Lampy Versus Big Daddy

Originally published on Torontoist on February 21, 2012.

Allan Lamport and Frederick Gardiner in happier times, during the official opening of the Yonge subway, March 30, 1954. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 8963.

As he awaits his fate at today’s special meeting of the TTC’s commissioners, Gary Webster might ponder the fact that he isn’t the first General Manager to run afoul of political intrigue. Criticism of W.E.P. Duncan’s performance in 1959 came amid a power struggle between two larger-than-life personalities. The battle between TTC Commissioner Allan “Lampy” Lamport and Metro Toronto Chairman Frederick “Big Daddy” Gardiner turned into a three-ring circus that ran for two years and shared some parallels with our current debacle.

Like Rob Ford, Allan Lamport rarely made politics dull. As Toronto’s mayor in the early 1950s, he fought for Sunday sporting events. As a city councillor in the late 1960s, he insulted hippies. And as TTC Chairman from 1955, he styled himself as the voice of transit users by cutting through the often secretive practices of TTC management. He was always ready for a fight, even if it meant alienating former allies like Gardiner. The two fell out around 1957, soon after Gardiner initiated an operating subsidy from Metro Council to address rising TTC deficits. As Metro Toronto slowly increased its influence on the traditionally independent agency, Lamport believed that Gardiner was “drunk with power” and turning the other TTC commissioners into his lackeys. Gardiner questioned Lamport’s technical knowledge and felt he used his position as an ego booster.

W.E.P. Duncan (left) receiving a gift upon his retirement from the TTC in 1961. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1567, Series 648, File 83, Item 2.

Lamport also maintained poor relations with TTC General Manager Duncan. Like Webster, Duncan brought decades of experience when named to the post in 1952, having worked at the TTC since its founding in 1921. Lamport found Duncan arrogant and disrespectful toward his position, while Duncan, after one too many requests from Lamport about accounting practices, told the chairman that he was “sick and tired of your damn nonsense.”

During a special meeting on January 2, 1959, Lamport suddenly resigned as Chairman. A month earlier, the commissioners unanimously supported a plan to split the duties of General Manager: Duncan would supervise construction of the Bloor-Danforth and University subway lines, while someone else would oversee general operations. When the commissioners reconvened on December 29, 1958, two of them refused to approve the plan until Gardiner, out of courtesy, was consulted. Lamport believed their actions made his position untenable. He also cited concerns regarding financial inefficiencies, information that bypassed commissioners, and changes Duncan made to the contracts for the Yonge subway line, which resulted in overweight vehicles and electrical equipment of lower quality than used for the streetcar lines.

Just as current TTC chair Karen Stintz was vacationing when the petition for today’s meeting arose, Gardiner was holidaying in Jamaica when he was cabled by new TTC Chairman Charles Walton. Gardiner requested a delay on any shakeup until the new Metro Council executive met with the commissioners. Lamport, who remained a commissioner, called this “brazen political interference.” The battle was on.

Toronto Star, January 6, 1959.

Lamport delivered daily headline-grabbing charges against Duncan and Gardiner. Tempers flared at a TTC meeting on January 6, 1959 when Lamport spent over an hour reading letters intended to portray Duncan as a lousy manager. Toronto Starcolumnist Ron Haggart depicted Duncan’s reaction: “His astute, canny face rests in his hands as Allan Lamport shrills, pointing with a sheaf of papers: ‘He’s an employee here, and he’s got to learn it someday—he might as well learn it today!’ And the man at the end of the table, the iron ring of the engineer worn on his little finger, snaps ‘I am still a man, Mr. Lamport!’”

Foolishly, Lamport grasped anything that discredited his foes or suggested betrayals within the TTC. His belligerence and certainty about being right cost him support among commissioners just as Rob Ford’s stubbornness has among the current city council. Lamport wanted nothing less than a royal commission to investigate—when his fellow TTC commissioners gave Lamport a one-week deadline to put his charges in writing, he indicated he wouldn’t comply until Metro Council declared the TTC free from “dual loyalties.” Duncan dropped hints of legal action before Lamport finally delivered some of the charges at the end of January.

When Metro Council told Lamport to shut up in early February 1959, he bought radio air time. Claiming that “someone is determined to muffle me,” Lamport threatened to create more charges and criticized Gardiner for taking advantage of his work in creating the structure of Metro Toronto while mayor. He vowed that the only way to silence him was to remove him from his commissioner role. Meanwhile, Metro Council recommended that the TTC should handle any investigation into Lamport’s claims.

Cartoon by Duncan Macpherson, the Toronto Star, January 30, 1959.

On March 18, 1959, a TTC report cleared Duncan of Lamport’s accusations, declaring he had done nothing to stain his reputation. The report was an approval by all of the commissioners including Lamport, which Gardiner found odd. “Lamport was the accuser—he became the crown prosecutor—he became the judge—he was one of the jury and signed the judgement exonerating Mr. Duncan from all of his charges,” Gardiner noted. “If it were not so serious it would be the comedy of the century.” The plan to split the General Manager position proceeded, but a call for Lamport’s resignation went unheeded.

Just over a year later, in June 1960, Lamport and a fellow commissioner discovered Duncan and other TTC advisers were secretly meeting with Gardiner regarding plans for a future subway line along Spadina (Lamport supported a Christie Avenue route that was approved, then reconsidered by the other commissioners) and to build a full Y to allow interlining of trains on the Bloor and University lines. Lamport disguised himself as a tourist, hung around Gardiner’s office, and berated Duncan when he exited. The absurdity continued during a heated meeting on September 21, 1960 when Gardiner and Lamport insulted each other’s dental work. Lamport claimed he never made a bad business decision for the TTC, but when Gardiner asked about financial problems, Lamport declared “too many armchair experts” were destroying the agency. Both men turned shades of purple and red as observers struggled to understand what they were saying.

Cartoon by Les Callan, the Toronto Star, January 6, 1959.

Days later, Lamport announced his candidacy for Mayor of Toronto but held on to his commission seat. By mid-October, Metro Council sent a request to Queen’s Park to fire the TTC commissioners and appoint a restructured five-person commission whose members could be dismissed by three-quarters majority of council. Lamport soon tendered his resignation.

With Lamport gone, enthusiasm to revamp the commission among Metro politicians went with him. When the vacancy he left behind was filled in January 1961, Gardiner acknowledged that the province wouldn’t back the restructuring plan. That was fine by Gardiner, who now had a far more pliable set of commissioners. Lamport, who failed to regain the mayor’s chair, reacted bitterly. “He vowed to get me and that was the answer, and he has forced others to fall in line with his way of doing things…I thank Mr. Gardiner for his courageousness in keeping his boys in line and he alone will know the accomplishment.”

Perhaps the same will be said about Mayor Ford and the commissioners toeing his line.

Sources: Big Daddy by Timothy J. Colton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); the January 3, 1959, February 6, 1959, March 19, 1959, June 14, 1960, September 22, 1960, and January 28, 1961 editions of the Globe and Mail; and the January 5, 1959, January 7, 1959, January 20, 1959, March 18, 1959, and October 19, 1960 editions of the Toronto Star.

UPDATE

On the same day this story originally appeared, Gary Webster was fired as the TTC’s general manager.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

From the “unused images” department, a front page excerpt showing three stories: the Lamport/Gardiner battle; that period of time where there was serious consideration of moving Fort York to get it out of the way of the Gardiner Expressway; and a world-changing moment in Cuba.

Pickled Eggleton

This post was inspired by my participation in a session for The Festival of Bizarre Toronto History on strange photos. I forgot how I originally stumbled onto the photo below – some sort of research project involving digging through late 1970s editions of the Toronto Star – but it has long been one of my favourite weird historical Toronto images.

(UPDATE: it was probably while preparing this post that I found the picture.)

Art Eggleton dressed as a pickle, Halloween 1978. Photo by Dick Darrell. Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Toronto Public Library, TSPA_0045479F.

Dateline: Halloween, 1978. It was political campaigning season in Toronto, with a municipal election only two weeks away. With David Crombie’s decision to enter the federal arena, the city experienced its first real mayoral race in six years. A three-way contest emerged, where the big question was would a split in the right-leaning vote between Tony O’Donohue and David Smith pave the way for a John Sewell victory?

In the council races, where each ward elected two aldermen, the largest field of candidates was in Ward 4, which included Little Italy and Trinity-Spadina. The most prominent was incumbent Art Eggleton, who had served the ward since 1969 and spent several years as the city’s budget chief. He decided to spend Halloween at his campaign office, greeting trick-or-treaters while costumed as a pickle. You might say he was a comedic pickle, complete with a clownish nose which suggested he might have spent a little too much time soaking in brine.

The Toronto Star ran a photo of Eggleton in costume the next day with the following caption:

No Sourpuss. Dressed as a pickle, but all smiles, Toronto alderman Art Eggleton hands out a balloon to Diana Russo, 2, of Grace Street at campaign headquarters last night. Supporter Robert Lang offers Halloween treat.

Why Eggleton chose to dress like a pickle is a good question. Perhaps he felt he was in a pickle. The first part of the municipal campaign coincided with Eggleton’s attempt to win a federal by-election for the Liberals in Parkdale. He lost by just over 1,000 votes on October 16 to Progressive Conservative Yuri Shymko, ending the Liberals’ 16-year hold on the riding. Little time was left to run his campaign to keep his Ward 4 council seat. “He has knocked on virtually every door in the ward and is hand-delivering newspapers in several languages,” the Star reported.

The Star’s campaign notebook surveyed what the mayoral frontrunners offered kids on Halloween night. Sewell’s office was quiet and devoid of treats. One of Smith’s campaign outposts gave out bags of peanuts but made sure not to print political messages on them. “We wouldn’t do that to the kids,” a Smith staffer noted. As for O’Donohue’s HQ, “we have Tony O’Donohue balloons, Tony O’Donohue masks, and some Chinese fortune cookies.”

When the votes were tallied on November 13, Eggleton finished first out of the 10 candidates running in Ward 4, returning to council with fellow incumbent George Ben. Among the losers were future councillor Joe Pantalone and future MP Tony Ianno.

“Heat’s on: Alderman Art Eggleton donned a John Sewell look of yore to rib the mayor at a roast yesterday. The roast was for retired police chief Harold Adamson but Sewell took the heat.” Photo by Dick Loek, originally published in the August 6, 1980 edition of the Toronto Star. Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Toronto Public Library, TSPA_0079548F.

Sewell won the mayoral contest, marking the beginning of a controversial term. Among his rockiest relationships was with the Metro Toronto Police, so when he decided to attend a roast for outgoing police chief Harold Adamson in August 1980, he had to expect a few barbs. Eggleton, who was seen as the main challenger in that year’s mayor’s, went back into his costume box for the roast. He appeared dressed as the early 1970s incarnation of Sewell as council radical, complete with long haired wig with a receding hairline, turtleneck, leather jacket, and cigarette. “What’s so funny?” Eggleton asked the audience. “The last guy who looked like this got elected mayor of Toronto.” He claimed that while Sewell wasn’t his archenemy, they had “a very weird and wonderful relationship. He’s weird.”

In what turned out to be an ugly municipal campaign overall, Eggleton defeated Sewell in a tight race, and would go on to serve as mayor for 11 years. Even if he didn’t dress as a pickle, he would maintain a tradition of opening his office doors to trick-or-treaters.

Sources: the November 1, 1978, November 2, 1978, August 6, 1980, and October 29, 2017 editions of the Toronto Star.

The Battle of the Belles: The 1966 East York Mayoral Race

Originally published as a Historicist column on Torontoist on July 19, 2014.

“Beth Nealson, left, and True Davidson smile now in anticipation of their battle for new job.” Photo by Dick Darrell, originally published in the October 11, 1966 edition of the Toronto Star. Toronto Star Photograph Library, Toronto Public Library, TSPA_0070483F.

Always good for a colourful quote, East York Reeve True Davidson didn’t disappoint when the province announced in January 1966 that it would merge her township with the Town of Leaside, which was headed by Mayor Beth Nealson. “I think the real reason the Government decided to amalgamate our two municipalities,” Davidson observed, “is that the men didn’t want so many women around in politics and decided to get rid of one lady mayor.” The ensuing contest between the two female incumbents that December was, as the Star termed it, “a bombastic, free-wheeling affair.”

Following the Second World War, women ran for municipal office across what became Metropolitan Toronto in increasing numbers. None held the highest office in their municipalities until the 1953 elections, when Marie Curtis became reeve of Long Branch and Dorothy Hague won the same office in Swansea. Local media periodically addressed the growing number of women entering the fray, even if those articles bore titles like the Globe and Mail’s contribution to the 1962 campaign, “Women: The Reluctant Politicians.”

“The question that perplexes the handful of women on municipal governments in Metropolitan Toronto most,” reporter Margaret Cragg observed, “is not concerned with high finance or interpretation of legal matters but why more women are not in politics. The experience is exhilarating, they agree, and the opportunities for intelligent women capable of working hard are almost unlimited.”

