its new campus. 

During the Second World War, Osgoode Hall was a rare holdout when most of the wrought-iron fences around churches, gardens, and public and private buildings in Toronto were taken down to provide iron for the war effort. In almost every case, the lawns and gardens inside were gradually replaced with street widenings and parking spaces as soon as the fences were removed

In the 1950s the City of Toronto planned to expropriate a broad strip of the grounds in order to widen Queen Street. 

In the 1960s , the Ontario government proposed building an office tower on the grounds at the corner of Queen and University. 

In the 1970s the law society quailed at the cost of renovating the fence, and considered transferring it to the provincial government, and it was argued that the fence was a symbol of exclusion, exclusion, and barriers to justice -- a suggestion that was revived in the early 2000s.

It's fair to say that the survival of the fence, at considerable cost to the Law Society, was indeed assisted by the Law Society's -- and the Ontario legal profession's -- sense of noblesse oblige, "a positive obligation to preserve the legacy of 'a handful of barristers who built thsi marvellous building to our great joy today.'" The other factor was the very substantial clout that leading lawyers and judged always had in dealings with the provincial governments of all stripes at all times.

The gardens and the fence triumphed over all these challenges.  But it looks like they will succumb to the Doug Ford government and Metrolinx, its transit-building arm, which have expropriated a corner of the gardens and are about to level all the trees on it as part of planning for a new subway station. The law society has been resisting the erosion of its domain, but not very effectively or successfully.  Authoritarian, headstrong governments and their "arm's length" agency are no longer subject to the informal restraints that once prevailed, and are likely to get their way, even on stupid things.

(Much of the detail here is drawn from my own The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers 1797-1997, University of Toronto Press, 1997)

Finding digitized Toronto newspapers

The downside of using digital collections of historical newspapers -- and being able to use them is mostly all upside, I hasten to add -- is figuring out where the hell they are, what they cover, and how to work 'em.  My own use of Toronto newspapers collections is very intermittent, and every time I want to do some, I have to learn the system all over again.  

Hence I was delighted to discover on the website of Jamie Bradburn, ace researcher/chronicler of Toronto history, a clear and detailed listing of historical Toronto newspapers that are or are not available online. 

Thanks, Jamie.  BTW, his blog on things Toronto is pretty good too.  

History of Tkaronto

Nice to see a forthcoming article in Ontario History getting front page coverage in national newspapers.  Toronto map researcher Rick Laprairie identified the words "Lac Torontos" on  a 1678 map by Quebec-based mapmaker Jean-Louis Franquelin

John Steckley, the dean of all things Iroquoian in 17th century southern Ontario, seems to have taken note of Franquelin's use of the term fifteen years ago.  But Laprairie, whose article surveys the origins of the name Toronto, apparently makes a pretty good case this is the earliest known use of the root of "Toronto" on a European map.  Map is here; wording not visible at this magnification.

The label is on a lake that is pretty clearly today's Lake Simcoe. It's further evidence that the place now called Toronto was then the entrance to the Toronto portage, which led to the 17th century Tkaranto, a site located near today's Orillia. The word is Iroquoian and refers to the fish weirs there: something like "tree trunks in the water." 

(So Toronto means not so much "the meeting place" (as used to asserted) and is more like "sticks in the mud"?)

Toronto Dreams Project on Simcoe and Slavery

In Toronto, the August long weekend holiday Monday is called Simcoe Day in honour of John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. The Toronto Dreams Project, a lively website by Adam Bunch, contributed a look at Simcoe's complicated relationship with slavery,

He saw no place for the practice in his new province. "The principles of the British Constitution do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns," he wrote before he officially took his post. "The moment I assume the Government of Upper Canada, under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates by dishonest policy between natives of Africa, America or Europe."

But the legislative council Simcoe himself had appointed was dominated by slave-holders

He was forced into a compromise — the exact thing he had promised never to do. The new law didn't abolish slavery immediately; instead, it would be gradually phased out. No new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, but any who were already here would spend the rest of their lives in slavery. Their children would be born into captivity, too; they wouldn't be free until they turned twenty-five. Finally, anyone who wanted to free a slave was discouraged from doing so: they would be forced to provide financial security to ensure the newly freed slave wouldn't be a drain on the resources of the state.

