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ОглавлениеFROM THE YORK LAND COMPANY TO FREDERICK TODD TO LEASIDE
THE HISTORY of Leaside has many connections with the railway. Once the Canadian Northern chose the land north and west of the Leaside Junction station for the location of its new real estate project, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann established the York Land Company as Canadian Northern’s development arm. Quietly, the Company began assembling property in the area. Prices varied from $900.00 to $4000.00 an acre. The total CNoR purchase exceeded two million dollars. By 1912, the Company had accumulated over 1,000 acres bounded on the south by the Canadian Pacific tracks, on the west by Bayview Avenue, on the east by Leslie Street and, on the north, three farms above Eglinton Avenue.
This massive land purchase was made public in The Toronto World March 1912. The purchase of land in York Township was described under the headline of “Toronto’s largest land deal.” The acquisition included: Lea property (300 acres); Pugsley Farm (100 acres); Hunt (Junior) Farm (100 acres); odd lots (50 acres); Dr. Norman Allen (135 acres); Atkinson Farm (100 acres): a total of 900 acres. All of the owners were required to vacate the land by August 1912.1
In April 1912, the Canadian Northern Railway announced its intentions to build a large residential community in what was known as North Toronto. Canadian Northern’s plans for the project did not include railway service to the community immediately, but the Railway did build the planned extensive repair facilities adjacent to the Canadian Pacific’s Leaside yards and main line.
Mackenzie and Mann engaged Frederick Todd,2 the town planner and landscape architect from Montreal, to lay out the plan for a “model town.” Leaside was intended to be the new upper class residential area of Toronto, the “new Rosedale.” The detailed street and lot plan of the community was completed in late April, 1913 and the project was named and incorporated as the Town of Leaside. The project was innovative for its time – a pre-planned town, laid out fully before a building existed. The railway service to be provided by the CNoR was intended not only to foster residential growth but to attract industrial activities.
Map outlining the York Land Company property. Redrawn by J. Rempel (1931) from map in The Toronto World3 March 22, 1912.
But, the anticipated residential development of the new town did not happen. A global recession, the outbreak of the First World War, the bankruptcy of the Canadian Northern Railway and Leaside s isolated location, all combined to prevent the project from proceeding. However, extensive industrial development did grow along the Canadian Pacific Railway corridor, accelerated by the First World War munitions factories.
The wide and steep-sided valley of the Don posed a major physical barrier to convenient access from the south to the Leaside open land. Without a road connection which spanned the valley, the undeveloped land would remain that way. As well, Millwood Road, the route to the south, dead-ended at the Leaside (north) side of the CPR tracks.
Two major construction projects were required to connect the open land of Leaside to Toronto in the south. In October 1927, both projects were completed—a high level bridge across the Don Valley (now called the Leaside Viaduct) and an underpass.
Leaside’s open land was now readily accessible by car although many still considered the area to be in “the middle of nowhere.” Growth was slow for that reason, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.
Building the Millwood CPR Underpass; date circa 1926. Lopking northwest under the Canadian Pacific main line from what would become Millwood Road and the southern entrance into Leaside. What would you see today if you looked northwest from this spot? City of Toronto Archives.
The residential Leaside community with which we are familiar, began taking form in the late 1930s as the economy emerged from the Depression. Streets, sewers and water mains could not be built for the entire area of Leaside all at once. Construction took place as sections of Leaside became populated. Its development continued through the 1950s, finally with the completion of North Leaside. There is no neatly defined “completion” of Leaside. The community today continues to change and grow with new development.
A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF FREDERICK TODD’S TOWN PLAN FOR LEASIDE
“The Factories” (The Industrial Zone)
Todd’s4 original 1912 concept for the Town, called for a separation of the residential area from the zoned industrial section. This was Canada’s first planned industrial development park and the concept has become the model for most new communities.
The industrial area was defined by Laird Drive on the west, Wicksteed Avenue on the north and the Canadian Pacific mainline on the south and east. This zone represented about one quarter of the Towns acreage. The remaining land to the west and north was designated for residential use.
