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The Lives of the Early Settlers

and the Birth of North York

There are 44,442 acres in North York, enough for 222 full-sized two-hundred-acre farms. It was a great place for farms, with some of the most fertile land in the world, thanks to the deposits left behind by receding glaciers after the last ice age. The area had seen its fair share of nomadic, aboriginal activity for thousands of years before the first permanent settlements were established at the surprisingly late date of 1400 A.D. French priest and explorer Étienne Brûlé was thought to be the first European to set foot in North York when he travelled down the Humber River, on his way from northern Ontario to Pennsylvania, in September 1615. For the next 170 years or so the only other Europeans would be fur traders and explorers passing through on their way to points north and west. It was not until the late 1700s that any thought was given to permanent white settlement in the area.

As Canadians, much of our time is spent wondering what our neighbours to the south are up to and back then a similar curiosity existed. Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s arrival in 1791 was prompted by Great Britain’s desire to understand and maintain the land mass that would one day become Canada. The United States had already fought for and won its independence from the British who had no intention of losing all of North America.

John Graves Simcoe was appointed lieutenant governor of Upper Canada in 1791. He immediately had the jurisdiction, known then as the Home District, surveyed and divided into townships and ultimately nineteen separate counties to ensure that local issues would be addressed locally and not by some distant central government.

The Queen’s Rangers, which he had commanded during the American Revolution, accompanied Simcoe when he moved the capital of Upper Canada from Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) to York (Toronto) in 1792. Early in 1793 he began construction of Yonge Street from Lake Ontario north to the Holland River. This route, named after his friend, the British Secretary of War, Sir George Yonge, was critical to the future of Upper Canada in two ways. First, it was deemed the easiest trade route for reaching the north and west, but it also held great military significance. Hostilities between Great Britain and the United States were always bubbling just below the surface and Simcoe needed a “back door” to the Great Lakes. In the event that battles might erupt on Lake Erie or Lake Ontario, Simcoe wanted a route he could use to sneak up on the enemy from behind and take them by surprise. Yonge Street was central to his plans for preserving Upper Canada as a British colony.

With the West Don River being navigable as far north as Hogg’s Hollow in those days, Simcoe decided that the best route to Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes was to use the Don River as far north as Hogg’s Hollow, then portage his vessels by wheeled wagons all the way north to the Holland River. Once there they could once again be put in the water to head west to Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Try to imagine the rigorous task of pulling lake bateaux out of the river in York Mills and then dragging them overland to Holland Landing. Such military moves would be unimaginable today.

The only flaw in this plan was the fact that Yonge Street didn’t exist yet, so Simcoe and the Queen’s Rangers made it their priority to clear this road through the dense, unforgiving wilderness. This they did, through blackflies, mosquitoes, suffocating heat, and stupefying cold. They did what they intended to do, but as soon as they crossed what became Steeles Avenue, they left the North York of today, and so they leave our story. It had taken them five years to clear Yonge Street from Lake Ontario to Steeles Avenue. Eventually, they would extend Yonge Street all the way to Lake Simcoe. Subsequent extensions would reach Rainy River, near the Manitoba border, and create what is now credited as being the longest street in the world.

With Yonge Street well underway, Simcoe was now able to have surveyors hired to start laying out the concessions, and the lots that became the farms of North York. The grid system used is a beautifully simple one. Basically, the lot numbers start from Eglinton Avenue, increasing in numerical value the further north one travels, with Lot 1 being the first lot north of Eglinton and Lot 25 being the first lot south of Steeles. The concession numbers are expressed as being either east or west of Yonge Street, so if a lot was the first one north of Eglinton on the east side of Yonge Street, it would be referred to as Lot 1, concession-1E. The first lot north of Eglinton and west of Yonge, would be Lot 1, concession-1W. All concessions are a mile-and-a-quarter apart and all lots are one-quarter-of-a-mile wide. Each lot then, measured one-quarter-of-a-mile by one-mile-and-a-quarter, for a total of two hundred acres. Now, with Yonge Street completed and the lots laid out, it was time for Simcoe to start attracting some settlers.

