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The Risebroughs: Robert I, Robert II,

Robert III, Roy, and William

When the Township of North York was created in 1922, it had a population of 6,000 and a police force of one. Roy Risebrough, fourth generation North York farmer, born on the family farm near today’s Bayview and Cummer, was definitely his own boss. Not only was he the lone constable on a force of one, he was also the chief. It’s not surprising that Roy would hold a position of prominence in the early days of North York, as it can be said without exaggeration that without Roy’s efforts, there might not even be a North York.

Roy was one of five disgruntled farmers who criss-crossed the area in 1921 gathering signatures on a petition to secede from the Township of York. He was also one of the people charged with raising money to pay for the lawyer, who would be required to conduct the secession proceedings. As the urban population of Toronto grew, fewer and fewer farmers were being elected to York Township Council until, in 1919, for the first time, no farmers were elected at all. The farmers, who were paying nearly 25 percent of the township’s taxes, decided that something had to be done. In 1921, James Muirhead, John Brumwell, W.J. Buchanan, and W.C. Snider piled into Roy Risebrough’s Model T Ford and visited all the farmers in the area to drum up support. Their efforts paid off quickly and in grand fashion. In 1922, the province granted their request and the Township of North York was born. Roy’s contributions were significant as he was the only one of the five who had a car, which made reaching all the farmers that much easier.

The new council had its work cut out for it, as North York was on the cusp of an unprecedented growth spurt. By the time Roy retired as police chief in 1957, he would be dealing with over 182,000 residents, a far cry from the 6,000 he had to worry about in the beginning. And, yes, by 1957, he had plenty of help.

Roy was born on the farm where he would live his whole life. Located on the northeast fifty acres of Lot 22-1E, on the southwest corner of Bayview and Cummer, the farm had been in the family since 1862. Roy was born there thirty years later. Forty-five years after Roy’s birth, the family farmhouse would gain a new neighbour when St. John’s Convalescent Hospital opened on part of the Montgomery/Elliot farm in 1937, just to the west of the Risebroughs’ farm

Roy studied at the little red-brick Newtonbrook Public School on Drewry Avenue before graduating from Richmond Hill High School and the Ontario College of Agriculture in Guelph. He would spend the next six or seven winters inspecting dairy cattle throughout the province and farming in the summer. He married Ida Congram of Wingham and together they had two daughters.

At the time Roy was appointed chief of police in 1922, he was also given the posts of school attendance officer and sanitary inspector, and yet he continued to inspect dairy cattle in the winter and farm in the summer. The fact that he was able to wear so many hats says a lot about the relative lack of crime in North York in the 1920s. With automobiles still beyond the reach, or taste, of most North York residents, crime was much more localized than it is today. In addition, Roy was dealing mostly with people he knew on a personal level. After all, his family had been farming here for over eighty years by the time North York was created. Crime was often minor: the odd burglary, a little rustling, public drunkenness, and domestic disputes were the types of things that Roy was likely to encounter. He never wore a gun and only wore a uniform twice — on ceremonial occasions.

As the population grew, Roy was obliged to hire additional officers. John Harrison was perhaps the most significant of Roy’s early hires. He joined the force in 1930, becoming deputy chief in 1946, and working in the community on such projects as the restoration of the Zion Primitive Methodist Church, usually going beyond the call of duty. The descendant of another pioneer family, John would become district chief when the North York force was absorbed by the Metropolitan Toronto Police in 1957. He is buried in the Zion Church cemetery that he helped to restore.

John Harrison wasn’t the only addition to the force, which had grown to thirteen officers by 1944. The township population had grown to 25,000 by this point, but it would be the post-war years that would see a real explosion in both population and crime. By 1953 the population of North York had exploded to over 110,000. Crime grew as well, for now the area was well-serviced by hundreds of new roads and nearly everyone had access to a car. Bank robbers, in particular, took aim at the new, isolated suburban banks, which offered a more enticing choice of getaway routes than their downtown contemporaries. It was Roy’s men who, in 1952, captured two members of the notorious Boyd gang[1] who had escaped from the Don Jail and were hiding out in an abandoned barn on the old Hildon Farm near Finch and Leslie.