Among those who admitted enjoying that exhilarating feeling in 1962 was Leaside councillor Beth Nealson, who became the town’s first female mayor that year. Urged to enter politics by colleagues in the local branch of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, Nealson won a seat on the Leaside Board of Education in 1951. Seven years later, she was elected to town council. At first it appeared she lost her 1962 mayoral campaign to Lloyd Dickinson by 14 votes, but a recount gave her a five-vote victory (Dickinson immediately declared he was done with politics, complaining he’d sacrificed up to $25,000 a year from his plastics business. His vow was short-lived, as he lost a 1964 rematch). Nealson, a.k.a. “Mrs. Leaside,” claimed she faced little discrimination in office: “With some of my colleagues there was never any difference,” she told the Star in 1964. “With others, everything was fine as soon as they got to know me and I established a reputation.”

Globe and Mail, December 28, 1962.

In neighbouring East York, True Davidson’s political career stretched back to activism within the CCF (the forerunner of the NDP) during the 1930s. After opening a private kindergarten, parents suggested she run for the township’s board of education in 1948 to campaign for similar publicly funded services. Within a year of her election, six kindergarten classes were launched in East York schools. She became the board’s first female chair in 1952. When she ran for council in 1958, Davidson believed the township required a master plan for its zoning bylaws. “East York should have planned development such as they have in European cities,” she observed. “We are small, compact and cohesive, and we could do a planning job that could be the envy of Canada.”

After her election as reeve in 1960, Davidson developed a reputation for sound bites. She wasn’t afraid to brutally criticize her colleagues. As one victim of her tongue, councillor Richard Horkins, noted, words poured out of Davidson “as hard as cannonballs. She always came right to the crunch point.” While many of her peers fought with Davidson, they respected her dedication to details and her intelligence.

At a speech she gave to the Association of Ontario Mayors and Reeves in 1962, Davidson, mixing quotations, humour, and her flair for poetry (she published a volume of work in her younger days), urged municipal politicians to use their oaths of office as positive motivation. One section of her speech remains relevant for current Toronto politics:

Perhaps we seek popularity, yield to flattery, hunger for power, bask in public notice and acclaim, or are blinded by our own self-importance . . . Some of us can be cowed by threats . . .Some of us are influenced by racial or religious predispositions . . . All of these constitute conflict of interest which can never be reached by the long arm and probing finger of the law. Only we can spot them, and at that only if we scrutinize our own conduct as severely as we scrutinize the government . . . Insofar as our ideals are high, we lift our municipalities with us. If they are low, we drag them down.

Both Davidson and Nealson fought against amalgamation plans proposed for Metro Toronto during the mid-1960s. Initially, a Royal Commission report issued by H. Carl Goldenberg recommended that Metro’s 13 municipalities shrink to four (Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, and Toronto). Davidson lobbied hard to preserve East York, to the extent of quoting Jane Jacobs on how smaller entities could better fight City Hall. When the province released its final plan in January 1966, it included an enlarged East York as one of the five suburban boroughs alongside the City of Toronto.

Metropolitan Toronto Council, 1965. Beth Nealson is third from left in the second row; True Davidson is second from right in the back row. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 283.

Despite Davidson’s prediction that she and Nealson would smoothly integrate Leaside into East York before the new borough’s official birth on New Year’s Day 1967, there were a few bumps. “Women are the peace makers of the world,” Davidson told the Star. “If there is any trouble in my council I always apologize.” One sticking point that Nealson won was how councillors would be elected—Davidson wanted them voted at large, while Nealson preferred a ward system.

For several months, it was unknown if the two officials would face off to become the borough’s mayor. When amalgamation was announced, Davidson hinted at a gentleman’s agreement where she would be chief executive, while Nealson would run for council and sit as a representative on Metro Council. This played into one of Davidson’s weaknesses, which her biographer Eleanor Darke defined as a growing sense that “she began to care too much about remaining mayor.”

Nealson ended the suspense when she launched her mayoral campaign on October 5, 1966. Municipal planning was the backbone of her platform, which seemed unavoidable after a recent fight over a $20-million apartment project on the boundary of East York and Leaside. Nearby residents fought the development on Mallory Crescent all the way to the Ontario Municipal Board, where the proposal was rejected. Nealson echoed ratepayer groups in vowing to “protect single-family home areas from undesirable intrusion by high density apartments.” Davidson’s support for the development led to complaints from Leaside residents that she was arrogant, ignored ratepayer groups, and wielded power with an iron fist. They also feared that amalgamation would raise taxes and weaken infrastructure services. A third mayoral candidate, East York councillor Royden Brigham, hoped to coalesce anti-Davidson votes.

The media played up the contrasts between the female front-runners. The Globe and Mail observed that Davidson “conducts herself with the decorum of an empress,” while Nealson “fosters somewhat of a little-girl-lost air but her opponents know her as an able and shrewd politician.” (Brigham, for the record, was “a bespectacled stick of dynamite with a delayed fuse.”) The Star compared their breakfast habits and fashion sense: Davidson’s love of fancy hats (“I never throw them away. I retrim them”) and Nealson’s preference for suits and two-piece dresses (“I’m just not comfortable in a one-piece dress at a meeting”).

The campaign saw Davidson tear into her opponents. Things were particularly heated during a debate at William Burgess Elementary School on November 28. Davidson called Nealson “a wishy-washy prissy little sweetheart” who was dominated by her department heads. As for Brigham, who was a lawyer, she beamed that the borough had a job ready for him: “[O]ur solicitor needs a junior to assist him.” When the audience thought both women were too harsh toward Brigham, who believed he had been “clawed,” he was given extra rebuttal time. “Well, he is a defenseless man,” Davidson noted sarcastically. “All men are, you know.”

The next evening, at East York Collegiate, Davidson told voters that Nealson would win if the election was a beauty contest. “If you want someone beautiful and elegant or glamorous,” she joked, “I’m not that.” Davidson was helped to the platform and cut short her speech when she ran short of breath. She spent the rest of the campaign in room 126 of Toronto East General Hospital. While reports indicated she was suffering from “strain and a virus infection,” at least one later account attributed her hospitalization to a heart attack. Whatever happened was serious enough to have her isolated in intensive care. Brigham curtailed his campaign, while Nealson pressed on. “The ratepayers fill the rooms to hear the candidates and to deny them this would be entirely unfair,” noted Nealson. “I won’t make any critical comments about True, but then I never have.” Nealson had her own health issues, as she spent six weeks on antibiotics to combat a bronchial infection, which sapped her energy at several debates.

Picture of True Davidson from the cover of her book The Golden Strings (Toronto: Griffin House, 1973).

Voters went to the polls on December 5. Davidson sat in her hospital room surrounded by bouquets of chrysanthemums, including one sent by Nealson. Doctors had ordered quiet rest for Davidson, and prevented her from following results on radio and television. Inevitably, the count trickled in to her. Having told voters “I have nothing to give you but love,” the electorate responded in kind. Though Davidson’s support of the Mallory Crescent project cost her in Leaside, she won by a 4,000-vote margin over Brigham. Nealson finished third, less than 200 votes behind Brigham.

The phone in Davidson’s room was hooked up to the loudspeaker system at East York’s municipal’s offices, where a crowd of 70 waited to hear her. “Do any of you people really know how deeply touched I am by all of this?” she noted. As photographers entered her hospital room, Davidson applied lipstick and put on a pair of earrings. “Don’t think that just because I’m sick and feeble you’re going to get over there and shoot me from my bad side,” she joked. “I look like a ghost.” Brigham and Nealson also participated in the hookup—Brigham observed “the race was not too bad for a defenseless male,” while Nealson offered her help in launching the new borough.

During her recovery, Davidson tried to ease fears among Leaside residents and ratepayer groups that they would be totally subjugated by East York (“we don’t have the same chicken-swallowing tendency Toronto has”). As municipal employees were reassigned with the merger, so was office furniture, as Davidson wound up with Nealson’s old desk. Davidson remained mayor until 1972, after which she pursued a PhD in literature and Canadian history at York University and wrote a column for the Toronto Sun. When she died in 1978, the Star remembered her as “flamboyant but never frivolous.”

As for Nealson, she worked in PR for Metro and as a publicity co-ordinator for the Toronto Citizens’ Centenary Committee. She testified in front of East York Council in 1976 on the decaying state of the Thorncliffe Park apartment building she resided in, and blamed the neighbourhood’s decline on municipal neglect, poorly maintained parks, vandalism, and absentee landlords. When she died in 1994, her daughter admitted that Nealson had faced a rough time from male colleagues during her time in office. The Star’s obituary referred to the 1966 election campaign as the “Battle of the Belles.”

A street for Beth Nealson. East York Mayor True Davidson presents shears to Beth Nealson, the last mayor of Leaside before it was absorbed by East York, to open the drive named for her, Metro Roads Commissioner Sam Cass holds umbrella in yesterday’s rain. Photo by Boris Spremo, dated October 6, 1972. Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Toronto Public Library, TSPA_0070479F.

Both women are honoured with streets named after them, while Davidson’s name was bestowed upon a seniors residence.

Asked in 1962 what qualities women needed to succeed in politics, Davidson offered the following advice:

Any quality that makes for success in the home or the world of business is useful in public life. There is no experience that is not of value. I think a woman should like people, be articulate, have a public conscience, common sense, courage to try things and to have had a share of both pain and pleasure, being neither too sheltered nor embittered.

Sources: Call Me True by Eleanor Darke (Toronto: Natural Heritage, 1997); the November 29, 1962, December 28, 1962, January 11, 1966, October 12, 1966, November 29, 1966, November 30, 1966, December 2, 1966, December 6, 1966, and December 9, 1966 editions of the Globe and Mail; and the December 3, 1964, March 4, 1966, October 5, 1966, October 11, 1966, November 29, 1966, December 1, 1966, December 2, 1966, December 6, 1966, May 18, 1976, September 19, 1978, and January 15, 1994 editions of the Toronto Star.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

From the December 3, 1964 Star, profiles of Davidson and Nealson that were part of a feature on women running for office in Metro Toronto in that year’s municipal elections. Also spotlighted were Helen Begg (who finished second in the race for reeve in Swansea) and Margaret Campbell (who was elected to Toronto’s Board of Control).

Toronto Star, October 11, 1966. Click on image for larger version.

Toronto Star, November 16, 1966. Click on image for larger version.

Globe and Mail, December 6, 1966.

Globe and Mail, December 6, 1966. Click on image for larger version.

The Loyal Orangeman Versus the Mayor of All the People

Originally published as a Historicist column on Torontoist on September 18, 2010.

Toronto Board of Control, 1956. Left to right: Leslie Saunders, Ford Brand, Nathan Phillips, Joseph Cornish, William R. Allen. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 1258.

For the first half of the twentieth century, one prerequisite to be a serious contender for the mayor’s chair in Toronto was membership in good standing with the Orange Order. As 1954 dawned, it didn’t appear that the situation would change much: Orangeman Allan Lamport had won a third term and the challenger most likely to run against or in place of him that December, Leslie Saunders, was a high-ranking official in the Order. Yet 1954 wound up being the beginning of the end of Orange dominance over civic affairs, thanks partly to a series of snafus by Saunders. The municipal election of 1954 not only proved a key element in breaking the Order’s hold, but showed that antagonizing the press wasn’t a good idea and that you didn’t have to be Protestant to take the mayor’s chair, even if it took you three efforts.

Cartoon depicting Allan Lamport, The Telegram, June 24, 1954.

Our story begins at the Toronto Transit Commission, where the combination of an expanded administrative board and the death of Chairman W.C. McBrien left several key vacancies. Sensing the prospects of steadier employment with the TTC than at the whim of voters, Mayor Lamport resigned from office in June to make himself available as a candidate for McBrien’s job (he wound up as Vice-Chairman when William G. Russell won the top spot). On June 29, Saunders, a veteran member of the Board of Control who was serving as president of City Council, assumed the mayoralty amid general respect for his abilities as an administrator.

Saunders’s honeymoon was short-lived. Shortly after assuming office, Saunders was also named Deputy Grand Master of the Orange Lodge, just in time for the annual Orange parade in early July to celebrate William III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Saunders decided the parade would be the perfect opportunity to issue a statement to Torontonians “reminding them of their British heritage” by stressing how important that the battle was as a victory for democratic and religious freedoms for all (even if some of faiths were deemed less worthy than others). Amid its glorification of the Orange Order, the statement requested citizens “to thank God for those whose courage against wrong hastened the dawn of freedom,” and compared the triumph of Protestants over Catholics to more recent victories against “the Hun, the Nazi and the Fascist.” One problem: Saunders issued the statement on official city stationery.

To Catholic councillors and other Orangemen in the city government whose views were less fervent than Saunders, the statement was received like an intolerant slap against citizens who weren’t connected to the Order. Controller David Balfour felt that the mayor should represent all faiths; in response, local Orange Order Secretary B.G. Louden challenged the Catholic Balfour to run for mayor. Saunders did not apologize for issuing the statement. “I’m proud,” he said, “to be able to make a statement of this kind to the people of Toronto on this great day in Orange history.” His statement did not find favour among the press, whose views were best summed by an editorial in the Telegram which noted that “the only rivers that Leslie Saunders is expected to concern himself with as Mayor of Toronto are the Don and the Humber.”

The Telegram, December 4, 1954.