Aerial view of Leaside, 1929. This view shows the sprawling yards of the Canadian Northern5 Railway’s Leaside repair shops. The steam locomotive, its passenger coaches and freight cars required massive maintance and repair facilities. Can you pick out Laird Drive? the Durant Motors car factory? Beyond Laird Drive lies mainly open land. City of Toronto Archives.
The relatively large industrial area was established with the intent of using its property tax assessment to maintain low property taxes for the homeowners. The industrial zone became a highly utilized area almost immediately. This was some 30 years before the residential area began to take form. In 1912, Leaside had only 43 residents and many acres of open, undeveloped farm land for housing.
In 1913, the Canada Wire and Cable Company became the first industry to locate in Leaside, on a large tract of land running east from Laird Drive and south of Wicksteed Avenue. With the opening of World War I, the Leaside Munitions Company (a subsidiary of Canada Wire and Cable) built a large factory directly south of the Canada Wire site. In 1922, the Durant Motor Company purchased the Leaside Munitions factory which had closed at the end of the war.
In the pre-war period, the Canadian Northern Railway constructed its massive repair facilities and marshalling yards off what is now Esandar Drive. This was industry at its heaviest and smokiest.
In 1917, the need for an airfield to train pilots for the Royal Flying Corps caused Todd’s industrial area to be expanded well north of Wicksteed Avenue to accommodate the field. After the war, the airfield closed and Eglinton Avenue replaced Wicksteed as the northern boundary of the industrial area.
The Leaside industrial area, looking southeast. Dated circa 1930. The aerodrome is gone. Eglinton Avenue (which dead-ends at the edge of the West Don Valley) is now the northern border of the busy indeustrial area. The open land of the residential area still awaited development. Canada Wire and Cable Collection.
In the 1920s, a host of regional, national and international industries settled in this desirable part of Leaside, drawn by the cheap land, low taxes, access to the Toronto market and the excellent service of two railways. In 1931, Leaside’s industrial zone was home to 29 companies and, by 1939, this number had grown to 52. All of this simply to say, the industrial zone was a thriving area of employment and manufacturing activity long before the houses appeared in the residential area. However, in attracting labour to the town, this industrialization became the impetus for the urbanization process.
When residential development did begin in the late 1930s, Todd’s rationale of a large, industrial assessment used to subsidize residential property taxes did, in fact, take place. From the 1940s through to 1967, Leaside residents were envied for their modest property taxes—well below those of the surrounding municipalities. Leasiders were very happy with “the factories” as the area was called.
In 1967, with amalgamation with neighbouring East York, Leaside property taxes jumped abruptly over five years. Leaside residents had angrily opposed that amalgamation, citing increased taxes and loss of the Leaside identity as the inevitable outcomes.
Today, the so-called “factory area” has undergone significant change. Much of the heavy industry and manufacturing which had been its hallmark has gone, being replaced by light industrial and commercial businesses. Since the late 1990s there has been some re-zoning to introduce retail and residential use into the old industrial area. However, many successful enterprises do remain and the area has been re-named the Leaside Business Park, to reflect the new purposes for which the empty land will be used.
Looking back, Frederick Todd’s industrial urban plan for Leaside functioned well for about 80 years. That’s not bad in a century which has witnessed tumultuous change in the industrial and transportation sectors.
THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES—THE COMING OF TRAFFIC
When Frederick Todd laid out Leaside’s town plan in 1912, both the adjacent townships of Scarborough and North York were sparsely populated open and productive farmland. Cut off by the Don Valley and distant from downtown, the Leaside lands were truly isolated. The train provided the only easy access from North Toronto.
Leaside’s location and the nature of the plan for the town combined to cause Leaside to function as a giant urban cul de sac. Well into the 1950s, Eglinton Avenue stopped at the western brink of the Don Valley and became a dirt path leading down to the west branch of the Don. Bayview Avenue was unpaved at Moore Avenue and still a dirt country road beyond Eglinton into the 1940s. McRae Drive led into the industrial area and stopped there. Millwood Road dead-ended at the north side of the CPR tracks until 1927.