In 1793, he advertised free two-hundred-acre lots to anyone willing to settle in the Township of York. From Simcoe’s perspective, the British needed to build a British presence in Upper Canada. In particular, they needed proven Loyalists who would be willing to take up arms to defend their land against incursions from the south. Advertisers and recruiters spread the word throughout Great Britain as well as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where many United Empire Loyalists had settled after fighting on the losing side in the American Revolutionary War. While it’s nice to think of being given a lot that stretched from Yonge Street to Bayview Avenue for free, the conditions attached to the Crown grants were not to be taken lightly.

To qualify for a grant it was necessary for a prospective settler to prove that he and his family were practising Christians,[1] law-abiding in their home country, and capable of manual labour, but that was just the start. Before settlers were actually granted the deed to their land, they had two years to complete a number of tasks. First, a permanent residence had to be built on the property during the first year, usually a simple log cabin of at least 320 square feet. Next, 10 percent or twenty acres of the land had to be cleared each year, and ten acres of that fenced. Then, the full quarter-mile of forest along both ends of the property had to be cleared for a road allowance thirty-three feet wide and levelled off. This would have to be done with axes, hand-saws, and a team of oxen.

Detail from an archival map of Toronto showing Willowdale with lot numbers and owners’ names, from Tremaine’s Map of the County of York, published by George Tremaine in 1860.

Courtesy of North York Central Library.

If the settler met all these conditions, the deed to the property was transferred from Crown to settler after two years. If the settler failed to comply, the land stayed with the Crown. Preference was given to military personnel and United Empire Loyalists. Grants of up to 1,200 acres were possible, but presented a formidable task for such applicants, often land speculators with an eye to the future. The more privileged grant recipients were quite within their rights to hire other people to do the dirty work. No one was able to sell their grants, however, until the Crown had transferred the deed to the original owner.

Living conditions must have seemed extremely crude for the first immigrants, many of whom were attached to the military who were leaving older, more-established civilized societies and developed social activities. Their hearts must have sunk when they first laid eyes on that dark, endless forest, thousands of miles from home. Still, they all had their reasons for being here and now had to get to work. There was no turning back now, for if they had never actually experienced winter in Upper Canada before, they had surely heard the stories and realized that the log cabin was clearly a priority.

The first cabins were extremely primitive. Picture one large room with a dirt floor, one fireplace, one door, and one window covered with cloth, shutters, oiled paper, or glass if it was available. The washroom was outside. There was no running water and likely no time for digging a well that first year. Water would have been carried from a nearby creek or spring. Crude, hand-made furniture consisted of a bed, a table, a few chairs, and maybe a cabinet. Improvements to the cabin would have to wait since clearing the land and planting crops for food had to take priority.

The first year, settlers were limited to planting only those crops that could survive in the untilled, stump-riddled soil. Potatoes, pumpkins, onions, squash, corn, peas, and turnips were popular choices. The settlers’ diet was supplemented by hunting and fishing as back then pheasants, partridges, deer, trout, and salmon were plentiful in North York. Wild berries and other wild fruits were a welcome addition to the diet. Bears and wolves were also quite common so caution was required when out and about.

Logs left over from clearing the land were piled up and burned. The remaining wood was re-piled and burned again. The resulting ashes were taken to an ashery to be made into potash, which was used in the manufacture of soap, glass, dyes, and baking soda. Cash was still rare so the settlers would exchange their ashes for cloth, tea, whisky, flour, or root vegetables to get them through that first winter. The Crown also donated supplies to the earliest settlers but the availability of these government supplies was so notoriously unreliable that most settlers would only turn to the Crown in times of imminent starvation.