Watching from the sidelines was former city councillor Nathan Phillips, who was taking a rest from elected office after a quarter of a century as an alderman and two unsuccessful mayoral runs against Lamport in 1951 and 1952. As controversy about Saunders’s statement grew, Phillips was contacted by Star reporter Bob McDonald to see if he would consider a third run for the mayor’s chair. Phillips decided he would, but only if his wife supported another run (she did) and if he could secure more newspaper support beyond the Star, which had backed his previous campaigns. He contacted Telegram publisher John Bassett, who indicated that Phillips could soon tell anyone he “damned well pleased” that he had Bassett’s full support. That Phillips was Jewish would make for an interesting angle in editorials in all of the city’s papers criticizing Saunders for trying to provoke religious strife. Upon hearing of Phillips’s entry, Saunders told the press on July 10 that when all the ballots were counted, he would be “be sitting right where I am now.”

Phillips’s entry into the race was timed well, as Saunders bounced from one fiasco to another. The mayor’s relations with the press were frosty at best when he had a confrontation with three reporters who entered a Board of Control meeting on July 14. The meeting was supposed to be held in private out of respect for any candidates named as potential successors for outgoing Parks Commissioner Oscar Pearson. The reporters from the Star and Telegram refused to leave due to their editors ordering them to be there. Much yelling ensued, mostly from Saunders. He was reported to have said “You’ll obey me! The newspapers aren’t going to tell me what to do!” Then Saunders chastised the reporters for not being good gentlemen by ignoring his requests to leave. The Mayor’s tactics appeared to outrage half of the four-person board, as Balfour and fellow Controller Roy Belyea stormed out of the room and accused him of being an autocrat.

Once again, Louden challenged somebody to run for mayor, but this time it was fellow Orangeman Belyea, who Louden warned to watch his tongue if he didn’t want to lose the up to ten thousand potential votes the Order could deliver. Saunders invoked a press ban at City Hall, which was the cue for the media to write editorials echoing the complaints of the controllers. The ban lasted for a day before Saunders reversed himself and declared that he would no longer have any private meetings with city councillors. As revenge, Saunders attempted to blacken Belyea’s reputation by questioning why the controller hadn’t served his country proudly during World War I, after Belyea stated that “dictators are being fought all over the world. Now is the time to fight them at home.” The electoral silly-season had kicked into high gear.

Amid these antics, both the Star and Telegram printed their endorsements of Phillips before the month was over. Both papers praised Phillips for his long public service record and for his dignified bearing,the antithesis of Saunders’ increasing irritability. As the Star noted, Phillips “possesses tact and natural friendliness and by these qualities, as well as by cogent arguments, he will, we think, improve Toronto’s standing in the Metro council, and represent her well in his contacts with municipalities outside this area.” For his part, Phillips vowed to run a campaign based on tolerance for all regardless of their religious affiliation.

The Telegram, December 4, 1954 (left), December 1, 1954 (right).

The question of who the Globe and Mail would support remained in the air for awhile, as neither of their favoured candidates could decide if they would run. Press speculation was that if Belyea didn’t run, former Toronto Board of Education Chairman Arthur Brown, who was defeated by Lamport the year before, would make a second attempt to become mayor. Belyea dithered for several months until he decided in late September that he would run again for the Board of Control. A few weeks later, Brown declared his intentions and the Globe and Mail printed their endorsement (while the paper found Phillips an agreeable person, they felt he never shown any signs of leadership or innovative thought). Saunders responded to the news by saying Brown was “wasting his time. I’ll lick him just as easily as anyone else. He’ll be pie.”
Over in the Phillips camp, the former councillor had an inkling that the campaign might be turning in his favour.

My campaign ran smoothly. I sensed that support was coming to me from every part of the city. I didn’t hear much said either for or against Brown, but there certainly was a rising tide against Saunders. As I look back, I don’t think it was so much a case of the people voting for me as it was of the people voting against Saunders. People do not often vote new governments into office. They vote old governments out.

Globe and Mail, November 26, 1954.

Among the crucial endorsements Phillips received was one from the Sunday Sports Committee headed by former controller Fred Hamilton, an old enemy of Saunders who was certain the incumbent candidate would reopen the issue of allowing sporting activities on Sunday and find a way to ban them again. An ad produced by Hamilton showing a collage of anti-Saunders articles left the Mayor fuming.

But this was only one of the image problems plaguing the Saunders camp. An attempt to ban municipal candidates from appearing before the Board of Control during the campaign, which appeared to be aimed at Phillips, backfired when the majority of the Board of Control opposed it. An ad listing prominent Torontonians who supported Saunders’ campaign was questioned when it appeared that some of those listed were unaware their names would be used in such a way. Three days before the election, Brown condemned the mayor for reportedly allowing a suite in the Royal York Hotel to be used for secret meetings of city council executives and to lavishly entertain visitors. The rumours of a secret clique running were too enticing for newspapers to resist running headlines decrying extravagances. Phillips demanded an investigation into the suite, which ultimately revealed that there wasn’t anything too shameful going on.

Globe and Mail, December 2, 1954.

Saunders felt confident of his chances on election day, believing the righteous citizens of Toronto would see through the “lies” in the press and cast their ballots in their usual fashion. He felt it was impossible that he would be unseated on December 6, especially to previous losers like Brown and Phillips. As the results came in, he maintained a positive face.

I had no idea that I could be defeated. We carried on an active campaign over radio, press and an 110,000 distribution of election literature through an agency. A victory party was arranged in Victoria Hall. As I listened, on my radio in my car, I was well down. My driver encouraged me, remarking that there were several polls to hear from, but I knew that I could not gain sufficiently. I listened until I had passed Arthur Brown, whose purpose in the running could only have been to split the Church and Gentile vote…Then I went up to our headquarters knowing I was defeated. At least I could walk with my head up, despite the unprecedented campaign waged by the three papers, Hamilton, et al.

Ett Phillips relaxing at home. “Did you ever see a dame like that?” her husband observed when this photo was taken in November 1962. Photo by Reg Innell. Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Toronto Public Library, TSPA_0073605F.

Phillips had greater worries during election day than the results. The night before, his wife Esther (“Ett”) began preparations for the post-results party. On her way down to the basement to retrieve a turkey, her foot caught on a metal strip and she fell down the staircase. Mrs. Phillips was rushed to the hospital and underwent brain surgery. The candidate got little sleep that night and stayed in constant contact with the hospital during what Phillips later called “the longest day” of his life. He barely thought about what he would say after the votes were tallied until an editor from the Telegram called him around 10 p.m. to indicate that he had likely won in a very tight race (less than four thousand votes separated Phillips from Saunders, with Brown just over a hundred votes behind the incumbent). Phillips took fifteen minutes to draft a speech, in which he thanked the voters and discussed what really mattered to him at that moment.

As I speak to you, my heart is filled with sadness because my wife suffered a serious accident last night as a result of which she is in the hospital. She is still not out of danger and I appear before you now to express our thanks and gratitude because I know she would want me to. I have been deeply touched by the many inquiries during the day and the prayers offered for my wife’s recovery. I believe in prayers, and I ask you to continue to pray for her, because if I ever needed her, I need her more than ever now. Mrs. Phillips has in her the inspiration a husband needs to help him carry on.

Mrs. Phillips went on to make a full recovery, though her memories of the accident and the following days never returned.

Phillips then touched on the general nastiness of the campaign and expressed his pride at Toronto voters for rejecting the tactics from the Saunders camp.

Every person should be proud of his ancestry, and I am proud of the blood that flows in my veins. I am sure that every other citizen is proud of the blood that flows in his veins. I shall represent all the people, and I mean all the people in the broadest sense, fairly and without discrimination. I shall cut intolerance, I will try and be you, all the people of Toronto, and reflect your aims, ideals, aspirations and ambitions.

The Telegram, December 7, 1954.

The speech earned Phillips the nickname “Mayor of All the People,” a title he tried to live up to during his tenure. Third-place finisher Brown offered his congratulations and seemed at ease despite his loss…which was something that could not be said for Saunders. He refused to offer a formal concession to Phillips and never stopped blaming the press and non-Orangemen for engineering his defeat. His statements after the election lacked even traces of graciousness amidst his utter disbelief that the voters didn’t rally for him (“This is hardly the reward a person should receive for that type of service. No man has served Toronto better than I.”), and he never got over how the press turned against him, having had praise heaped on him before becoming mayor.

Having lived in East York for several years, Saunders eventually turned his political attentions to that municipality. As in Toronto, Saunders would serve as interim Mayor of East York in 1976, but with far less controversy. He never apologized for his fervent Orange beliefs or any actions he took during the 1954 election campaign. Yet the zealousness of his actions and his apparent ability to think only in terms of black and white, in contrast with the growing multicultural makeup of the city, helped spark the demise of the Orange Order’s hold on power in Toronto. The parades no longer draw the crowds they once did, and no mayor since the retirement of William Dennison in 1972 has been a member.

Sources: Mayor of All the People by Nathan Phillips (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), An Orangeman in Public Life: The Memoirs of Leslie Howard Saunders by Leslie Saunders (Toronto: Britannia Printers, 1980), and the following newspapers: the July 10, 1954, July 15, 1954,and November 18, 1954 editions of the Globe and Mail; the July 29, 1954, and October 5, 1954 editions of the Toronto Star; and the July 10, 1954, July 13, 1954, July 14, 1954, July 16, 1954, July 21, 1954, and December 7, 1954 editions of the Telegram.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Globe and Mail, June 29, 1954.

Globe and Mail, July 12, 1954.

Toronto Star, July 15, 1954.

The Telegram, July 15, 1954.

The Telegram, October 6, 1954.

The Telegram, November 17, 1954.

Globe and Mail, November 22, 1954.

The first of several editorials in the G&M backing Arthur Brown. While Phillips, Saunders, and Brown had a tight race, the only other mayoral candidate finished far behind, with just under 5,000 votes: former Bellwoods MPP A.A. MacLeod, a member of the Communis…erm…Labor Progressive Party and the uncle of Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine.

Globe and Mail, November 27, 1954.

Globe and Mail, November 29, 1954.

Globe and Mail, November 29, 1954.

Toronto Star, November 29, 1954.

The Star’s endorsement of Phillips.

Toronto Star, December 3, 1954.

The Telegram, December 3, 1954.

The Telegram, December 4, 1954.

The Telegram, December 4, 1954.

Toronto Star, December 7, 1954.

The Telegram, December 7, 1954.

The Telegram, December 9, 1954.

Voting Rights in Toronto: Who Has (and Hasn’t) Been Allowed to Cast a Ballot in Our Elections

Originally published on Torontoist on September 15, 2014.

Ballot box preparation, Township of North York office at 5000 Yonge Street, 1964. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 217, Series 249, File 261, Item 1.

For most of Toronto’s history, the privilege of voting in municipal elections belonged to an elite group. If you were male, 21 or older, and owned a certain amount of property, you automatically gained membership. If you were a male tenant, or a woman in general, the road to getting the municipal franchise was long and frustrating, often pitting the city against the reluctance of Queen’s Park.

The limitations on who could vote were enshrined in the document that created the City of Toronto, the York Incorporation Act of 1834, and written in convoluted legalese:

That the Aldermen and Common Councilmen of the said City shall be elected respectively by the majority of votes of such persons being male Inhabitant Householders within the Ward for which the Election shall be holden, or the Liberties attached thereto, as shall be possessed at the time of the Election, either in freehold or as tenants for term of years, or from year to year, of a Town Lot of Dwelling-house within the said Ward or Liberties: Provided always, that a portion of a House in which any Inhabitant shall reside as a Householder, and not as a Boarder or Lodger, and having a distinct communication with a street by an outer door, shall be considered a Dwelling-house within the meaning of this Clause: And provided also, that no person shall vote at any such Election, who has not been a resident Inhabitant with the said City or Liberties thereof, for the period of twelve calendar months, and who had not resided within the Ward for which the Election shall be holden, or the Liberties attached thereto for the period of three calendar months next before the Election.

The minimum monetary property value set by the province varied over time. Amendments under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1849 set the minimum at 50 pounds (pre-decimalization); by the time a revised Municipal Act passed in 1866, the minimum was $600, later reduced to $400. The ownership restrictions effectively shut out the city’s growing working class, despite calls as early as the mid-1860s to extend voting rights to all male taxpayers aged 21 and older.

Although women chose educational trustees as early as 1850 (since schooling was seen as a domestic concern), getting the municipal vote took nearly half a century. The fight for women’s suffrage gained traction after women’s property rights were officially recognized in the early 1870s. Organizations such as the Toronto Women’s Literary and Social Progress Club (TWLSPC, founded by pioneer suffragette Dr. Emily Stowe) urged city council to petition the province to extend the vote. Defenders of the status quo made ridiculous arguments against doing so: women lacked the mental capacity to comprehend politics, extending the vote to women would destroy marital bliss, the whole political process was too degrading, and virtually every other misogynistic complaint you could think of.

There were even fears that allowing women to cast ballots would disrupt child-rearing. “Some people think it will take women from the fireside, and cause them to neglect the babies and spoil the dinners,” observed a TWLSPC member during a meeting held in the city council chamber in March 1883, “but there need not be much fear that our absence will greatly affect our domestic concerns.” The TWLSPC soon renamed itself the Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association, and fought for the vote at all levels of government.

1914 calendar advertising Belle Ewart Ice Co. with reference to women’s suffrage. Toronto Public Library.

In March 1884, Queen’s Park passed legislation that allowed women to vote municipally, though the franchise was restricted to spinsters and widows, and only those who met the same property ownership qualifications as men. It was believed married women, even if property was held in their name, would be represented by their husbands at the ballot box.