With the automobile and the bus in their infancy, the railway and street railway were the only means of transportation. Mackenzie and Mann had planned to run a streetcar line into the Leaside area. It never happened. If a person entered the Leaside lands from the west, there was no easy and direct way out to the north, to the east or to the south and, added to that, there was no particular destination to go to in any of those directions.
Innovative for its time, the Leaside town plan contained many of the elements of present day subdivisions – curving streets, crescents, cul de sacs, no through roads, zoned commercial/retail areas and industry separated from the residential area.
Leaside Transportation Company, 1925. From the Archives at Todmorden Mills Museum.
Photograph of early bus is entitled “Smashed up 1925. Burnt up 6 months later.” The man shown is idenified as Albert Pilcher. From the Archives as Todmorden Mills Museum.
The newly-opened Leaside Viaduct. Date: April 1928. Looking south from the undeveloped Leaside lands, across the viaduct towards the Township of East York. By 1928, Leaside had many factories, but the homes were yet to come. The bridge was widened to six lanes in the 1960s. City of Toronto Archives.
In 1912, Todd could have no inkling of what impact the automobile would have on North America generally, or on Leaside specifically. Rather, Leaside’s early problem was a total lack of traffic. People could not get there and, as a result, the residential lots lay empty throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.
The first attempt to create traffic into Leaside came in 1927 with the construction of the Leaside Viaduct6 across the Don Valley and the opening of the Millwood underpass which carried the road under the CPR mainline and south to the new viaduct.
There was now a road from Leaside that led somewhere—to east end Toronto. There was now a road through Leaside, from Moore Avenue to Southvale Drive to Millwood Road.
The two aspects of the automobile which Frederick Todd could not have imagined were its numbers and the mobility which it created. The automobile resulted in the massive development of distant dormitory suburbs from which thousands of residents each day made the double trip by car from their homes to their place of work downtown. In travelling from home to work (and back again), the commuters had to go around or get through the ring of old inner suburbs of Leaside, North Toronto, Weston, Swansea and Mimico.
Side view of the Leaside Viaduct. Date: November 1928. Looking east along the Don Valley from the North Toronto Sewage Treatment Plant (under construction). City of Toronto Archives.
In 1956, the most dramatic change came for Leaside and the growth of traffic. Eglinton Avenue was extended eastward across the west branch of the Don River and out to the growing suburbs of Don Mills and Scarborough. Eglinton Avenue, a residential street, instantly became a high volume, high speed arterial road running through the heart of Leaside.
Laird Drive which had served only to give access to the factories, now connected into arterial Eglinton. South vale and Moore would never be the same again. McRae Drive, once dead-ending in the factories, now gave a direct connection to busy Eglinton. McRae, too, would never be the same.
Paving Bayview Avenue north of Eglinton in the 1940s converted a neighbourhood shopping street into a busy arterial road which led to the expanding suburbs of North York. Bayview’s extension south in the late 1950s made it possible for commuters to get downtown directly. However, it simply added more traffic to a stop-and-go Bayview.
When busy arterial roads get clogged, commuters flow into the adjacent residential streets looking for a way around the tie-up. The first attempt in Leaside to control such infiltration was the use of the ubiquitous stop signs. Leaside became famous for its stop signs! These stop signs were soon followed by the many no-turns-during-rush hour signs.
In the bigger picture, Eglinton Avenue is the source of the traffic problem. Costly plans have been proposed which are designed to draw commuter traffic away from Eglinton and divert it around Leaside, plans such as the Leslie Street Extension and the Redway Road Extension, plans which to date have not materialized.
