Archives /// Lost History

The city has been extending its waterfront since the early 1900s, that much is no secret, but what we've been burying down there is a little more curious. Somewhere in the east end of the Toronto Harbour lies an eccentric turn-of-the-century contraption that was once touted as the vessel that could revolutionize marine travel. The Roller Boat was the brainchild of Frederick Knapp, a lawyer and aspiring inventor. As he traveled to England in the 1890s, Knapp found fault in the sluggish ocean liners — the trip was too long and seasickness abounded. His solution was to build a cylindrical boat ...

We're all too aware of the misuse of our waterfront — and of the many, many unrealised plans to re-imagine it as a green, public, and natural connection between city and lake. Less well known is that these plans are as old as the city itself. Standing at Bay and Front streets, with the financial towers looming above the commuter-crowded sidewalks and rows of taxis, it is difficult to imagine that this spot was the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Yet it was the natural beauty of this site that inspired the province's first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, some 200 ...

Exhibition Place is Toronto's Plains of Abraham, and Fort York is our citadel. If this comparison seems far-fetched, it may be because we have a lot to learn from Québec. The Plains of Abraham Battlefields Park, established in Québec City in 1908 as Canada's first national urban park, was one of the first historic parks in the country. Its benefits to Québec, and to Canada, are incalculable — contributing to our national spirit and setting the stage for Expo 67 in Montréal. Ironically, it was around this time that the City of Toronto acquired Fort York from the federal military authorities, on ...

Next time you are on the 401 heading east out of the city, take the Kennedy exit and head north until you're just past L'Amoreaux Park. Take a left onto Purcell Boulevard, then another onto winding Shepton Way. Drive for a few hundred feet past the lovely new homes, then park and turn off the engine. Now imagine it's the year 1360. Here, at Purcell and Kennedy, where the local gas station currently stands, there are corn fields. Instead of the smell of lawnmowers and cut grass, you smell wood fires and roasting fish. The silence of the suburb at ...

A fascinating artifact from our city's architectural history lies in storage at Black Creek Pioneer Village. The Toronto fire of April 1849 leveled the whole of the north side of King Street between Church and Jarvis, including St. James Cathedral and the T.D. Harris hardware store. Before the year was out, activity was under way to replace the structures that had burned east of the church. In place of the previous rows of wooden shops, handsome new brick and stone terraces arose. Their elevations were built uniformly but each unit had separate ownership. Hence, Harris was able to retain the architect ...

Since the first "theatorium" was established in 1906 — a Yonge Street storefront packed with 150 borrowed kitchen chairs — Toronto's movie theatres have been indicative of developments in social, cultural, and economic life in this city. "[Movies] made crowded urban space more sensible by organizing bustling masses of city people into a more orderly audience," notes Ryerson professor Paul Moore in his book, Now Playing. "A collective pastime, a mass practice, [movie-going] was ironically built on the radical and unprecedented heterogeneity of urban populations." Our movie theatres have been closely informed by the city's narrative, as trends in social life, ...

Horse racing — the Sport of Kings — is deeply embedded in Toronto's history. It's likely that the first horse race here involved none other than Mrs. Elizabeth Simcoe, the consort of the province's first lieutenant governor. In her diary for September 23, 1793, barely seven weeks after the founding of York, she recorded riding on the peninsula (now known as the Island) escorted by one of her husband's officers, Lieut. Thomas Talbot: "My horse has spirit enough to wish to get before others. I rode a race with Mr. Talbot to keep myself warm." For the next 40 years, the ...