Thanks to implementation delays, it wasn’t until January 4, 1886 that women in Toronto cast their first municipal ballots. Reform candidates such as mayoral contender William Holmes Howland counted on the 2,000 eligible female voters to support their stands on middle class concerns like the temperance movement. The Globe predicted that the injection of female virtue would cause inebriated, rowdy behaviour on election day to vanish: “No woman need fear having to endure any insult or having in the slightest degree to part with her womanliness in consequence of exercising her privilege of voting.”

Nearly 40 years passed before married women were allowed to vote, over which time countless attempts by city council and opposition parties in the Ontario legislature to change the rules failed. But the will was there, as shown by council’s actions when its Civic Legislation and Reception Committee heard from a delegation of 30 local suffragettes on January 11, 1912. Constance Boulton noted how the “public spirited ladies of Toronto” influenced council to back major infrastructure projects like the Ashbridges Bay water treatment plant. Dr. Margaret Gordon, president of the Toronto Suffrage Association, observed, “We are allowed to vote only when our husbands die. They do not die until we are well up in years.” The councillors in attendance (apart from George McMurrich, who believed that giving women the franchise would discourage their husbands from voting) praised the suffragettes. “There are hundreds and thousands of women in this city who pay taxes yet are without a voice in municipal affairs,” reflected controller J.O. McCarthy. “It is not square. The individual who pays taxes has some right to a voice in the government that spends them.”

Two weeks later, council voted unanimously to apply to the province to extend the franchise to married women. Mayor George Reginald Geary originally insisted on a rider that recommended that if a couple was jointly assessed for taxes, only the husband would vote. Sensing the mood, he consented to dropping it. Fifty women were on hand for the vote, but only after councillors gave up their seats to allow more to enter a council chamber packed that day for a separate debate on legalizing Sunday tobogganing.

James Pliny Whitney. Wikimedia Commons.

But the province didn’t feel like rocking the boat. When three proposed bills allowing women’s suffrage were defeated in the legislature on April Fools’ Day 1913, Premier Sir James Whitney noted that they were contrary to British precedent. “The restriction of the franchise to men is a good custom that is quietly helping to corrupt the world,” an editorial in the World noted, “and it will have to change.” Married women were granted the right to vote in provincial elections in February 1917, but they had to wait until the passage of the Municipal Franchise Act in 1922 to vote in municipal elections.

The next great battle was extending the franchise to anyone 21 or older, regardless of their property holdings. While some community leaders, like Mayor Jimmie Simpson, supported the idea during the 1930s, others not only opposed it, but also wanted to reduce the number of eligible voters. At a provincial hearing on reforming municipal taxes in April 1938, Property Owners’ Association of Toronto president H.E. Manning argued that the administration of social services and assistance to the poor should be eliminated from municipal budgets. “With the removal of the above services from the municipal field any sentimental reasons for preserving an unrestricted municipal franchise disappear,” Manning stated. “The temptation to win elections by promises of spending the taxpayers’ money on airports, uneconomically cheap housing projects, harbour improvements and other enterprises not particularly the concern of either local government or property ownership will persist as long as non-taxpayers control the election.” In a piece published by the Globe and Mail a few months later Dr. Charles Sheard wrote, “to have members of Council representing tenants is like being asked to contribute to a charity by a canvasser when she herself contributes nothing, but merely seeks to point out to others wherein their duty lies.”

Globe and Mail, November 9, 1956.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, calls to update voting qualifications grew louder. The existing laws allowed tenants to vote only if they met absurdly convoluted qualifications. In 1949, for example, the Municipal Act stipulated that tenants had to rent two or more rooms that could be assessed for at least $400 worth of taxes, and in which they regularly cooked and slept. If an adult lived in their parents’ home, they were disqualified from voting if they ate meals in the parent’s portion of the residence. Extending the franchise to tenants was seen by some as a blow to the ego of taxpayers.

In a referendum during the 1956 municipal election, Torontonians were asked if they would allow city council to request the province extend the franchise to all people 21 or older who had resided in the city for at least a year and were British subjects. The ballot question exempted public votes on money matters, which would continue to require proof of property ownership. By a two-to-one margin, voters approved of the idea.

Yet the province stalled. When the matter finally arose in March 1958, proposed legislation required Ontario municipalities to hold a referendum before extending the vote, with the exception of the three cities (London, Port Arthur, and Toronto) that had already done so. The province’s municipal law committee unanimously approved the proposal on March 24, but overnight dictates from Premier Leslie Frost and his cabinet provoked backtracking. The next day, the committee announced the three exempted cities had to hold fresh referendums. The move was defended by Renfrew South MPP James Maloney, who believed the bill should be reconsidered because “there are certain matters in it which trouble my people down at Renfrew”—namely, the notion Toronto was receiving preferential treatment. Bewildered opposition officials, including Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (the forerunner of the NDP) leader Donald MacDonald, wondered why on earth anyone in Renfrew cared. He chalked up the mood shift to “railroading tactics.”

Globe and Mail, November 21, 1958.

City council reacted swiftly. Another referendum question was placed on the 1958 municipal ballot; it passed by an even larger margin than the last one. In response, Queen’s Park allowed an extended franchise (with some lingering restrictions) to be implemented in 1960, on condition that a pricy separate voters list prepared by a separate enumeration team was maintained for newly eligible electors. The move reeked of spite.

Over the course of the 1960s, city council worked on proposals to base voter qualification on residency instead of the few remaining property ownership restrictions, most of which were abolished years earlier for federal or provincial contests. These efforts caused at least one right-wing councillor to cry “Communism!” Loosening the franchise occurred gradually in the suburbs within Metro Toronto, though communities like Scarborough resisted as long as possible.

Toronto Star, October 26, 1972.

The piecemeal process of reform ended in June 1972, when the province passed the Municipal Elections Act. The new legislation lowered the voting age to 18 and removed the last property value qualifications—the main requirement was Canadian citizenship or being a British subject (the latter a right Toronto retained into the 1980s). The city’s current voter qualifications reflect these changes; they also allow non-residents who own or rent property within the city’s borders to vote, which some observers say is a means of padding the electoral rolls.

Current efforts to extend the vote to non-citizens are not without historical precedent. In 1971, councillor Joe Piccininni proposed allowing non-citizens who owned property in the city to cast ballots. The idea was attacked in letters to the editor by those who argued that the right to vote is one of the few incentives to become a Canadian citizen. Yet, as Ryerson University political science professor Myer Siemiatycki pointed out in a 2006 report on voting and social inclusion, nearly 16 per cent of Toronto’s population was ineligible to vote due to lack of citizenship. Will this group bring about the next stage in the evolution of our municipal franchise?

Sources: Mayor Howland: The Citizens’ Candidate by Desmond Morton (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973); Statutes of His Majesty’s province of Upper Canada, passed in the fourth session of the eleventh provincial Parliament of Upper Canada (Toronto: Robert Stanton, 1834); The Muncipal Franchise and Social Inclusion in Toronto: Policy and Practice by Myer Siemiatycki (Toronto: Community Social Planning Council of Toronto, 2006); the August 30, 1866, March 7, 1883, January 12, 1912, and January 23, 1912 editions of the Globe; the April 29, 1938, July 27, 1938, December 1, 1949, June 9, 1961, May 10, 1962, and April 21, 1972 editions of the Globe and Mail; the March 25, 1958, December 16, 1958, April 12, 1960, December 9, 1971, and December 13, 1971 editions of the Toronto Star; and the April 2, 1913 edition of the Toronto World.

UPDATE

According to the City of Toronto’s website, the following can vote in the 2022 municipal election:

• Canadian citizen
• 18 years old and older
  • Either a resident in the city of Toronto, or a non-resident who owns/rents property in the city or has a spouse who owns/rents property in the city
• Not prohibited from voting under any law

Four bullets points list who officially cannot vote: prisoners currently serving sentences, corporations, an executor or trustee who isn’t serving as a voting proxy, and anyone who has been “convicted of a corrupt practice” under section 90(3) in the Municipal Elections Act, 1996.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Globe and Mail, July 27, 1938.

An opinion piece arguing why those who didn’t own property did not deserve to vote in Toronto municipal elections. Later that year, mayor Ralph Day opposed suggestions that eligible voters needed to show their tax receipts before they could cast their ballot.

Globe and Mail, January 31, 1945.

One example of an unsuccessful attempt at municipal franchise reform from the mid-1940s, proposed by controller Stewart Smith, who belonged to the Communi…err…Labor Progressive Party. I would have words with Mr. Walton about renters not having a stake in the city.

Editorial, Toronto Star, February 1, 1945.

Vintage Toronto Ads: The 1922 Municipal Election

Toronto Star, January 2, 1922.

For decades, Torontonians began their year by casting their ballots in the annual municipal election. It was generally held on New Year’s Day unless, as in the case of 1922, that fell on a Sunday. When they went to the polls that January 2, they had a variety of aldermen, controllers, and plebiscite questions to cast their votes for.

Among the main issues was one that frequently ate up acres of newsprint during the first half of the 1920s, Sir Adam Beck‘s quest to build radial railway systems throughout the province. That topic would require several posts, and is so tied up in partisan battles and deep emotions that I’m going to dodge it as much as possible here. I’m also writing this post without access to the Telegram, which, like the Star, would treat the issue with all the delicacy of an overwrought melodrama.

Charles Alfred Maguire, 1934. Toronto Public Library, Toronto Star Photographic Archive, TSPA_0112954F.

There was no mayoral campaign. After a seven-year run as mayor, Tommy Church was elected as an MP in the federal election on December 6. During the nomination meetings for mayor and controllers on December 21, Charles Alfred Maguire was acclaimed as mayor. Church had contemplated holding down both jobs, but waited to see if Maguire, an incumbent controller, would support public ownership of power utilities. According to the Star, Maguire “made an impassioned attack” on Premier E.C. Drury’s opposition to ballot questions on radials in the Niagara peninsula and Toronto. After speaking, Church asked Maguire if he was prepared to stack outside boards with supporters of Beck and his hydro-related projects. “I do not think that it is necessary to ask me that question,” Maguire responded. “If any members of outside boards are not in full sympathy with the policy of the citizens so far as public ownership is concerned they will have to go.” After some applause, Church was satisfied with Maguire’s answer and dropped out. In a subsequent speech, Maguire indicated he fully supported the radials and believed Ontarians should be able to vote in support of them. All nine approved Board of Control candidates also indicated their support.

While the Globe all but ignored day-to-day election coverage and ran no campaign ads at all, plenty appeared in the Star. Among the candidates, several themes emerge, primarily that businessmen were best suited to run the city, because we know that always works out well. You’ll also notice Toronto’s historical penchant for cheapness and thrift at play.

Toronto Star, December 30, 1921.

In the race for the Board of Control, where the top four competitors would sit at City Hall, Thomas Foster finished first with over 23,000 votes. Foster had sat on council as either an alderman or controller for most of the period between 1891 and 1917, then was elected as a Unionist MP for York East in the 1917 federal election. Forced to run as an independent in 1921, he lost his seat and decided to return to the municipal realm. He later served as mayor from 1925 to 1927.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Nicknamed “Honest Tom,” Foster was a penny-pincher a la Rob Ford, whose habits included personally making repairs to the properties he owned. Unsurprisingly, he favoured low spending and taxes, as well as establishing a five cent fare for the recently-established TTC. He credited his victory to his “public economy and retrenchment policy.” He told the Star that he would have a better chance of helping the city as a controller than if he had returned to Parliament Hill.

The money he saved was later used for, among other things, the grandiose memorial he built for his family near Uxbridge.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Second place went to W.W. Hiltz, who would serve as mayor between Maguire and Foster’s terms. Originally a school teacher, he entered the home building and real estate business in the east end around 1907. After serving as a school board trustee, Hiltz served as an alderman from 1914 to 1920 and as a controller from 1921 to 1923. While he professed support of the radials this time around, he opposed them by the time he became mayor in 1924. While his opposition may have held doom radials for good, it, along with his support for prohibition, contributed to his defeat in 1925. The main achievement of his mayoralty was commencing construction of the downtown railway viaduct, removing many level crossings and leading to the completion of the new Union Station.

According to a Star editorial following his death in 1936, his greatest personal legacy lay “in the lives which he influenced as a school teacher, as a Sunday school superintendent, and in his daily life. He was indeed a good citizen.”

Toronto Star, December 28, 1921.

Third place went to Joseph Gibbons, a former streetcar conductor and union activist who was first elected as an alderman in 1915. He was first elected to the Board of Control in 1920 and remained for a decade. Gibbons was one of the few Roman Catholics elected during an era of Orange Order domination over city politics. “Never showy,” the Globe and Mail observed, “he was regarded as a solid, shrewd representative of the people.”

An ally of Beck, he later served a long stint as a Toronto Hydro commissioner and was its chairman when he died in 1946. Along with Hiltz, Gibbons was backed by the Star, who praised him as “an earnest, moderate, common sense advocate of the rights of labour.”

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

The final controller slot was claimed by A.R. Nesbitt, a lawyer who had a brief municipal career before a 14-year run as a Conservative MPP in Toronto Northwest and Bracondale.

Toronto Star, December 24, 1921.