One wonders how Frederick Todd might have responded to Leaside’s traffic issues today.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEASIDE’S RESIDENTIAL AREA
Toronto’s growth in the early 1900s was north along the Yonge Street corridor. By 1912, this made the Leaside location potentially one of the most attractive areas in the city for residential development. Todd’s town plan for Leaside was made public in 1913. A glance at the original 1913 plan reveals some salient features.
Outside of the large industrial area, the town plan was an absolute myriad of thousands of housing lots. The farmland gathered by the York Land Company represented an investment of over $2,000,000.
Each open acre of land by the design standards of the day, could be subdivided into four residential lots. In Todd’s plan, however, probably more than four lots were created on average for each acre. Mackenzie and Mann, always operating at the financial edge, needed to re-coup huge profits from the Leaside project to fund the major capital improvements being made to their Canadian Northern Railway. The imperative was clear for Frederick Todd – load as many residential lots into the plan as possible.
Today when visitors from the suburbs see Leaside, they are struck by how close the houses are. The use of many attached houses and smaller bungalows also enabled smaller lots to be used. In general, land use was quite different from nearby Rosedale to which Leaside had compared itself in the early marketing campaigns.
In the 1913 plan, there were no areas designated for schools, parks, stores, library, fire hall, churches or some form of municipal town centre. If the town council, which would eventually govern Leaside, wanted those amenities, the council would have to buy the property from the York Land Company (The Canadian Northern Railway). Mackenzie, Mann and colleagues knew how to make a dollar!
Even before the formal plan was made public, the York Land Company began selling land to developers and industries. In May 1912, Winnipeg real estate investor, J. F. Hansen, purchased 1.5 million dollars worth of the planned Leaside lots. Later that year, in December, the CNoR announced that more than two acres of land secured by a Montreal firm would be for the construction of a brass foundry. It was to employ 3,000 to 4,000 men.
In February 1913, the Bayview Land Company purchased $340,000 worth of land (300 odd lots) in the residential and business sections. Finally, in March of that year, Neelys Limited purchased land for a cost totalling one million dollars. They formed a syndicate to build 125 homes on their lots in the spring of 1913.
In summary, by March 1913, the York Land Company had sold over three million dollars worth of land to developers and industries (about half the land available in the new suburbs).7
By March 1914, with the spring construction around the corner, Leaside was soon to become a physical reality.
“What an orgy of construction, what a hammering of nails and tearing of saws there will be when Leaside wakes up for the season and the will of the giants is fulfilled… A few years from now the ‘Tally-ho’ man will be bawling thru his megaphone as he shows visitors to Toronto the prosperous homes at Leaside.”8
The CNoR had felt Leaside should be annexed to an existing municipality to add prestige and to provide costly streets, sewers, water and public transportation. Consequently, in June 1912, they had approached the Town of North Toronto only to be refused. The following month, North Toronto became annexed to the City of Toronto.9
As another option, the York Land Company, under the direction of Colonel Davidson and Randolph McRae, initiated, in March 1913, the procedure whereby Leaside would be incorporated into a municipality by an act of the Provincial Legislature. At the same time, the York Land Company approached the City of Toronto to request annexation of Leaside. The City of Toronto also rejected this request and, on April 23, 1913, Bill No. 55 of the Provincial Legislature incorporated the CNoR property into the Town of Leaside. Leaside was “on its own.”
When incorporated, Leaside had a population of 43 and an area encompassing 1,025 acres of surveyed land. On May 8, 1913, Leaside’s voting citizens met to nominate a Town Council. Five CNoR employees were acclaimed. To provide a certain degree of stability, the Mayor, Randolph McRae, and the four Councillors, Harvey Fitzsimmons, Laurence Boulton, George Saunders, and Archibald McRae, were to serve a term of two and a half years. Thereafter, elections would be held each year.
Leaside had no money in the bank, and no source of revenue for 1913. Any money would have to be raised by municipal debentures. By April 1914, the town had acquired over $150,000.00 in debentures to be spent on the supply of services. Throughout the war years, Leaside would experience financial problems.