The unfettered population growth and the corresponding expansion of the police force meant that the force seemed to be constantly looking for new police stations. In 1955, the twenty-nine member division that served Don Mills had to be housed in one of the barns at the former Don-Alda Farm, near the corner of Don Mills Road and York Mills Road. By 1957, the North York force had grown to two hundred officers. Through it all, Roy’s influence continued to grow. He became somewhat of an elder statesman whose opinion was sought and valued by members of the community. His endorsement often meant the difference between victory and defeat for local politicians, in a time when it was considered perfectly normal for municipal employees to involve themselves in this way

Several months before the North York Police Force was absorbed into the new Metropolitan Toronto Police Force in 1957, Roy Risebrough retired. It seemed a perfect convergence of events for the former one-man show. He had reached retirement age that year and had certainly earned his leisure, but he was also able to neatly sidestep being rolled into the huge new bureaucracy, a near miss that probably pleased this rugged individual. He retired to the family farmhouse on Cummer, staying involved through local service groups, police associations, and the Newtonbrook United Church.

In a time before graffiti, there was a certain elegance in abandonment, and a chance to explore and appreciate what once was, before it was defaced. The empty, haunted eyes of this massive Risebrough farmhouse, photographed on the south side of Cummer Avenue, just east of Bayview in 1961, beckon a visitor to enter an interior that would have offered the senses a visceral education to shame the most elaborate video game or surround-sound movie. It was demolished in the mid-1960s and high-rise apartment buildings took over the site.

Photo by Lorna Gardner, North York Historical Society, NYHS 42.

Roy’s ancestors did historians no favours by making sure that they were all named “Robert.” His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and brother all carried this handle with only the odd middle initial to differentiate them from one another. Robert I started it all when he left the county of Norfolk in England and sailed to Canada with his wife and six children in 1837. After a nightmarish thirteen weeks at sea they finally arrived in Upper Canada, sick, tired, and hungry. One source indicates that they first farmed the northeast corner of Lot 22-1E, the section near Bayview and Cummer, but this is difficult to prove.

The land, which had previously been home to Alexander and John Montgomery, was owned by the Cummers when the Risebroughs arrived, so if they did start there it would have been as tenants. What is certain is the fact that Robert I bought the east quarter of Lot 21-3E on the northwest corner of Finch and Woodbine in 1852. It was not until 1862 that his name appeared on the deed to the northeast corner of the lot on Cummer. The same year he also bought the western half of Lot 22-2E on the southeast corner of Bayview and Cummer. When Robert I died in 1871, he left the farms to his son Robert II, who had been born in England in 1827 and survived that hellish Atlantic crossing at the age of ten. In 1891, Robert II bought the southwest corner of Lot 23-1W and expanded an existing farmhouse there on the northeast corner of Bathurst Street and Drewry Avenue.

In 1890, William Risebrough, one of Robert Risebrough II’s sons, bought sixty acres of the seventy-five-acre Lot 22-4E, north of Finch on the east side of Woodbine. The remaining fifteen acres was part of the Myers family holdings. By 1891, the Risebroughs had a farm in every one of the four concessions east of Yonge Street, as well as one farm west of Yonge. They were also farming in Scarborough, to the east of Victoria Park Avenue.

As already seen with Roy, the family continued to farm until after the Second World War, when pressures from the growing city began to gobble up all of the remaining farmland in North York. But, the family’s contribution to farming still wasn’t over. Their more easterly farms, near Finch and Woodbine, continued as productive farmland until the 1960s. Post-war development generally flowed east and west from Yonge Street, and farms on the far eastern and western borders of North York were the last to be paved over.

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 York Board of Education closed R.J. Lang Junior High at the end of the school year in 1982.

The project didn’t find its legs again until 1983, when Bob Holland took over the Industrial Arts Department of Windfields Junior High, built in 1970 on one of the last remnants of E.P. Taylor’s Winfields Farm, where Northern Dancer once frolicked near the corner of York Mills Road and Leslie Street. Twenty lucky Windfields students then took up where their counterparts at R.J. Lang left off and, under the supervision of Bob Holland, reconstructed the Risebrough farmhouse on its new site to serve as a teaching facility for those interested in learning about a vanquished way of life.

Mr. Holland deserves our thanks. Though not a work of literature or musical composition, this project must certainly be considered an opus.