The first of our losing Board of Control candidates, W.D. Robbins, later enjoyed a two-year run as mayor following the death of Sam McBride in 1936.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Also unsuccessful was R.H. Cameron, a leather goods manufacturer who was an on-again, off-again presence at City Hall during the 1910s and 1920s. He wasn’t the right man at the right time during his two unsuccessful mayoral runs in 1918 and 1926. He was endorsed by the Star, along with another defeated controller candidate, George Ramsden. Among Cameron’s proposals was improving access to Toronto Island via bridges at either end to allow a streetcar line to connect with the mainland.

Toronto Star, December 30, 1921.

The first candidate in our collection of ads to tout their perfect attendance, Clifford Blackburn’s dedicated council experience didn’t translate into a Board of Control seat. He regained his Ward Five (the area around Trinity-Bellwoods) seat in 1923 and was on and off council for the rest of the decade. He later served as a local Conservative Party official.

I did not discover any ads for the last place finisher, William Varley, who received just over 3,400 votes. “I have no regrets,” he told the Star. “I wish you to realize this, my campaign, was a good, clean one, without recriminations on either side.”

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Moving to the ward races, Frank M. Johnston’s lack of sparkle impressed enough voters in Riverdale to return him to office. Johnston, who had manufactured and wholesaled hats and caps, represented Ward One from 1918 to 1922, in 1929, and from 1931 until his death in 1941. A national champion ten-pin bowler, Johnston was involved in the creation of Greenwood Park.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Frank M. Johnston, successful Ward One candidate, should not be confused with Frank W. Johnston, unsuccessful Ward Three candidate. Despite the effort of his old buddy to portray Frank W. as a man of the people, he finished fifth in an 11-man contest in an area covering the central business district and The Ward. Frank W., a former grocer, would outlive Frank M., passing away in 1949.

Of the others in this cluster of ads, Hunter and MacGregor were victorious, while Ward Five forsook safety when it came to Robert Prince.

Toronto Star, December 28, 1921.

Among the successful incumbents was Toronto’s second female city councilor. Ethel Small followed in the footsteps of Constance Hamilton, who had served Ward Three in 1920-1921 but decided not to run in 1922. Small was a social worker who was active with numerous organizations, including presidencies of the Big Sister Association and the Social Service Club.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

During her three-year stint as an alderman for Ward Four (which covered Kensington Market and the Garment District), Small chaired the Board of Health and sat on several committees which reflected her interests, including parks and juvenile court. After her decision not to run again in 1924, no female councilors would be elected until Adelaide Plumptre in 1936.

Toronto Star, December 24, 1921.

Among those Small defeated was Lewis LeGrow, who paid for a wide range of ads in his futile quest for a council seat.

Toronto Star, December 28, 1921.

LeGrow’s ads make him sound like the epitome of businesspeople who run for office because they believe the “common sense” they developed operating a business was equally applicable to municipal matters.

Toronto Star, December 30, 1921.

He also displays this type of candidate’s obsession with saving money even if factors such as building infrastructure to support a growing population require the income raised via taxes.

(Trying…to…resist…rant….)

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

LeGrow may have run in the wrong ward, as his common sense approach and quoting of H.G. Wells earned a fifth-place finish with just over 1,000 votes.

Toronto Star, December 28, 1921.

Claude Pearce was another businessman who didn’t wow Ward Four voters. A successful automobile dealer, Pearce was also a long-distance runner and supporter of charities for orphans. In its endorsement, the Star called him “a man with ‘energy to burn,’ a four-square citizen who deserves a large vote.” He had better luck in the future, serving the ward as an alderman off-and-on between 1923 and 1933, plus a two-year stint as a controller in 1930-1931. Like Gibbons, Pearce was one of the few Roman Catholics to hold office during this era.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Note that both of Pearce’s ads brag about his property holdings. Does this refer to his dealerships or other properties? Was he a good landlord or a bad one? Did this have any effect on his results in 1922?

In 1942 Pierce received a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to charges of false pretenses. He had received insurance payments after reporting his car was stolen, but the vehicle was discovered by police in a garage he had rented on St. Clair Avenue. The court agreed with Pearce’s lawyer’s request for leniency on the grounds that Pearce turned the money over to a taxi company he owned.

Toronto Star, May 8, 1962.

Forty years later, the Star ran this amusing photo of Pearce protesting the behaviour of his fellow U.S. Steel shareholders. It wasn’t the first time he was an angry shareholder; in July 1958 he opposed Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline’s attempt to gain parliamentary approval for a stock split, unhappy that such a move would lower the stock’s value. After appearing in front of a parliamentary committee, he stuck around to interrupt the proceedings with questions or attacks on the company’s statements.

Toronto Star, December 30, 1921.

I’d love to know what was so extravagant about the parkettes that incensed W.R. Plewman so much. I’m guessing the cost amid post-war uncertainties.

The son-in-law of former mayor Horatio Hocken, Plewman previously represented Ward Five as an alderman in 1916 and from 1918 to 1920. He was a journalist with the Star for over half-a-century, where his notable contributions included his sympathetic coverage of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 and the “War Reviewed” columned he penned during the First and Second World Wars. Perhaps that explains why the Telegram, with its extreme hate-on for anything related to the Star at this time, was the only city daily not to endorse him.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Voters took the special care Plewman asked for, as he was the top vote-getter in Ward Five. He would not run again in 1923.

Toronto Star, December 31, 1921.

Of the candidates covered in this post, Pernelius Wesley Benner was the least successful. Being a large property owner whose “services are much needed” and believed aldermen did not deserve to be paid earned him a whopping 452 votes. While his performance might be excused, according to a post-election ad, due to being unable to attend any candidate meetings due to the flu, he had an equally weak performance in 1923 and an even worse one in 1924.

According to his 1945 Globe and Mail obituary, Benner was an authority on real estate taxation and assessment of corporate municipalities. Besides his careers as a builder and realtor, he served as an arbitrator in buying property required to expand the Welland Canal. He was also a master of the “Cock O’ The North Lodge” of the Loyal Orange Lodge. None of these sound like qualities which would appeal to the blue collar immigrant electorate of Ward Four.

His first attempt to run for office was ill-fated. The Star reported that during the candidate nomination meeting for Ward Five in December 1910, Benner (whose occupation was listed as “gentleman,” implying he was living off investments or inherited wealth) was notified that his daughter had broken his wrist, yet “he expounded his views at some length.” He felt uncertain about going ahead with his candidacy, and by the time election day his name was not on the ballot.

Toronto Star, December 29, 1921.

Five questions presented to voters on the ballot. Despite Drury’s intention to ignore the results, Torontonians voted in favour of radial railways. They also overwhelmingly approved a request to force horse-drawn vehicles to be illuminated at night, despite ads such as the one above. They rejected salary increases to the salaries of aldermen and Toronto Board of Education officials by a landslide. A narrow majority voted in favour of keeping the election date at the start of the year.

Sources: the December 22, 1921 and January 3, 1922 editions of the Globe; the February 27, 1936, November 24, 1943, October 8, 1945, July 30, 1958, and September 25, 1963 editions of the Globe and Mail; and the December 24, 1910, December 21, 1921, December 27, 1921, December 29, 1921, December 30, 1921, December 31, 1921, January 3, 1922, January 4, 1922, February 27, 1936, October 11, 1941, February 18, 1946, June 23, 1949, and May 8, 1962 editions of the Toronto Star.

Threatening the Toronto Public Library

Originally published on Torontoist on July 21, 2011.

An uncommon sight in the future? Sod-turning ceremony for the Forest Hill Village municipal offices and library building, Eglinton Avenue West at Vesta Drive, November 13, 1960. Photo by Geoffrey Frazer. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 207, Series 1251, Item 146.

Earlier this week, Torontoist reported that Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) was dismayed because he perceived there to be more library branches in his area of Etobicoke than Tim Hortons. Though the actual numbers don’t support Mr. Ford’s claim, would it be horrible if it was true? Through collections and outreach programs, the Toronto Public Library’s 99 branches provide more brain food than all of the double-doubles and boxes of Timbits sold throughout the city.

Yet curtailing access to the library, through reduced hours or branch closures, is among the recommendations KPMG provided in today’s portion of the Core Services Review. Based on past experience, attempts to implement such advice, to force reduced hours or closures onto local libraries, will be met with stiff opposition, and politicians will either back down or tone down the degree of service reduction.

The Toronto Public Library in its original location in the former Toronto Mechanics’ Institute, July 1, 1884. Toronto Public Library, Item X 71-16.

Though a limited form of library via the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute was available as far back as 1830, it wasn’t until the early 1880s that city officials seriously set out to to create a free public library. Championed by Alderman John Hallam, a bylaw to create a public library was placed on the January 1, 1883, municipal ballot. Detractors argued that books were so plentiful and cheap that there was little reason for taxpayers to fund a library. That argument was countered in many newspaper editorials: “We wonder,” wrote the Mail on Christmas Day, 1882, “if those who say so ever put themselves in the artisan’s place, and calculated how much he could spare in a year, after supporting his family, for books. For a quarter of a dollar in taxes, or less, the library will give him use of, or choice from, thousands of volumes.” The bylaw passed by a landslide.

After a brief search for sites, the Mechanics’ Institute agreed to turn over its collection and property. Following renovations, the TPL officially opened its doors at the northeast corner of Church and Adelaide streets on March 6, 1884. Though it quickly became popular, critics felt the collection contained too much mind-corrupting fiction and needed more dry reference works. Hallam noted that he learned far more from the likes of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and Sir Walter Scott than nine-tenths of the published sermons that Torontonians considered “good” literature.

Those who considered the TPL a passenger on the Victorian equivalent of the gravy train—such as the author of the following verse that appeared as a letter to the editor of the Toronto World—continued to air their beefs in public forums:

What is this building, father?
This, my son, is the celebrated free library.
Why is it called a free library, father?
Because everybody is compelled to subscribe.
What was the origin of it?
Ex-Ald. Hallam’s vanity.
What good is it, father?
To increase the taxes and circulate sensational novels.
What are sensational novels?
Tales where shop-girls marry lords.
What is the use of reading them?
They make people discontented and negligent.
Has the library any other purpose?
Yes, my son, it provides some good fat berths.
Do the subscribers manage it?
Nominally they do, but really they do not.
Who does, then?
Some people who pay very little towards it.
Is it very popular?
Wait until the tax bills come in.
How are the public benefitted by it?
Ask the trustees, my son.

Metropolitan Toronto Central Library, northwest corner of College and St. George streets; the predecessor of the Toronto Reference Library, it was built with Carnegie money. Photo taken May 15, 1914. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 307.

For the rest of the 19th century, library officials were frustrated by the city’s refusal to provide the full amount of funding it was allowed under provincial law. Branch closures were frequently threatened but never carried out. City council continued to cut funding until it made one reduction too many in 1900. The library board sued for the lost funds and won. Funding stabilized after that point, thanks largely to Carnegie grants that began a few years later.

After the library systems in Toronto and its suburbs experienced years of growth, threats to services became common from the mid-1980s onward as municipalities attempted to cut costs. The mere threat of a library closure was enough to spur neighbourhood activists into action—among the small branches frequently used for target practice were Mount Pleasant, Queen-Saulter, Silverthorn, Swansea, and Todmorden. The Toronto Reference Library (and its predecessor, the Metro Reference Library) incurred reduced hours and closures for a week at a time during the late 1990s. Mayor Ford’s favourite branch, Urban Affairs, was recommended for closure in 1996 in anticipation of cuts.

Eastern Branch Public Library (now Main Street branch), July 17, 1939. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 828.

Perhaps the most decimated branch was City Hall, which was supposed to be scrapped in October 1995 in order to save $640,000. Politicians figured it would be an easy cut, since there wouldn’t be opposition from ratepayer groups as there was in neighbourhoods where other branch closures were announced, and the space could easily be rented out for a restaurant or other commercial uses. Globe and Mail columnist Colin Vaughan pointed out the faultiness of the library board’s argument, which said that most of the branch’s users lived outside pre-amalgamation Toronto:

One reason given for closing the City Hall branch over, say, the less-used Beaches branch was that many of the users are business folk from the suburbs, as opposed to the local residents who frequent neighbourhood libraries. Perish the thought that Toronto should serve as a clearing house for the edification of the barbarian hordes. What next? Bar suburban patrons from attending those free lunch-time concerts in Nathan Phillips Square?

The branch remained open but saw its holdings reduced from 75,000 items to 25,000 and its operating time shrunk from nine-and-a-half to three hours a day.

In September 1999, the post-amalgamation TPL recommended closing 12 branches over the next five years. Of those listed, only one, Niagara, bit the dust. Protest against the proposals was loud, especially for the Mount Pleasant and Swansea branches. Noting that the report that recommended Mount Pleasant’s closure was called “Reinvesting in Our Future,” Councillor Michael Walker snarled, “That sure as heck isn’t reinvesting in any future…This library only opened about 10 years ago. There was a clear shortfall of library services in this neighbourhood then.” Down in Swansea, Councillor David Miller reminded the library board that the branch there was as much a monument to fallen soldiers as a library. “The original collection was donated by the residents of Swansea as a living memorial for 22 boys who didn’t return from World War I,” Miller noted. “It’s just as much a memorial as a statue in a park. I think the city has the same moral and ethical obligation to uphold that memorial.”

Runnymede Public Library, July 17, 1939. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 827.