South Leaside, looking north. Date: circa 1948. South Leaside’a curving streets show well, with Hanna Road winding graciously through the centre of the photo. Only a magnifying glass reveals it, but all of South Leaside has its new trees. For some reason, homes on Leacrest Avenue have yet to get theirs. City of Toronto Archives.
By the end of 1917, Leaside’s financial situation had reached catastrophic proportions. The York Land Company was the major culprit, having accumulated a string of unpaid taxes. However, they still owned half of Leaside. By the end of 1919, the Council threatened to sell off the York Land holdings.
Although the first sale of home sites was advertised in The Toronto World on June 12, 1913, construction, however, had ceased with the outbreak of the war. Few of these houses were ever built.10
Under the auspices of the 1919 Ontario Housing Act, the newly formed Leaside Housing Company received a provincial loan of $100,000.00 to build working-class houses.
North Leaside was developed without having a park area designated. The schoolyard of Northlea School has served as the community park. Early in Leaside’s growth, the town fathers saw the need for parkland and ensured that each Leaside school (Bessborough and St. Anselm’s excepted) had a large park-like schoolyard.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Todd’s plan, as with Mount Royal, was the curving street plan, most prominent in South Leaside; striking because town planning of the day relied mainly on a grid pattern. Adjacent Toronto reflected that grid pattern. This imposed some restrictions on Todd, because his Leaside streets would emerge to the west and should meet the streets from Toronto. A glance at a map will show that he missed on a few!
Most residential streets were to be 66 feet wide. Twenty foot lanes were included on the blocks that had deep lots. Three streets were to provide direct and efficient access through Leaside. With a width of 80 feet, Soudan Avenue (now Parkhurst) and not Eglinton Avenue was intended to be the major east/west street.
Two grand boulevards or diagonals were included: Edith Avenue (now Bessborough) 110 feet wide and McRae Drive (120 feet wide). Streets having widths of more than 80 feet were intended to accommodate heavier traffic flows.11
The pleasing curved streets resulted, to some degree, from the south to north-east curvature of the Canadian Pacific Railway line and the location of the industrial area. As in our modern suburbs, the curving streets of Leaside continue to confuse many drivers who happen into South Leaside.
Other than a sprinkling of houses built close to the industrial area for the workers (68 houses by 1929), most of Leaside’s residential lots lay vacant for about 25 years. The late 1930s saw Leaside’s housing growth begin (328 houses by 1938). The surge of building began in 1939 and by 1941 the population had jumped to 6,183.
Leaside’s housing design was somewhat repetitive with about four plans being most prominent – the two-storey side hall, the single storey bungalow, the attached home pair and the centre hall plan.
In its urban history the homes of Leaside have experienced three distinct demographic transitions, each one re-newing Leaside in its unique way. Those transitions have been:
—the original owners—purchased a new home in Leaside in the 1930s, 1940s.
—the second wave—purchased a home in Leaside in the 1960s. This group usually re-decorated their home, added a deck or patio and made only minor changes to the house and landscaping.
—the third wave—purchased in the 1980s and 1990s. This group has authored a construction boom which rivals the original building of Leaside. With their renovations, knock-downs, add-ons, infills and garage conversions, this group has changed the nature and appearance of housing in Leaside. Hundreds of sub-contractors and many architects have been kept busy for a decade on these projects.
Two Leaside classica taske shape. Date: 1949. Looking north at a pair of two-storey side entrance homes being built at 458 and 462 Broadway Avenue. Attached garges will be added to complete the construction. Metro Toronto Reference Library, Salmon Collection.
These expensive projects have been completed with full confidence that the real estate values in Leaside will continue to climb. House prices in Leaside may have plateaued once or twice, but otherwise values have climbed steadily for 60 years. More importantly, these demographic transitions have regularly infused Leaside with new ideas, new energy and a new generation of young families. The schools of Leaside have remained full and vital with strong parental involvement, the key to a thriving community.
The young parents have provided the new volunteers to ensure that the recreational programs of figure skating, hockey, ballet, baseball, swimming and soccer continue to thrive. The changing population has also provided a new market which has resulted in the revitalization of Leaside’s various retail areas.