Pioneer families were much less mobile than the generations that came later. Neighbours were literally few and far between. One house or cabin would commonly house several generations of one family. Social interaction was pretty much limited to the communal “bees,” when settlers would get together to pool their resources and abilities. There were land-clearing bees, logging bees, husking bees, quilting bees, cabin-raisings, barn-raisings, and many other tasks that were accomplished more easily as more neighbours became involved. After the work was done, they would share a meal, followed by a little fiddle music, dancing, and perhaps a jug or two of whisky. When the first churches were built, they too would become centres of social activity. All such get-togethers were much appreciated by the settlers as a welcome break from their gruelling routines.

Assuming survival of that first winter, the first spring would involve learning the magic of maple-syrup production — not for the syrup itself but for the maple sugar that could be made from it. (The cane sugar used today was simply not available in Upper Canada back then.) The various First Nations tribes who had been tapping maple trees for generations willingly shared their knowledge with the settlers. To repay this kindness, settlers would often give iron kettles to the Natives, which made boiling and processing the sap much easier than had been the case with the earlier wooden vessels.

Another improvement in the second year would be a well. This would be dug near the cabin for convenience and capped off with a stone or wooden enclosure to keep children and animals from falling in. Trips to the creek or the spring were now a thing of the past, and, although pumps would not be widely available until the 1860s, it was still a great convenience to pull as much water as needed out of the nearby well with ropes and buckets.

Mills were also built in the second or third year of settlement. If sheer luck or sufficient forward-thinking provided a strong-running stream or river on the property, building a sawmill and/or a gristmill became a possibility. Sawmills were simpler and smaller since they didn’t require the large, heavy mill stones of the gristmill. Generally, mills were helpful in a number of ways, allowing millers to process their own raw materials, either for barter or personal use, as well as providing a place for neighbouring settlers to have their goods processed. In this latter case, the miller would keep a percentage of the flour or lumber as payment, and the neighbour would go home with finished goods without laying out any cash. It was also quite common for a distillery to be attached to a gristmill. The distilleries used the smaller, inferior grain or “trailings” to make whisky, a beverage highly prized for its ability to soften the hard edges of pioneer life.

This was also the time to start thinking about some domestic animals, probably a cow and some chickens to start with — a source of eggs, milk, and homemade butter. The following years would see the arrival of more cows and chickens as well as ducks, geese, sheep, and turkeys. This would require fencing and coops for the poultry to protect them from the local wildlife. Hogs were also raised but were generally allowed to run free until hunted like wild game in the fall.

Autumn was slaughtering time, when the abattoirs, tanneries, and smokehouses would swing into action. Here again, the barter system prevailed, so farmers with no money could go home with tanned leather and smoked meats and the tanners and slaughtermen would end up with meat and leather of their own, taken as payment for their services.

The stumps left behind after the land was cleared could take up to ten years to rot away completely, but early settlers needed tillable land sooner than that so they kept at the stumps with their oxen to clear as much land as they could. Then they would plant their first grain crops, usually wheat, rye, buckwheat, barley, or oats. Flax was also a valuable early crop with most farms featuring at least one acre of this most versatile plant with its beautiful blue flowers. The settlers grew flax to make cloth for their own clothes. The almost unbelievably labour-intensive process involved rolling the uprooted plants in water for several weeks before drying and pounding them. They were then flayed and combed to remove the flax fibres from the stalks. The fibres were then spun, woven, and sewn into clothes that would seem extremely crude to us today. Back then, however, they were just fine.

More new tools were available every year. Shovels, pitchforks, rakes, a plough, axes, saws, and scythes had to be acquired, and the little log cabin made a bit more civilized. A room divider on the main floor was a popular method of providing a little privacy, as was the construction of a second-floor bedroom. A cellar was another improvement that could pay many dividends, for although the labour required to dig a cellar out by hand was not for the faint of heart, the results were substantial. Carrots, turnips, onions, and potatoes could be stored there where they would stay fresh for most of the winter. The extra storage space was also a bonus since a proper barn probably didn’t exist yet. Primitive lean-tos were often constructed for animals before a barn was built. The cellar was a place to store all new tools as well as flax, cloth, firewood, and flour.

