1

LEARNING ABOUT "THE WARD"-THE ST. JOHN’S WARD- ’S FIRST URBAN SLUM

Historically, one of Toronto's earliest multicultural communities was a section of St. John's Ward. This was one of the municipal wards that early Toronto was divided up into, and although officially known as "St. John's Ward" it was often much more commonly referred to simply as "the Ward". It's boundaries were in the east, University Avenue in the west, to the north, and to the south.

Near the southeast corner of the ward, roughly where Bay and Albert streets meet up today - so, at Nathan Phillips Square - lay the heart of old multicultural Toronto. An early immigrant to Toronto named Thornton Blackburn (who definitely merits a future entry of his own) escaped to Canada with his wife Lucie in the 1830s. They had fled slavery in the United States, and had they returned, they would have undoubtedly faced execution in the United States. But in Toronto, they found not only sanctuary but prosperity. Thornton began working as a waiter at Osgoode Hall, and heard a group of lawyers talking about a fantastic new form of transportation that they'd ridden in, in Montreal. It was a taxi cab. Thornton Blackburn took the idea and opened up 's first taxi cab company, and the rest was history. Though financially successful, he never forgot where he came from. He began buying up property in the Ward, and built inexpensive housing for other escaped slaves in the neighbourhood. By the 1850s, there was a large Black community, many of whom were escaped slaves, living in the Ward, approximately around where today's Nathan Phillips Square stands.

In the 1800s, there were Jewish settlers in Toronto, most of whom came from Western Europe or the United States. However, for several years, there was no major influx, and without a large Jewish population, there was no cluster neighbourhood to be formed. However, in the 1890s, there was a surge of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. Many were poor and had only a thin grasp of the English language. They moved to the Ward, too, and became its new cultural majority.

Source: http://torontothenandnow.blogspot.ca/2010/09/4-saint-johns-ward-and-kensington.html

Terrible Tales of Toronto Slums (1911)

Told by Dr. Hastings, MHO, in his report on slum inspection 22 People Live in cellars; water on the floors MHO would have city expropriate land around city for future city planning From the Toronto Star, July 5, 1911 Dr. Hastings, Medical Health Officer, in his report to the local Board of Health, cited three things that are necessary to solve the problem connected with the slums of Toronto. The three things are: 1. a good housing bylaw, with provisions for its adequate enforcement; 2. suburban garden cities, with rapid transportation facilities at single fare; 3. city planning. 2

The report is based upon the results of visits made by the Medical Health Officer’s inspectors to 4,693 houses in the city, which was divided into six districts. A special appropriation of $800 was voted by the Board of Control some months ago to secure the report, which contains much valuable information. “The assessed value of land in the central district of Toronto is from $100,000 to $150,000 per acre, and in the Niagara street district from $30,000 to $40,000 per acres,” says Dr. Hastings. “From an economic standpoint, is it reasonable to think that the mechanic and the labouring classes can be housed to as good advantage on land of this value as on land in the suburbs which is assessed at from $1,000 to $2,000 per acre?” Buy Up Suburban Land, Says He Dr. Hastings, in advocating the expropriation of the area surrounding the city for about five miles, gives the following comparable table: Toronto: 17,920 acres Buffalo: 26,880 acres Cincinnati: 27,840 acres Detroit 23,040 acres Minneapolis 34,080 acres Indianapolis: 19,840 acres “The following conditions, peculiar to great cities, are found to be present to a lamentable extent,” says Dr. Hastings. “High rents are being collected for small houses, dark rooms, tenement houses, houses unfit for sanitation; inadequate water supply; impaired and filthy yards and lanes; sanitary conveniences, which, by their position or for various other reasons have become a public nuisance, a menace to public health, a danger to public morals, and an offence against public decency.” In speaking of the visits made to slum homes by his inspectors, Dr. Hastings says: “Some houses were so inaccessible that they were at first missed, even by experienced inspectors. One house could be reached only by a curious tunnel-like passage from the street, down a dark and precipitous stairway, and up again into a back yard. Two houses were found built over stables with no evidence of any drainage.” Conditions in “The Ward” He finds that the district lying between Yonge, College, and Queen streets and University avenue is the most densely populated part of Toronto. Of the 2,051 families visited in this section, 1,275 families lived in four or more rooms, 348 families in three rooms, 227 families in two rooms, 139 families in one room, 61 families in basements, and one family in a cellar; 108 of these houses were pronounced to be unfit for human habitation. The report states that overcrowded, unsanitary lodging houses are increasing in Toronto. From ten to thirty foreign men are crowded into a small house. Each pays from 75 cents to $1.25 per week, for lodging and washing, while each earns from $1.75 to $3.50 per day. “Their ways are not ours,” says Dr. Hastings. “Every effort must be made to familiarize our new citizens with our sanitary standards.” Living in Cellars He reports that there are 92 tenement houses in Toronto; 447 people in the city are living in basements, and 22 in cellars. One dwelling near Niagara street had four inches of water in the cellar; another, in the centre of the city, which rented at $20 per month, had four feet. In the cellars and back kitchens of many houses, hens, ducks and dogs are kept. 3

