Читать книгу Toronto Sketches 12 - Mike Filey - Страница 12

July 22, 2012

As we enjoy the warm (often hot) weather months, it’s particularly sad to learn about the numerous drownings that occur in our lakes and rivers or closer to home in someone’s peaceful and beckoning backyard swimming pool.

While it’s a difficult subject to write about, the eradication of these more often than not preventable accidents has been a concern for decades. In fact, in his letter to the mayor of Toronto back in 1910, Robert John Fleming, the general manager of the privately owned Toronto Railway Company (predecessor to today’s TTC), stated that in his opinion every boy and girl should learn to swim. And to back up his conviction, Fleming declared that his company was prepared “to place at the disposal of the boys and girls of the city on every afternoon [except Sunday — not much was legal on Sunday back then] during the summer school holidays all of the special streetcars on different routes that will be necessary to transport to and from the respective free swimming stations throughout the city.” And the company would do it without charge!

Fleming’s only condition was that City Council must “provide at each swimming station a sufficient number of instructors and assistants for the purposes of properly caring for the children’s lives and furthering the object of the service.”

In the summer of 1916, Toronto newspapers featured a series of ads like this one that listed details on how to take advantage of the Toronto Railway Company’s “free bathing car” service.

It took some time to get the plan up and running, but eventually a summertime “free bathing car” service was in operation.

Three of the bathing stations where instructors hired by the city’s Department of Public Health would teach children (who had arrived and would return home on the free streetcars) to swim were located at Sunnyside Beach (where years later the famous amusement park would open), on the Don River not far from the old Riverdale Zoo, and on the Western Sandbar (located across the old channel at the foot of Bathurst Street; the sandbar would eventually give way to Hanlan’s Point and a new Island Airport).

A bobby-helmeted Toronto police officer assists two young Torontonians on board one of the city’s “free bathing” streetcars after an afternoon of swimming lessons at Sunnyside on the western waterfront, circa 1925. Note the TTC inspector helping to keep some sort of order.

One additional bathing station was located on Fisherman’s Island (now covered by the southernmost part of what is known as The Portlands). In addition to the free streetcar ride, getting to and from this facility required a ferryboat ride from the docks just south of the Yonge and Front intersection. The boat was provided, also free of charge, by Lawrence “Lol” Solman, the general manager of the Toronto Ferry Company, the same company that built the restored steam-powered Trillium that still paddles around Toronto Bay.