Three delightful pieces of history collected on the recent Jane’s Walks in the Greenwood Coxwell Corridor (Little India) worth posting:
1. Footage of a soccer game in 1930s at the Ulster stadium, formerly located east of Greenwood and south of Gerrard St. East:
The Toronto Ulster United versus the Rangers.
Apparently the stadium was behind the Ulster Arms (nicknamed the Empty Arms by locals), for about 20 years and torn down after the war to build housing. There had been a football field and dog racing track too.
This picture from the Toronto Archives of 1940s Leslieville shows a racetrack along the very eastern edge of the photography, which is Highfield. (Dundas Avenue has not yet been extended through the neighbourhood, and a dirt path crosses what is now Greenwood Park.)
2. Denny Manchee collected this story from local historian, Joanne Doucette. Jane Farrow passed it on:
In the 1880s, real estate developers started marketing tiny lots 10 ft. wide to very poor people. The Ashbridges family owned the west side of Craven Road, which was still farmland, but the east side became this string of shacks called Shacktown. The developer was the same company that created Parkdale. Shacktown had the reputation of Regent Park did – drinking, guns, drugs. The shacks had no running water, no toilets, no police or fire protection, no schools.
Inevitably, people got sick from lack of sanitation (some died), so in 1909 the City took over that area and insisted people install running water. Many couldn’t afford it so they were evicted. Houses were condemned by the health authority and about half the people were turfed out. The fence was part of the cost the City had to pay when it expropriated a good portion of the west side to the street. It was erected to keep the riffraff away from the wealthier folk on the west. The street was named (rebranded!) Craven Road in 1923.
Joanne is a font of local lore and does a lot of guided walks for both the Toronto Field Naturalists and Lost Rivers.
3. The flat-roofed homes on the corner of Walpole and Woodfield Avenue were some of the first ones built in the neighbourhood and now house the fourth generation of the same family. The current residents explained that when their ancestors settled in the neighbourhood, the two brothers dug a hole in the ground, put sod over the top and stayed there until their homes were ready. Farm fields lay to the east, and Natives who worked the fields, lived in teepees to the west. They built many other homes in the neighbourhood, as well.
Also, the City of Toronto Archives has posted historic photos of Leslieville on Flicker.
A Neighbourhood by Any Name, 2009
Greenwood-Coxwell Jane’s Walk, 2009
Cynthia’s Walks, 2010
Toronto’s Little India: A Brief Neighbourhood History, Ryerson, 2010
Greenwood Avenue’s History of Bricks, Gene Domagala, Beach Metro Community News, 2012
Toronto Ulster, United F.C., Scots-Irish / Ulster-Scots blog, 2012
Tiny House Society of Craven Road, Spacing Magazine, 2013