When he returned to Britain, he was assigned to lead troops in assisting the French royalist regime in Haiti to suppress the slaves' growing independence war there -- a task he eventually dropped out of.

Image: from Toronto Dreams Project.

History of Jane-Finch, and Toronto Heritage Awards

The Toronto Heritage Awards, which I missed the other night, gave out a slew of awards in several categories, all now recorded here.

I have a slew of connections to nominees in several categories, but particularly with the Books category, where I was a juror this year. Rather than navigate all my associations here, I want to say something about one book among the nominees that has stayed with me strongly -- and to which I have no personal connection other than being a reader.

One of the huge stories of Toronto in the last half century has been the enormous growth of the Caribbean-Canadian population. A related story has been the growth of the Jane-Finch neighbourhood and its reputation for poverty, racial segregation, public housing, and gun crime. Jane-Finch sits at the intersection of two important traffic arteries, and close to York University, and I often ride past on the Jane 35 express bus on the way to the Ontario Archives at York, but for me as for many Torontonians, Jane-Finch and its big public housing complexes like Driftwood Court are largely unknown territory -- personally and historically.

Let me say that as far as I know, Michael A. Amos's Both Sides of the Fence: Surviving the Trap is the best and most revealing window into Jane-Finch life currently in existence. Privately published and hard to find except directly from the publisher  (UPDATE: or any ebook source!), it's the memoir of a still-young man who grew up in Driftwood Court. He's been an athlete, an actor, and an entrepreneur, but Both Sides of the Fence is mostly about youth in Jane-Finch: posses, guns, drugs, mothers, poverty, violent death, police, school struggles, sport, racism. We read about these things all the time -- but rarely, rarely from Michael Amos's point of view.

I don't know what a Toronto Heritage Award nomination and prize can do for either sales and recognition.  But I'd like to see more attention to Both Sides of the Fence, to Jane-Finch's own testimony about itself, and to a writer called Michael Amos.

Kudos also to Allan Levine for his Toronto: Biography of a City, to Jennifer Bonnell for Reclaiming the Don, and to Bob Bossin for Davy the Punk, a truly wonderful family history that I had expected to see on the nonfiction shortlist for the Governor General's Awards this fall.  And to the winners in all the other categories, too

Active History - History Matters Fall 2011 Lecture Series, Toronto Public Library

History lectures series at the Toroto Public Library.

"This year these lectures focus on two themes—labour and environmental history in the Toronto area and beyond."

http://activehistory.ca/2011/08/history-matters-fall-2011-lecture-series-toronto-public-library-2/

Why should the TTC museum be controversial?

The Toronto Transit Commission has problems -- funding, customer service, labour relations, construction overruns, inadequate subways, what have you? -- but the fact that its new headquarters will include a TTC museum is not one of them.

The TTC is an integral part of Toronto and of Toronto history. The building of the subway in the 1950s was a transformative moment for the city. The building of the Don Valley Viaduct, subway potential included, decades in advance, makes a crucial and appropriate appearance in Michael Ondaadje's novel of Toronto immigrants and labourers, In the Skin of A Lion. The fight over ownership of the "street railways" way back in the early twentieth century was one crucial battle between public ownership and private monopoly in Canadian public life. The TTC even trades on traditional "Red Rocket" imagery to persuade us that streetcars are an adequate substitute for our missing subway routes. (And as someone said in the press recently, the TTC's flimsy paper transfers and aging architecture make every subway station seem like a living museum anyway.)

The history of the TTC matters. It ought to conserve and make available its historical material as a matter of course. Museums and archives should be understood as an obligation, not a frill or a diversion, in every significant public institution.

The suburban boobosity that seems to run Toronto since the megacity amalgamation is in hysterics about this wasteful spending. A museum? What's worse is that even those who ought to be urban thinkers and politicians seem to be running scared.

Mr. Smitherman said he's not opposed to the idea of a transit museum, but given the choice, he'd scrap the project....

If you glance at Toronto city politics from afar and wonder why on earth a nasty clown named Rob Ford seems to be doing well in the current mayoral race, there's the answer in a nutshell. If the main urban candidate wants to be all downtown and progressive, but goes all Rob Ford lite whenever an issue arises, why not?

[Image: Toronto Star via Google Images.]