The new 90s residents of Leaside do face one challenge. There are three Leaside icons—curving streets, stop signs and its trees. To a person, the visitor or the resident is impressed by the mature canopy of trees. Its trees are a key factor to the community’s character. The large trees soften the effect of the repetitive housing design and small lots; they hide the tangle of overhead wires and they give Leaside its pleasing human scale. The early town fathers are to be admired for their foresight in systematically planting Leaside’s trees in the 1940s. At the rate at which trees are being taken down, Leaside’s green canopy will have massive gaps within two or three years. To prevent those large gaps, the new 90s residents will have to work to replace their lost trees, soon.
Leaside, circa 1950. Photographer unknown. And you thought Leaside was always leafy and green! Can you identify the location?12 The Toronto Star Archives.
Returning to yesteryear briefly, a few words about the original Leaside home buyers and their houses. Those new residents had grown up in the Great Depression, an event which deeply imprinted all who had experienced it. Some of the older males had served in the First World War; many of the younger men and women had seen service in World War II. Generally they were conservative; they had gained some financial security as they joined the growing middle class. They sought the peace and simplicity which Leaside seemed to offer.
Their children would become the first mass teen culture with sufficient numbers, time and money to dominate the airwaves with its music and to create its own self-imposed dress code. In the basement of the house, the coal bin and laundry room were complemented by a “rec room” for the use of the teens. The “finished basement” entered housing lexicon.
The bathroom shower made its appearance as did the living room fireplace which was used not for heating but for its ambiance on special occasions.
Modest housing of the day featured the verandah as can still be seen in many areas of Toronto. Upscale housing such as Rosedale, did not have verandahs. Thus, Leaside would not have verandahs, the simple small entrance stoop would replace it.
Many Leaside houses had a private drive and a garage, small by today’s standards, to accommodate only one car. At the time the Leaside house designs were coming off the drawing board, many people did not own cars and, because of the 1939–45 war effort, the automobile was not available in quantity until the mid 1950s. But when the car did become available in numbers, it grew wider, longer, lower and sprouted massive fins. It no longer fitted in its Leaside garage! The small, junk-filled-garage-as-storage-space has become another Leaside icon.
So, once completely built and populated in the 1950s, what did Leaside become in people’s minds?
Leaside was seen to be affluent, to have a strong sense of community as the Town of Leaside. People recognized the excellent recreational facilities and programs for the young people of the town, although North Leasiders had to travel south of Eglinton Avenue where the rink, pool, parks, tennis courts, library, ball diamonds and the high school were located. Leaside became known for its strong baseball teams and hockey teams. In retrospect, however, there were few recreational programs for girls.
There was good shopping, some of it walk-to. Leaside was close to downtown and good bus service to the subway made the trip to jobs in the city core convenient. The town had a solid industrial base, excellent schools and a full range of churches. The trees were a Leaside hallmark because most new housing in the expanding suburbs through the 1950s and 1960s remained without trees for many years.
Leaside’s population was homogeneous and upwardly mobile. It was assumed that the offspring would attend university. There was a certain smugness or cachet in being a Leasider. It wasn’t Rosedale or Moore Park or Lawrence Park, but it was very good. For some, the Leaside house served as a “starter home” for those who aspired to Rosedale style.
Since much of the Leaside residential lands lay empty for some 25 years, the final stages of North Leaside’s construction would be carried into the 1950s. The land development company fell on hard times. Long before the 50s, the Canadian Northern Railway, in bankruptcy, had been absorbed by the Canadian National Railway. The York Land Company, the development arm of the Canadian Northern and owner of most of Leaside’s available land, had defaulted on its tax obligations to the Town. Movers and shakers, Sir Donald Mann and Sir William Mackenzie had long since disappeared from the scene. However, Frederick Todd’s basic town plan of 1913 persisted and came to define what Leaside would look like today. It had all worked out fairly well.