In one basement 12 people live. Some of the houses do not even keep out the cold and wet. In one the bedroom floor and a couple of inches or more of water on it. Two boards were laid down and the man and his wife got into bed without wetting their feet by walking on these boards. In one house of five rooms, five families lived. They kept two sewing machines and conducted a tailor shop.

390 Houses Condemned Altogether the Medical Health Officer’s inspectors condemned 390 houses: 77 in the district, 108 in the Central district, 9 in the Niagara street district, and 197 in other districts. In these condemned houses, 2,133 people are now living, amid unsanitary conditions. Forty-eight houses with dark rooms were discovered. In one of these dark room seven people slept. There are 1,348 dwellings in Toronto without drains; 619 of these are near the City Hall. In most of these the waste and slop water is thrown into the yard. Five hundred and fifty-nine families have no water in their houses, although the rent is high enough to provide for a good supply. A row of ten houses was discovered where there was only one outside water tap for the whole ten, yet the landlord receives $960 annually in rent. Two hundred and forty-six “rears,” or houses built on back lanes, were discovered. Some of these, being next to another house or a stable, have no access to fresh air. Would Reduce Rents. Dr. Hastings states that Toronto must solve the following problems connected with her slums: the lodging house evil, the tenement house, dark rooms, back-to-back houses, basement and cellar dwellings, unsanitary privy pits, lack of drainage, inadequate water supply, overcrowding, and exorbitant rents. “Inasmuch as there is a legal rate of interest permitted to be collected, why should anyone be permitted to charge rent which is out of all proportion to the returns?” asks Dr. Hastings, “simply because he is dealing with a foreigner who is not familiar with conditions, and who is entirely at his mercy.” From the reports of his inspectors, Dr. Hastings estimates that 10,000,000 gallons of water is wasted daily simply because penurious landlords will not provide proper plumbing. The Board of Health received the report, and Aldermen Graham and McCarthy were appointed representatives on a general committee which will consider it. ♦ Photos: Above, Back Yard in the Ward, 1907, courtesy City of Toronto Archives f1244_it0313. Below, mosaic of photographs from Dr. Hastings’s report.

Source : "Terrible Tales of Toronto Slums (1911)." BillGladstoneca. N.p., 13 May 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. 4

Whatever became of Toronto’s first priority neighbourhood?

John Lorinc

Almost a century before the United Way’s Poverty by Postal Code report (2004) begat the City’s “priority neighbourhood” strategy (2006), Toronto officials found themselves confronted with an almost identical set of challenges: concentrated poverty, inadequate housing, a dearth of social services, all in a dense urban neighbourhood populated by a large number of recent immigrants. The Ward,” an early 20th century “slum” bounded by Yonge, University, Queen and College, could be described as Toronto’s original priority neighbourhood. The area was a classic “arrival city,” to use the phrase coined by the Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders — a zone of transition for the first sustained wave of non- Anglo-Celtic migration to Toronto. Moreover, the significance of the city’s response to the poverty of this neighbourhood cannot be overstated. Despite that, the Ward has been almost totally erased from the surface of the city. Only a handful of original buildings remain, and there’s not a single historic marker to acknowledge a poor but vital neighbourhood that taught Torontonians crucial lessons about tolerance, public health, and the uses of public space. Between 1881 and 1921, Toronto’s population exploded, leaping from 86,000 to over 500,000. Until the 1890s, the Ward was primarily an anglo-saxon working class community, with some Irish immigrants. By the turn of the century, however, thousands of newcomers had settled in the Ward; most were Chinese, Italian or Eastern European Jews fleeing Czarist pogroms, although there were Scandinavians, Africans and Greeks. Over-crowding became a major problem. By 1911, according to this York University essay by Michael Chrobok [PDF], two-thirds of the dwellings in The Ward had four to nine residents, and a fifth had over ten.