As mayor, Miller later saw the library board eliminate Sunday operations at 16 branches in September 2007 in reaction to a city budget crisis that Miller blamed on the deferment of votes on new land transfer and vehicle registration taxes. An arbitrator ruled the following month that the board was wrong to act so quickly, which led Miller critics like Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) to gloat over how ineptly the incident was handled. “It was a very cruel decision to force the closures of the library branches, and to see that there are no savings that are going to be accumulated makes it even crueller,” Minnan-Wong told the Star.

But will he have the same reaction if the current council follows KPMG’s recommendation and pushes for library branch closures that will provide, at best, middling savings? Or, if such an event comes to pass, will he tell users of targeted locations that, rather than a cruel blow to their neighbourhood, the loss of a library branch is merely a sacrifice needed to right the financial health of the city? Even if all that happens is a reduction in service hours, we know that defenders of Toronto’s libraries are preparing to protect an institution we should all be proud of.

Additional material from A Century of Service: Toronto Public Library 1883–1983 by Margaret Penman (Toronto: Toronto Public Library Board, 1983), Free Books for All: The Public Library Movement in Ontario 1850–1930 by Lorne Bruce (Toronto: Dundurn, 1994), and the following newspapers: the July 10, 1995 edition of the Globe and Mail; the December 25, 1882 edition of the Mail; the September 21, 1999, September 22, 1999, and October 16, 2007 editions of the Toronto Star; and the January 30, 1884 edition of the Toronto World.

UPDATE

The Ford brothers’ attempts to shrink the Toronto Public Library were met with public backlash, notably from Margaret Atwood. While the in-the-works closure of the Urban Affairs branch at Metro Hall went ahead (which led to confusion in accessing its holdings for years as its collection was integrated into the Toronto Reference Library), the other branches remained open. The TPL expanded in the years that followed, with new branches serving the Fort York neighbourhood and Scarborough Civic Centre.

When Mel Freezes Over

As I no longer have a copy of this story as it originally appeared on The Grid’s website in early February 2013, this post is based on the draft I submitted for publication.

Toronto Sun, January 15, 1999.

“It might have people across this country shaking their heads, even rolling their eyes,” Peter Mansbridge observed while introducing the January 13, 1999 edition of The National. To some Canadians, Mel Lastman’s plea for military assistance to help Toronto cope with a record-breaking month of snowfall confirmed their view of the country’s largest city as a magnet for spoiled, whiny wimps.

By the time Lastman requested help, Toronto had endured 84 cm of snowfall over the first two weeks of 1999, with 21 cm alone coming down on January 13. The deepening accumulation, combined with gusty winds and cold temperatures led to chaos. Clogged switches delayed GO service, drifting snow covered the third rail of exposed subway lines, and the Scarborough RT proved its uselessness in inclement weather. TTC chief general manager David Gunn recommended people stay home, as chances were “poor to nil” that closed subway sections would operate for several days. Snowplows barely made a dent on roads as the white stuff continued to fall.

Toronto Star, January 14, 1999.

“I’m petrified of what could happen,” Lastman told the press. “You come to a point where you can’t push it back any more. Then no cars move. I want to have (the army) ready in case there’s 25 cm of snow.” Lastman had recent precedents: troops were called in for assistance during the Red River flood in Manitoba in 1997 and the ice storm that paralyzed eastern Ontario and Quebec in 1998.

The next morning, four Bison armoured personnel carriers arrived at the former Downsview military base from CFB Petawawa to await use as emergency ambulances. While reservists shoveled out bus shelters and fire hydrants, 420 regular troops were placed on standby. They spent most of their time relaxing around the old base by rehabbing an old gym basement bowling alley, playing cards, and practising snowmobile manoeuvres for a future Arctic posting. One officer who had assisted with the ice storm cleanup told the Star that “it’s kind of hard just sitting here when you want to help.” Lastman told the troops that “it’s better to be safe than sorry…I don’t believe you want to wait until people are possibly gonna die.”

Cartoon by Patrick Corrigan, Toronto Star, January 15, 1999.

Torontonians coped with the situation in varying ways. Commuters stuck downtown booked hotel rooms and made Eaton Centre merchants smile. Cotton Ginny reported a run on nightgowns, while Shoppers Drug Mart was packed with people stocking up on bathroom essentials. Rentals at the Yonge-Wellesley Rogers Video more than doubled. Meals on Wheels provided extra food to clients in case they were forced to close. Municipal and transit employees racked up overtime, with some snow removal employees sleeping in temporary trailer camps. There were the expected idiots: one man was charged after being caught drunk snowmobiling along the Don Valley Parkway.

Toronto Sun, January 14, 1999.

As the city dug itself out, several city councillors questioned Lastman’s actions and lamented that he didn’t consult them. Lastman didn’t call an emergency council meeting out of fear of the speeches his colleagues might make. “The press would have been there, and what they would have been saying I don’t know. Some of them would have been absolutely out of it.” The mayor believed he was the only person who cared about the welfare of the entire city instead of specific wards, He never regretted his actions. “We arranged it so that senior citizens could go around the corner to get milk,” he boasted to the Star a decade later.

Toronto Sun, January 14, 1999.

By the time the month was over, Toronto endured a record-breaking 118 cm of snowfall. Councillor Jack Layton found the storm “a teaching lesson in municipal arrogance” due to the city’s complacency. Eye Weekly noted that the previous fall, council’s urban environment committee voted against budgeting an extra $28 million to clear windrows. Up to $70 million was spent on clean-up, more than double the annual $32 million snow clearing budget.

Eye columnist Donna Lypchuk had fun with the charges that Torontonians were wusses when it came to snow. “Torontonians get a little touchy the minute they see a snowflake,” she observed. “Like little robots, they go outside, see their cars covered with snow, make a phone call and then drop back into bed with complete resignation.” She felt the exhaustion of those battling the storm could have been avoided by just letting the snow melt on its own.

Lypchuk’s conclusion? “I think it’s time Torontonians familiarized themselves with important Canadian concepts, such as snow. During the winter, snow is going to fall from the sky. This is not a scary, unusual thing. It is normal. Respect the snow and be prepared.”

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Toronto Star, January 14, 1999.

Confession time: I’m drawing a blank as to what I did during the Snowmageddon of January 1999.

I definitely experienced it. I was living in Guelph, working at the campus paper. Given the regular dumpings Guelph received, the storm likely didn’t seem unusual. It was probably just another snowy day, albeit one with greater accumulation. My guess is that either I curled up with a pile of library books or headed over to the Ontarion office to work, surf the net, or play endless games of Civilization II. It was around this time that staff relations within the office settled into a permanent deep-freeze, sparked by deep disagreements about the cover of that week’s issue. The only story about the storm in the following week’s edition noted there were no plans to shut down the U of G campus, and that students were encouraged to take advantage of increased Guelph Transit service as parking lots turned into mountains of cleared snow.

As for Lastman’s call for the army—it was Mel. Given his bombastic style, it would have been hard not to expect anything else.

Toronto Sun, January 16, 1999.

After hearing all the jokes made about the situation over the years, reading about the circumstances at the time makes it clear action was needed. The factor that seems to be forgotten is that Toronto was already buried under an unusually large amount of snow. The forecasts for the storm that prompted Lastman to call in the troops didn’t look promising, and city services were already strained. And he did have the examples of military involvement in other natural disaster over the previous two years. The laughs at Toronto’s expense seem partly a natural reaction against the centre of the universe, and partly out of little comprehension of how badly the city’s infrastructure, especially for commuters, was affected. I was really struck by CBC archival clip’s depiction of a Meals on Wheels run, where deliverers provided extra food to clients in case the service had to be suspended.

Cartoon by Andy Donato, Toronto Sun, January 14, 1999.

I also checked out the Sun’s coverage. The front page on January 14, 1999 bluntly echoed TTC chief general manager David Gunn’s advice: “STAY HOME.” It also introduced the paper’s method of measuring the snowfall: the “Mel freezes over” infographic, which used Lastman’s height as a yardstick for how much snow fell that month.

On the editorial page, a list of snow-related mottos was devised to replace the new official motto the paper loathed, “Diversity our strength.”

Toronto—The city under North York
Toronto—Home of the squeegee kid, until you need one.
Toronto—Our mayor shovels it better than your mayor.
Toronto—Beware of drive-by plowings.
Toronto—Don’t even think about parking here.
Toronto—Where snow melters go to die.
Toronto—Where snowballs have a chance.
Toronto—Apocalypse Snow.
Toronto—Home of the two-hour cab wait.
Toronto—It’s not as bad as Buffalo, but we’re working on it.
Toronto—Where “The Better Way” is walking.
Toronto—We’d rather be in Florida.
Toronto—The flake by the lake.
Toronto—As pure as the driven slush.
Toronto—Home of Pearson Airport—you can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave.
Toronto—Plow me.

Cartoon by Dusan Petricic, Toronto Star, January 17, 1999.

Meanwhile, back over in the Star, it was interesting to read how angry councillors were over the lack of consultation from Lastman. Among the miffed was Frances Nunziata. “I sent a letter to the Mayor January 6 with a number of recommendations,” she told the paper. “I didn’t get any response, or even an acknowledgement.” According to Michael Prue, who represented East York, councillors were “taking all the crap because Mel Lastman tells (the public) that everything’s wonderful and everything’s being fixed and I get phone call after phone call that it’s not that way.”

Sources: the January 21, 1999 edition of Eye Weekly, January 19, 1999 edition of the Ontarion, the January 14, 1999, January 15, 1999, January 16, 1999, January 17, 1999, and January 11, 2009 editions of the Toronto Star, and the January 14, 1999, January 15, 1999, and January 16, 1999 editions of the Toronto Sun.

The Saga of the Gardiner Expressway

This post merges several pieces I’ve written about the Gardiner Expressway over the years, along with additional material. 

Gardiner Expressway, 1962. The caption was “Ready for ’67 Centenary if weather co-operates.” Photo by Dick Darrell. Toronto Star Photo Archive, Toronto Public Library, tspa_0115131f.

Frederick G. Gardiner was proud of the expressway named in his honour. “You know,” he noted in a 1964 interview, “I used to lie in bed dreaming in Technicolor, thinking it was too big. Now I know it isn’t. Maybe in 20 years time, they’ll be cursing me for making it too small. But I won’t be around to worry then. Right now, I’ve come up smelling of Chanel No. 5.”

When Gardiner died in 1983, few liked the scent of his expressway. They cursed him for pushing a crumbling roadway increasingly seen as a barrier between downtown and the waterfront. Decades of city reports have suggested demolishing some or all of the expressway, triggering debates that will turn anyone’s face blue. While its fate eternally hangs in the balance, millions are spent every year to keep it in service. Every time a major reconstruction project occurs that slows down traffic, you’d swear by the tone of the media that Armageddon is descending upon the city.

But there was a time when regional officials believed the Gardiner Expressway would solve bottlenecks plaguing a growing city in the early 1950s. Had it been built to its full extent via the Scarborough Expressway, drivers might have enjoyed views of Humber Bay, the downtown skyline, and the Scarborough Bluffs.

Sketch based on suggestions by Etobicoke Reeve Clive Sinclair on bringing the Queen Elizabeth Way into Toronto. Toronto Star, September 14, 1949.

The combination of the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Way in 1939 and suburban growth had led to frequent traffic jams caused by commuters entering the city along the old Humber Bridge. Visions of a waterfront expressway were included in the city’s 1943 master plan, but it took time for plans to firm up. In 1949, Etobicoke Reeve Clive Sinclair suggested the plan shown here, which he felt would reduce congestion he feared would emerge when the Ontario Food Terminal opened on The Queensway. The key to Sinclair’s plan was cutting the link between The Queensway and the approach to the QEW. “We’ve already had too many pedestrians killed or injured trying to dodge express traffic at this corner,” he told the Star.

Frederick G. Gardiner, taken during a photoshoot for Time magazine, April 5, 1956. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1653, Series 975, File 2262, Item 32745-3.

Enter Frederick Gardiner, chairman of the newly formed regional government of Metropolitan Toronto. As a Toronto Life article noted 40 years later, “Gardiner liked big solutions to big problems, and he brought an entrepreneurial flair to city government. He loved building things, loved to get plans pushed through and get the shovels in the ground.” As Gardiner once observed, “a municipality is no different from an industrial undertaking.” Fixing the bottlenecks at the bottom of the city was right up his alley.

Toronto Star, July 8, 1953.

One of Metro’s first acts was to announce in July 1953 that its executive committee had unanimously approved a motion by Gardiner to meet with regional planning authorities to discuss what was soon dubbed the Lakeshore Expressway. The highway would run from the Humber Bridge to Woodbine Avenue. Two sections would be elevated (Humber Bridge to Bathurst Street, and Cherry Street to Woodbine), with surface streets handling the traffic flow through downtown. Toronto Mayor Allan Lamport urged caution with construction—“We can’t go too fast on this. It is absolutely essential.” One of the main questions was which side of the CNE grounds should the expressway be built: on the north side, along the rail corridor, or on the south via fill into the lake?

Toronto Star, January 2, 1954.

As 1954 dawned, Gardiner and Scarborough Reeve Oliver Crockford supported a plan to extend the Lakeshore Expressway east to meet Highway 401 at Highland Creek. The route would have cut through east end neighbourhoods before proceeding along the bottom of the Scarborough Bluffs. Gardiner saw what was later known as the Scarborough Expressway as a solution to potential bottlenecks at Woodbine Avenue and Kingston Road, while Crockford felt it would help halt the erosion of the bluffs. The Scarborough Expressway remained in regional plans for decades before being scrapped.