Cisterns were another popular and practical addition to the cellar. These were large water storage tanks made from wood or cement that stored captured rainwater. When hand pumps became available, they made cisterns even more attractive, as now water could be pumped from the cellar to the kitchen. With a proper wood floor for the cabin now in place, the prospect of a second winter is starting to look a lot better than the first.

Despite all of these improvements, life was still pretty primitive. Baths were taken outside in the warmer months and in the kitchen area in front of the fireplace during wintertime, in the same metal tub. The well-water was heated on the hearth. The whole family commonly used the same water and the soap that they had made themselves from potash and animal fat.

Interior lighting was uninspiring. There were few options, none of them all that satisfactory. There were candles made from animal fat, which smelled terrible, dripped, required constant trimming, and didn’t throw much light. Pine knots could be burned on flat stones, or grease lamps, pan lamps or fat lamps lit, none of which were terribly effective. The best bet would probably have been candlewood — splints cut from the heart of pine or fir logs, which were stuck in holders and lit just like candles. They burned steadily, needed no trimming, were brighter than candles, and even smelled nice. However, there weren’t any matches yet. If the fire went out, it was off to the neighbours’ for a bucket of hot embers or better still, a handily available tinderbox. The tinderbox was a metal cylinder that contained a piece of quartz flint, a piece of iron on which to strike the flint, and some tinder. The tinder could be any flammable material, usually a piece of pre-scorched cloth or linen. The flint was struck on the iron until a spark ignited the tinder. This process could take up to half-an-hour.

By the 1820s, bright, clean-burning wax candles were available at most general stores. Shortly afterwards, effective lamps with cloth wicks and turpentine or alcohol-based fuels also became available. By 1856, Ezra Butler Eddy was making the first matches in Canada at his factory in Hull. Kerosene lamps became popular in the 1860s. Finally, electricity would reach into rural Upper Canada in the 1900s. Until then, nighttime was best left for sleeping.

By the second year, more trees would be tapped, more sap boiled, and more maple sugar made. Each subsequent year would see an increase in activity, — clearing more land and pulling more stumps, planting more crops, and raising more livestock.

In a few more years, actual income would become a reality. As the Town of York, which was changed by provincial legislation to the City of Toronto on March 6, 1834, grew to the south, it would need ever-increasing amounts of grain, lumber, flour, meat, fruit, milk, and vegetables. The roads grew steadily from stump-riddled, muddy trails to passable, functional routes that could actually be used to convey goods to market in the city.

Commercial agriculture, as it is known today, didn’t really exist until the 1820s. What a sense of pride the first farmers must have shared at this juncture — to have survived those gruelling early years, to finally get their deeds from the Crown, to see their children born at home, grow into strong knowledgeable partners, and to see the farms become profitable enterprises. Now it was time for a new house.

The cabin, by now far too small for a growing family, would be used as a stable, storage area, or lodging for hired hands. The new house would be frame, brick, or stone, depending on the availability of raw materials and the skills of the local craftsmen who were available and willing to pitch in. The house would be built with the help of neighbours, likely starting with a day-long framing bee, and completed piece-by-piece as time and finances allowed. Around the same time a new barn would be needed, again built during a barn-raising with the help of neighbours, a communal practice that involved everyone. The barn would house livestock, farm implements, hay, straw, a wagon, a sleigh, and maybe even a buggy, as the roads were now smooth enough to be used by horse-drawn vehicles. The wagon would be used for chores around the farm and to take goods to market. If fortunate enough to have a buggy, it would be used to take the family to church and social events or, with some trepidation, lent to the eldest to go “a-courtin.’” With roads now passable for buggies, wagons, and stagecoaches, and both branches of the Don River still navigable as far south as Lake Ontario, export markets began to open up.

Orchards were now being planted on newly cleared land, making a pleasant addition to the settlers’ diet when the trees began to bear fruit. Apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries were sold fresh as well as being preserved for the winter or made into jams, jellies, pies, and tarts. Apples were especially prized for their versatility as they could be turned into pies, preserves, apple sauce, apple butter, apple cider (alcoholic or not), vinegar, or simply stored and eaten raw.