Toronto Star, May 3, 1954. Note the proposed interchange with Strachan Avenue in the upper right corner, which was never built, which would have provided “access to the north and to local destinations on Fleet Street” (primarily, I suspect, Exhibition Park and Maple Leaf Stadium).

On May 5, 1954, Metro Council received plans for the Lakeshore Expressway. The $49.8 million project would be elevated above Fleet Street (now Lake Shore Boulevard) from Bathurst Street to Cherry Street. To alleviate congestion in the core, a two-level parking facility with direct ramps would be built under the expressway between Yonge Street and Parliament Street.

Globe and Mail, May 4, 1954. Click on image for larger version.

The route would run south of the CNE, and it was predicted the fairgrounds would receive 25 additional acres from the fill required for the expressway.

Globe and Mail, May 4, 1954

A Globe and Mail editorial predicted that the new road “ought to eliminate the worst of the waterfront traffic problems, at least for some years to come.”

Construction of Queen Street West extension, 1955. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 137, Item 13.

Two other road projects were rolled into the Lakeshore Expresseway. In the west end, Queen Street was extended westward to meet up with The Queensway via a new bridge across the Humber.

Construction of Queen Street West extension, 1955. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 137, Item 10.

This stretch, which opened in December 1956, was eventually treated as an eastern extension of The Queensway.

Construction of Woodbine Avenue extension, circa 1955. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 115, Item 15.

In the east end, Keating Street (now Lake Shore Boulevard) was extended from Leslie Street to Woodbine Avenue to provide an eventual end to the expressway. Opened in December 1955, residents soon dubbed the tight curve leading Keating onto Woodbine a “death trap.” Eastbound drivers going 55 miles an hour often found themselves driving into the southbound lanes of Woodbine or climbing onto the northbound sidewalk. Local councillors received complaints from residents ranging from smashed fire hydrants to a car hitting one home’s veranda. Over 60 years later, this curve remains problematic.

Globe and Mail, May 19, 1954.

One east-end vision which never materialize was a plan to build a ramp on the west side of Woodbine Racetrack, which would have connected the Lakeshore Expressway to Kingston Road and Dundas Street East (which was still being stitched together from local side streets).

Empress Crescent, looking east from Dowling Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard West, 1956. Photo by James Salmon. Toronto Public Library, R-912.

Construction on the Lakeshore Expressway began on April Fools Day 1955, concentrating on the stretch between the Humber and Jameson Avenue. Around 150 homes were demolished to make way for the expressway and its related projects, mostly in south Parkdale around Dowling Avenue and Jameson Avenue. Streets like Empress Crescent vanished from city maps. When the Globe and Mail printed pictures of the rubble left behind by demolitions in 1957, it described the scene as “ruins reminiscent of a Second World War bombing raid.”

Gardiner Expressway, looking west from east of the foot of Roncesvalles Avenue, during construction, showing Lakeshore Road bridge over CNR tracks, south of King Street and Sunnyside Railway Station, July 21, 1957. Photo by James Salmon. Toronto Public Library, R-934.

Construction also brought an end to Sunnyside Amusement Park, which would be revamped as a city beach. The nearby bridge connecting Lakeshore Road (now Lake Shore Boulevard) with the King/Queen/Roncesvalles intersection also met its demise. The Sunnyside train station survived the building of the expressway, but ceased passenger service in 1967.

Parkside Drive, looking north from Lakeshore Road, July 21, 1957. Photo by James Salmon. Toronto Public Library, R-1714.

A new bridge waiting for the Lakeshore Expressway to cross it.

A December 1956 front page story in the Globe and Mail predicted that by 1980 the city’s expressway system (then projected to include the Crosstown, Don Valley Parkway, Lakeshore, and Spadina) would be dominated by buses, as some Metro officials hoped to ease future congestion by banning parking downtown. The idea was that suburban commuters would leave their cars in giant lots next to the expressways, hopping on buses to finish their journey.

Toronto Star, July 2, 1957.

As construction proceeded, there were concerns that the expressway might permanently stop at Jameson Avenue. Metro was having problems convincing higher levels of government to help fund the proposed subway line along Bloor Street. Gardiner believed Metro couldn’t raise enough money to fund its expressway and public transit plans. “You simply cannot provide sufficient highways and parking space to accommodate every person who desires to drive his motor vehicle downtown and back each day,” Gardiner noted in January 1956.”Additional rapid transit is the only answer. It is a snare and a delusion to keep on spending millions of dollars on highways because the province will subsidize them 50 per cent. We know that beyond a certain stage $1 spent on more arterial highways and parking facilities.”

Problem was that Metro council preferred spending money on roads than transit. Eventually, outside funding for the subway came through.

Copy of a cartoon by Bert Grassick published in the Telegram, August 29, 1957. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1567. Series 648, File 26, Item 1.

On July 29, 1957, based on a suggestion from Weston Mayor Harry Clark, the Metro roads committee renamed the Lakeshore Expressway the Frederick G, Gardiner Expressway. Clark felt it was a gesture of appreciation for leading Metro through its formative years. The tribute pleased Gardiner.

Aerial view of the Gardiner Expressway, August 14, 1958. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 37, Item 1.

At 3 p.m. on August 8, 1958, dignitaries including Gardiner, Ontario Premier Leslie Frost, and Toronto Mayor Nathan Phillips officially opened the first section of the expressway, which ran from the Humber to Jameson Avenue. Frost praised Gardiner for his leadership. “Fred, you were the obvious man to do the job.”

Toronto Star, August 7, 1958. Note optimism about cutting driving time by 10 minutes.

The road experienced its first traffic jam that day, a mile-long backup which would seem mild compared to present-day gridlock. As the Globe and Mail’s Ron Haggart put it, “the traffic jam was the best tribute of the day to the need for the Frederick G, Gardiner Expressway.”

East end of Gardiner Expressway at Jameson Avenue/Dunn Street, 1959. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 58, Item 3.

In an essay in the commemorative book published for Toronto’s 125^th anniversary, Toronto ’59, Nathaniel A. Benson placed the Gardiner in the context of the evolution of Toronto’s shoreline.

The lakeshore once was open, save for a staunch little lighthouse and an old-fashioned yacht club. Today there rise the towers of a great Molson brewing plant, the imposing Tip Top Tailors Building, the head offices of Loblaw’s, and the multi-million dollar home of the Toronto Baseball Maple Leafs. The garish lights of the Frederick G. Gardiner Expressway cut spectacularly along the railway tracks, with its day-and-night ceaseless whizz of traffic shaking the peace of the ancient graves in the old military cemetery on Strachan Avenue, grazing the heroic battlements of old Fort York.

Plans considered for Fort York, Toronto Star, October 4, 1958.

After further study, the route of the Gardiner was switched to the north side of the CNE. This placed Fort York in the path of the expressway, which lead to protests throughout 1958 from groups ranging from historical societies the Toronto Women’s Progressive Conservative Association. The tide of voices against proposals to move the fort led to one of Gardiner’s few losses when it came to the expressway.

Construction of the new Dufferin Gate, 1959. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 58, Item 8.

While Fort York was saved, the CNE’s Dufferin Gate wasn’t. Fairgoers passed under the old landmark for the last time in 1957. Two years later, construction was well-underway for its replacement.

Construction of the elevated section of the Gardiner Expressway, 1959. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 37, Item 19.

By the end of the 1950s, some politicians and local media grew impatient with the slow pace of construction, which wasn’t scheduled to end until 1965. “At such a pace,” noted a December 1959 Globe and Mail editorial, “Metro might not bother at all. The growth of traffic will far outstrip the growth of the road, and at the end of 10 years congestion will be worse than when the work was started.” Part of the blame was placed on Frederick Gardiner’s refusal to borrow more than $100 million a year to fund all Metro capital works projects.

Globe and Mail, November 3, 1960.

By the end of 1960, designs were close to being finalized for the expressway’s connection with the Don Valley Parkway. Hopefully Frederick Gardiner and Nathan Phillips didn’t collide into each other. This cartoon also shows the streets (Fleet and Keating) which soon became Lake Shore Boulevard East.

Eastbound Spadina Avenue ramp, Globe and Mail, July 31, 1962.

The Jameson-Spadina section opened during morning rush hour on August 1, 1962. Despite the potential bottleneck at the eastbound Spadina ramp, one travelled noted that his evening rush journey on opening day from the Humber to Spadina and Front took 10 minutes.

Jarvis Street, east side, looking northeast from Lake Shore Boulevard East, showing Gardiner Expressway under construction, 1963. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 5603.

Note the billboards in the far background. The distraction provided by advertising was a growing safety concern, which led Metro’s transportation committee to recommend that no ads be placed within 150 feet of the Gardiner or the Don Valley Parkway.

Lake Shore Boulevard East, looking west from Cherry Street, showing Gardiner Expressway under construction, between 1961 and 1964.  City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 5619.

John Bentley Mays writing about the Gardiner (in this case, describing wandering underneath the expressway near Fort York):

Few sites more forsaken lie this close to Toronto’s busy, dense downtown mountain-range of glass. Overhead, the wide steel belly of the Gardiner’s traffic level lies like a flat green snake on a series of tall, water-stained concrete brackets. Underneath spreads the expanse of loose gravel, some of it used as a gathering place for trucks, some of it the dusty yard of a factory in which big cement blocks are fabricated.

One hesitates to use the word beautiful of such a forbidding place, though the word fits the hill. There is a strong visual surge and power here: in the dignified rhythms of the expressway’s tapered reinforced-concrete supports, marching away into the distance like an immense Baroque colonnade, in the tough muscularity, in the ensemble of cement factory and rumbling trucks. There is a gruff beauty here that swank towers nearby can’t touch.

Constuction of the Gardiner Expressway, 1964. Photo by Frank Grant. Toronto Star Photo Archive, Toronto Public Library, tspa_0115133f.

The caption for this photo reads “Full speed ahead: Workmen are busy levelling the groun underneath the concrete arches which will carry the expressway in the York-Jarvis area. By 1967 the Gardiner is expected to be extended still further to Leslie St.; and by 1972 will stretch out across Scarboro to link with Highway 401.”

Globe and Mail, November 6, 1964.

Besides the link between the Gardiner and the Don Valley Parkway, November 6, 1964 also saw the opening of most of the Eastern Avenue flyover.

Globe and Mail, May 5, 1966.

What proved to be the final stretch of the Gardiner, from the Don Valley Parkway to Leslie Street, was opened on July 15, 1966. Intended to be the first phase of the Scarborough Expressway, it would have intersected with Highway 401 at Highland Creek. Had a request to the Ontario Municipal Board from a citizen group inspired by the fight against the Spadina Expressway not delayed work, the next approved phase of the Scarborough Expressway would have extended it to Birchmount Road and Danforth Road. While Queen’s Park cancelled Spadina in June 1971, provincial officials were willing to fund a short extension of the Scarborough Expressway to Coxwell Avenue if the OMB approved. There was also the matter of purchasing homes (1,000 in the original plan, 500 after a revision) in the path of the projected route.

Photo by Boris Spremo, originally published in the November 21, 1973 edition of the Toronto Star. Toronto Star Photo Archive, Toronto Public Library, tspa_0011711f.

The original caption for this photo:

Opponents of the proposed Scarborough Expressway arrive at The Star Forum by bus last night, practising what they preach on the desirability of transit over private cars. Members of action groups left their cars at home and chartered a double-decker bus and one from Toronto transit Commission. They brought signs proclaiming their beliefs but a policeman made them leave them outside.

The “Star Forum” was a session held at the St. Lawrence Centre on November 20, 1973 to discuss whether the Scarborough Expressway should be built. Metro chairman Paul Godfrey indicated he’d support the project based on what he knew up to that point, but wouldn’t commit himself to a position until a Metro report was issued in February 1974. TTC chairman Karl Mallette felt further development of public transit in Scarborough would make the expressway obsolete (if only he knew the battles and delays to come on that front…). “The plain fact is that expressways don’t solve urban transportation problems,” Mallette observed, “they create more of them. They’re becoming prohibitively expensive and are an intolerable intrusion in and near residential areas.”

The next year, Metro Council scrapped further construction.

View of Gardiner Expressway looking west from the CN Tower, between 1976 and 1981. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 13, Item 2.

The first cracks in the Gardiner were observed in 1962. Metro roads commissioner George Grant blamed heavy traffic, while the province claimed a thinner-than-normal coat of asphalt was used while building the expressway’s first section. A year after Frederick Gardiner died in 1983, an ongoing repair program began to attack the effects of expansion and contraction on the concrete.

View of Gardiner Expressway looking east from the CN Tower, between 1976 and 1981. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 13, Item 13.

Chaired by former mayor David Crombie, The Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront’s 1992 report provided a good summary of the issues many Torontonians have with the Gardiner Expressway: “The combination of the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway, Lake Shore Boulevard underneath it, and the rail corridor beside it has created a physical, visual, and psychological barrier to the Central Waterfront. It is a constant source of noise and air pollution, a hostile, dirty environment for thousands of people who walk under it daily, and a barrier to thousands of others who risk life and limb to get across or around it. The Gardiner/Lake Shore is not only a road; it is a structure. As it processes traffic, it stunts land use; meant to move us along, it limits our opportunities.” That commission recommended a mixed approach to the Gardiner, where some elevated sections remained, some were moved, and some were buried.