As the early pioneers moved into their fifties or sixties, they remained actively involved in running their farms, happy to see their children and grandchildren stepping up to make sure that the family was able to take advantage of emerging new opportunities. After all, for most, that was the reason for immigrating — to see their children owning their own land, and controlling their own destiny, not under anyone’s thumb.

By the last half of the 1800s, things began to evolve more quickly as the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe, Great Britain, and the cities of North America. With change came the need to adapt. Potash was no longer needed, since by 1850 reserves were discovered and mined in Germany. The wheat and flour from Upper Canada would be replaced in the international marketplace by wheat from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, as those areas were opened up to settlement and farming. Manufactured goods were now more readily available to North York farmers now that the improved roads, which eased the transport of goods to the rest of the world, ran both ways, and the general stores of North York were full of desirable modern conveniences.

Farmers suddenly found themselves depending on cash. The focus shifted from doing, making, or growing what was needed, to selling enough goods to other people to get the cash to buy what was wanted. Even though most settlers were now well-fed, sheltered, and fulfilled in their endeavours, who could say no to cleaner, brighter candles, or a more efficient stove, a new reaper for harvesting grain, or softer, more durable clothes? And so was born our consumer society.

By this time, livestock production was the fastest growing type of agriculture in North York. With much more land now cleared for livestock food production and grazing, herds of purebred beef and dairy cattle such as Aberdeen Angus, Ayrshire, Herefords, Holsteins, Gurnseys, and Jerseys became a common sight. Many of the cattle were raised for export as breeding stock and beef-on-the-hoof. As might be expected, dairy products were also making up a significant portion of farm income by the time the nineteenth century drew to a close. Advances in transportation and cold storage now made it possible to ship such perishable commodities farther than ever before. Most successful farms would now have some sort of ice house, a small stone or wooden structure in a cool shady spot where blocks of ice that had been cut from a nearby lake or river in the winter were insulated with straw or sawdust. The resulting situation would have been sufficient to keep milk, cheese, butter, meat, and eggs fresher for much longer than ever before. Ultimately, the best hedge against fluctuations in market prices and customer demand would prove to be a well-balanced mixed farm where grains, fruit, vegetables, lumber, maple syrup, meat, and dairy products all accounted for a percentage of the farms’ income.

The twentieth century brought many changes to North York. As already noticed, the most exceptional change was probably the vast improvement in transportation. Where a century earlier the roads had been muddy, uneven, and stump-riddled, they were now flat and surfaced in crushed stone, hard-packed dirt, or even pavement. Electric transit cars called radials ran all the way up Yonge Street to Lake Simcoe. The first automobiles, trucks, and gasoline-powered farm vehicles were starting to appear. Rail lines now ran through North York, offering a reliable, inexpensive way to ship products to far-away markets.

Electricity was common in the city now and reaching further into the country all the time. These were the glory years for the farmers of North York. The brutally primitive conditions of the early pioneer days were part of a now-distant past. The burgeoning markets of Toronto and other nearby cities needed more food all the time. Social and educational situations were vastly improved. For the next fifty years, any farmer in the world would have been happy to have a farm in North York. There was only one real problem, and it would be addressed rather swiftly in 1922.

The problem was that North York didn’t actually exist until 1922. Prior to that, the area had simply been another part of the Township of York, but as the twentieth century progressed the farmers found themselves increasingly marginalized as municipal council ignored their concerns to focus on Toronto’s urban issues. In 1915, there was only one farmer left on council. By 1919 there were none, despite the fact that the farmers were paying nearly 25 percent of the taxes collected by the township.

In 1921, farmers James Muirhead, W.J. Buchanan, Roy Risebrough, W.C. Snider, and John Brummel criss-crossed the area in Roy’s new-fangled Model T Ford, collecting signatures for a petition requesting secession from York. The Private Bills Committee of the Ontario Legislature heard the application in 1921, and the only thing that delayed a vote on the matter was the fact that other farmers to the south of the proposed area wanted to be included in the new jurisdiction as well. After the boundaries were redrawn to include this new group, the bill was passed on June 13, 1922. The Township of North York was incorporated as a separate municipality on July 18 of the same year, with a population of less than 6,000 people.

When the inaugural council was elected on August 12, it was comprised of Reeve R.F. Hicks, Deputy-reeves/Councillors Oliver Bales, James Muirhead, W.G. Scrace, and Councillor W.J. Buchanan. Roy Risebrough was appointed police chief and sole constable in a force of one. The secession came in the nick of time as North York was soon to be swamped by a tide of unprecedented and unimaginable population growth.

It must be difficult for newer residents to imagine what North York looked like back then. There was no Highway 401, no Don Valley Parkway, no buses, or subways. Bayview and Leslie were two-lane dirt roads. Steam locomotives pulled trains of wooden boxcars across level crossings. Don Mills Road only went as far north as York Mills Road. Giant elm trees dotted the landscape, looking almost African with their tall bare trunks and broad high canopies, visible in old photos but no longer part of the current landscape.

There were no buildings higher than three or four storeys, and they were usually barns or silos. Horses, buggies, and wagons were the preferred means of transportation, sharing the rural routes with early motor cars. The air was clean and smelled of hay, grass, livestock, wood smoke, pine, earth, and wildflowers. There was so little light pollution that you could see the Northern Lights. Imagine that! As late as the early 1960s, people could see the Northern Lights in North York from the corner of Bayview and Sheppard. Anyone hiking north or east from Bayview and Sheppard in the 1950s and early 1960s would have seen nothing but woods, farms, fields, and the occasional country house or rural gas station. People fished and swam in the Don River.

This census listing provides some idea of just how overwhelming the growth of North York has been:

Population Growth in North York

from 1923 to 1991

1923	6,303
1933	13,964
1943	24,528
1953	110,311
1963	303,577
1971	504,150
1981	559,520
1991	563,290

Growth before the end of the Second World War was significant but fairly measured, as the population came close to doubling every ten years. The vast majority of this growth occurred in the two concessions east and west of Yonge Street, since Yonge was the only street with any regular public transit to carry new residents to work in downtown Toronto.

After the Second World War, however, all kinds of hell broke loose as the baby boom burst the dam and flooded upwards and outwards. According to the table above, nearly five times as many people were living in North York in 1953 as had been living there a scant ten years earlier. After that, roughly 200,000 people would move to North York every ten years until the growth finally slowed somewhat around 1980. The three decades that followed the war years would mark the end of farming in North York.

Residential and commercial growth was everywhere and municipal taxes were rising at an alarming rate, to the point where fewer and fewer farmers could even afford to stay on their own land. Farms east and west of Yonge Street, from Victoria Park to the Humber River, and as far north as Steeles Avenue, fell like dominoes. By the autumn of 1969 there were only a few isolated farmers still harvesting crops — men such as Fred Hampson, who farmed his own land, as well as land he rented from the Myers family at the corner of Don Mills Road and Finch Avenue. A few years later, it was all over.

It was a strange time to live through since a way of life was being erased before people’s very eyes, and yet most newer residents viewed this as a good thing. Progress was viewed as good. Clinging to the past was bad. Tear down those messy old barns, build some beautiful new high-rises, create some more roads, more stores, more cars, and more street lights. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, historical preservation wasn’t really a part of the equation. Out with the old. Newer is better. It was a philosophy of life that left no room for farmers or their “old” ways. So now they are all gone, all of the farms and the farmers of North York, but, fortunately, street names and other traces of their existence remain behind.

This is the story of those early farm families who built Willowdale, one that recognizes their contributions to the history of North York, and to the history of Toronto — an opportunity to view the past to better understand the present. Closing your eyes and remembering their stories allows you to become part of the story too. You are now part of the journey to the early days of Willowdale.