Speaking of burying the Gardiner…

Construction on the Gardiner Expressway, 1996. Photo by Boris Spremo. Toronto Star Photo Archive, Toronto Public Library, tspa_0115149f.

Like clockwork, every few years a plan to bury or replace the freeway emerges. Each plan is initially greeted with relief that the waterfront will soon be rid of what many people perceive as an eyesore and barrier. Just as predictable is the backlash, which usually involves fears about runaway costs and traffic Armageddon during construction.

One of the first serious proposals to knock it down was in the fall of 1983, when Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton asked city staff to investigate burying the Gardiner. Eggleton was supported by Godfrey, who saw a golden opportunity for a new route through the not-yet-redeveloped railways lands to the north. Godfrey feared that “with all the bureaucracy and red tape involved in putting a roadway of that magnitude through, I really wonder whether we’ll all be alive to see it, even if all the money is available.”

The opportunity to use the railway lands soon evaporated, but other ideas abounded. City planning commissioner Stephen McLaughlin described to the Star three plans submitted to the city: “modest” ($25 million to demolish the Jarvis and York ramps and build a new exit at an extended Simcoe Street); “grand” (place the Gardiner in a trench or tunnel between Bathurst and Jarvis); and “visionary” (for $1 billion or so, re-route the Gardiner into a tunnel under Lake Ontario).

Sam Cass standing on the bridge over the Don Valley Parkway by Riverdale Park, 1971. Photo by Reg Innell. Toronto Star Photo Archive, Toronto Public Library, tspa_0125807f.

Such plans were hooey to Sam Cass, Metro roads and traffic commissioner, and staunch defender of the Gardiner. Cass, who still promoted the completion of the Spadina Expressway in 1983, called the Gardiner “a beautiful structure that’s still doing what it was designed to do.” His contention that maintaining it wouldn’t cost much proved incorrect. Cass boasted that the Gardiner required no repair during its first decade-and-a-half and figured once a modestly priced five-year program to fix salt damage was completed, the elevated section wouldn’t require further repair for a quarter-century.

As annual repairs became a reality, calls for the Gardiner’s burial increased, especially as other cities contemplated demolishing their elevated highways. In a lengthy 1988 piece on why the Gardiner should come down, the Globe and Mail’s John Barber likened it to a Cadillac in a scrapyard. As chunks of concrete fell and its steel skeleton rusted, Barber declared “the highway that began life as a heroic symbol of the city’s progress is now just an overflowing traffic sewer.”

Toronto Star, January 20, 1988.

Among those Barber spoke with about alternative options was developer William Teron, whose company was covering over a section of the Boulevard Périphérique in Paris. Bringing his plan to municipal officials in 1990, Teron proposed an eight-lane Gardiner buried along the waterfront and a revamped, landscaped Lake Shore Boulevard. He promised to deliver the highway in less than three years and cover the $1 billion cost in exchange for development rights for housing and offices along the Gardiner’s former route, which Teron figured would recoup his costs. Naysayers included Metro traffic officials, who warned of cost overruns, overstatement of green space, massive traffic tie-ups during construction, and disruptions to TTC service.

Teron’s plan went nowhere, as have numerous other proposals since then (such as this one from 2013).

“Bumping the Humber Hump. Robert Balen works on 30 tonne steel beams for a new bridge over the Humber River, which will replace the westbound lanes of the notorious hump on the Gardiner Expressway.” Photo by Boris Spremo, 1998. Toronto Star Photo Archive, Toronto Public Library, tspa_0115144f.

Until 1998, one of the Gardiner’s distinguishing characteristics was the “Humber Hump.” Created by settling bridgework near the Humber River, it was a roller coaster ride that either thrilled or terrified. One of the best ways to experience the hump was riding near the back of a school bus, where the combination of position and speed would send you flying. During my university daze, I took a drama criticism class which included field trips into Toronto, and my classmates eagerly anticipated who’d hit their head on the roof when we rode over the hump.

But it wasn’t always fun. The hump witnessed several fatal accidents over the years, and going too fast could send your entire vehicle flying. After years of failing to remedy the settling, the bridge was replaced in 1998. The remnants were sent off to the Leslie Spit.

Demolition of Leslie Street ramp viewed from north side of detour, looking south-east. Photo by Peter MacCallum, January 20, 2001, City of Toronto Archives, Series 572, File 77, Item 4.

By the late 1990s, poor maintenance of the section east of the Don Valley Parkway prompted calls for a teardown. Opposition to the demolition came from two groups: film studios concerned about dust and noise that was factored into the final demo process; and local residents who worried about traffic spilling onto side streets and into the Beaches, even though drivers would be able to follow essentially the same route into the lakeside community. City councillor Tom Jakobek resisted demolition, devising several compromise plans that would have preserved part of the stump. “Cars are an important necessity in this society,” Jakobek noted in 1999. “Why would anyone want to eliminate road capacity anywhere, when it’s located in the middle of an industrial area and people use it?”

But Jakobek was in the minority: most attendees at public deputations wanted it to go away. City council approved its demolition in 1999. Only a few pillars remain, while land opened up for a bike path, big box shopping, and the TTC’s Leslie Barns facility.

Frederick G. Gardiner, 1961. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 220, Series 65, File 175, Item 17.

“I’ve looked at this darn thing from one end to the other,” Frederick Gardiner observed in 1964, “and I can’t think of anything I would like to change.” Many Torontonians have and will continue to disagree. For years, the arguments over the Gardiner Expressway have boiled down to either maintaining it in some form to prevent excessive disruption to motorists, tear it down and redirect the traffic, or find creative uses to rehabilitate the existing structure.

The Bentway, as used for exhibits during Nuit Blanche, October 2019. 

The latter has found favour in recent years, leading to artistic projects such as The Bentway. Housing and office towers have grown around the expressway in the core (but please, don’t throw your furniture toward the road!).

For as much as the Gardiner is maligned as a waste of money and an obstacle to the waterfront, I’ll admit it’s still thrilling to cruise into downtown at night along the elevated section, radio cranked to 11 to a song like Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” and soak in the lights and cityscape unfolding around you.

As Toronto Life concluded in 1993, “No matter what Toronto decides to do, it will be a prodigiously difficult project, politically and financially. It sounds as if it might require the skills of a politician as powerful and shrewd as, say, Fred Gardiner.”

Sources: Regeneration: Toronto’s Waterfront and the Sustainable City (Toronto: Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, 1992); Toronto ’59 (Toronto: City of Toronto, 1959); Emerald City: Toronto Visited by John Bentley Mays (Toronto: Penguin, 1994); Unbuilt Toronto 2 by Mark Osbaldeston (Toronto: Dundurn, 2011); the May 4, 1954, May 17, 1956, December 8, 1956, March 23, 1957, July 30, 1957, August 8, 1958, August 11, 1958, December 3, 1959, February 6, 1962, October 20, 1988, May 12, 1999, and May 15, 1999 editions of the Globe and Mail; the September 14, 1949, July 8, 1953, January 2, 1954, May 3, 1954, July 2, 1957, November 21, 1973, September 30, 1983, September 13, 1989, April 24, 1990, May 18, 1999, April 28, 2000, May 6, 2000 and July 15, 2000 editions of the Toronto Star; and the September 1993 edition of Toronto Life.

Articles I’ve written that were incorporated into this post were originally published by The Grid on March 17, 2012 and July 24, 2012 and Torontoist on February 7, 2014.

Lying in State at Old City Hall

Originally published on Torontoist on August 26, 2011.

“Some of the thousands of citizens who passed through City Hall today to pay their final respects to Mayor Sam McBride as he lay in state are shown above with a few of the many handsome floral tributes and the solemn procession inside the building.” The Telegram, November 16, 1936.

While the state funeral planned for Jack Layton tomorrow is unique for being the first held for an opposition leader, it won’t be the first time a former councillor lies in state in Toronto’s seat of government. That honour was also bestowed upon two men who rose from council to the mayor’s office but died before the end of their mandate. Old City Hall served as the venue for the public to remember Sam McBride and Donald Summerville in a way that may be similar to that we will see at the new City Hall today.

The Telegram, November 14, 1936.

Fiery Sam McBride returned to the mayor’s chair in 1936, seven years after his first term ended. Described by the Star as “a two-fisted, red-blooded, go-getter who was ready on a second’s notice to fight for what he believed to be right and to champion the cause of the common citizen,” his second stint was marred by ill health related to a blood infection caused by a teeth-pulling. Though he continued to look after city affairs, his public appearances declined. On November 10, 1936, McBride suffered a stroke and remained unconscious until he died four days later. City council decided the appropriate venue to remember McBride, who was born in the nearby Ward neighbourhood and who had been involved in municipal politics for 30 years, was Old City Hall. Inspired by the funeral held for Sir John A. Macdonald on Parliament Hill in 1891, the plan was to have McBride lie in state at the base of the grand staircase of the building for four hours on November 16, followed by a funeral in the lobby at 2:30 p.m.

A long line of mourners stretched along Queen Street to grieve McBride that day. As members of city council took turns attending the casket, around 25,000 people passed through to pay their final respects. City offices were closed for the day, while courts ceased their sessions at 1 p.m. When the funeral began at 2:30 p.m. buses, ferries, and streetcars across the city ground to a halt to observe two minutes of silence. Officials requested that during that quiet time, local motorists should avoid honking their horns. For the overflow crowd in front of Old City Hall, loudspeakers were set up so they could hear the 45-minute service, while the rest of the city tuned into CFRB. The eulogy was given by Reverend W.J. Johnson, who noted that if the mourners could open McBride’s heart, they would see, “written in letters of gold, Toronto.” A procession led by 20 mounted police led McBride to his final resting place in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Toronto Star, November 21, 1963.

Almost exactly 27 years after McBride’s passing, the public again converged on Old City Hall to remember a fallen mayor. After 10 months in office, Donald Summerville’s intensive work schedule worried his city council colleagues. Though only 48 years old, Summerville had suffered a heart attack two years earlier. When it was suggested that city hire an official civic greeter to lessen his workload, Summerville, who often put in 16-hour days, insisted that he should make a special effort to be available to community groups who requested a mayoral presence at their functions. On November 19, 1963, the one-time practice goalie for the Maple Leafs donned his pads for a charity game at George Bell Arena to support victims of a flood in Italy (where he was scheduled to fly to the following day).

The Telegram, November 20, 1963.

He played for five minutes, clowned for the cameras, then complained of fatigue. Summerville went to the dressing room and collapsed from a heart attack, unable to reach his nitroglycerine pills. “Don Summerville died trying to be nice to people,” noted Telegram columnist Frank Tumpane. “As we all must die, it is a good way to go, better, by far, than to meet life’s end wrapped in bitterness or striking a selfish blow.” The Star ran a tasteless headline the following day: “MAYOR SUMMERVILLE SKATES OFF ICE TO DIE.”

Summerville lay in state inside the council chamber close to the mayor’s chair. Despite requests from his family to send donations to Variety Village in lieu of flowers, bouquets were piled high within the room. Before his casket was moved to Old City Hall, a wake was held at former mayor Ralph Day’s funeral home on Danforth Avenue, where mourners included federal opposition leader John Diefenbaker. The length of visitation hours at City Hall were similar to those planned for Jack Layton this Friday and Saturday: 12 hours on November 21, then two hours on November 22 before the funeral was held at St. James Cathedral. A book of sympathy was placed at the entrance to the chamber, but Alderman Allan Lamport had it moved when it slowed the flow of people.

The Telegram, November 21, 1963.

The Globe and Mail described some of the 30,000 people who paid their final respects to Summerville over those two days:

Women curtsied, old veterans saluted, many crossed themselves. Men and women dropped to their knees before the coffin to pray. Some reached forward to pat the mayor’s hand. A clergyman put a hand on Mr. Summerville’s forehead and murmured a brief prayer. A motorcycle policeman in uniform looked at the body of the chief magistrate, snapped in attention, and saluted

One imagines the mood during Summerville’s funeral became even more sombre after mourners heard the news out of Dallas that afternoon: John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

To date, McBride and Summerville are the only Toronto mayors to have died in office. Unless a respected municipal politician reaches the same level of national prominence as Jack Layton, or there are extraordinary circumstances surrounding the demise of a public figure, we suspect the next person to lie in state within City Hall will be another mayor who is tragically unable to fulfill his or her electoral mandate.

Additional material from the November 16, 1936, and November 22, 1963, editions of the Globe and Mail; the November 14, 1936, November 16, 1936, November 20, 1963, and November 21, 1963, editions of the Toronto Star; and the November 14, 1936, November 16, 1936, November 20, 1963, and November 21, 1963, editions of the Telegram.

UPDATE

In March 2016, Rob Ford lay in state for two days at City Hall, the first time a former mayor received the honour.  City staff rejected several requests from the Ford family, including an open casket and displaying a “Ford Nation” flag.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

The Globe, November 17, 1936.

Toronto Star, November 20, 1963.

Inside coverage included a picture of Summerville lying on a stretcher before he was removed from George Bell Arena (which, so far, is not among the Star photos digitized for the Toronto Public Library).

The Telegram, November 20, 1963.