The conditions, clearly visible from E.J. Lennox’s “new” City Hall, galvanized officials like works commissioner R.C. Harris and Dr. Charles Hastings, the medical officer of health, who ordered a detailed survey of the conditions in 1911. The so-called slum problem, well known in New York’s Lower East Side and Chicago’s Back of the Yards, was seen as a kind of social contagion, and Hastings warned Torontonians not to be complacent. At the same time, he made it clear that the Ward’s residents had not brought impoverishment upon themselves; the problems had to do with sanitation, education, and public health, not a lack of morality.

Over the next decade, conditions in The Ward influenced a wave of regulatory and social reforms that would accelerate Toronto’s modernization and its attitudes towards immigrants:  The City built new sewers and water mains, banned outdoor privies, and passed regulations banning certain building practices – e.g., windowless rooms and laneway shanties — to improve the housing stock; 5

 Public health inspectors and nurses fanned out in the Ward and other poor areas (Parkdale, Cabbagetown) in an attempt to contain the spread of tuberculosis and educate immigrant women.  Municipal officials promoted breast-feeding and vaccination, ordered dairies to pasteurize milk and established a municipal abattoir;  The City established Canada’s first supervised playground — the Elizabeth Street Playground, located on what is now the north-east corner of Sick Kids. For over 30 years, generations of immigrant kids who lived in The Ward congregated there to participate in organized sports.  The influx of immigrants to the Ward prompted Elizabeth Neufeld, a Jewish activist from Baltimore, to establish Central Neighbourhood House at 84 Gerrard, just a few doors west of Terauley (now ). Canada’s first settlement agency, CHN had no church affiliations and didn’t seek to convert the children and mothers who participated in programs and clubs ranging from boxing to sewing.

By the early 1930s, The Ward had evolved into a lively immigrant enclave, and eventually became Toronto’s original Chinatown.

Yet public officials remained uncomfortable with The Ward’s proximity to Toronto’s political and financial institutions. Beginning in the late 1890s, municipal officials had generated successive plans for a civic square and public buildings for the blocks north of Queen. In 1934, a royal commission led by lieutenant governor Herbert Bruce, a surgeon, recommended that Toronto build orderly public housing complexes to replace the “sordid” housing in areas such as The Ward and Moss Park. In 1946, city council passed a bylaw banning private development south of Dundas, and proceeded to expropriate much of Chinatown in order to create space for new public administrative buildings and a square. In the north end, the hospitals had begun to expand, and land was assembled into larger blocks for uses like the bus station. By 1966, when Viljo Revell’s City Hall opened, Nathan Phillips Square had wiped out much of the Ward’s southern tier. Today, Elizabeth Street — which was to The Ward what St. Urbain Street was to the Montreal of Mordecai Richler’s youth — is a soulless connector that bears no trace of the role it once played. During the closing days of David Miller’s term, former councilor Howard Moscoe, whose grandparents lived in area, promoted a plan to create an immigration museum about The Ward at City Hall. But the idea appears to be on ice thanks to budget cuts and the resources required for the 1812 commemoration. But perhaps the City’s heritage officials, or even private philanthropists and history buffs, should push for something else — a series of public markers and explanatory plaques, at a minimum, or — dreaming here — a more ambitious venture modeled on the extraordinary Tenement Museum in New York’s Lower East Side. What’s clear is that this fascinating and enormously influential neighbourhood should be rescued from the amnesia that has long afflicted Toronto. The Ward today is a ghost city. It needn’t remain that way. photos from City of Toronto Archives

Source: Lorinc, John. “Whatever Became of Toronto's First Priority Neighbourhood? | Spacing Toronto." Spacing Toronto. N.p., 6 May 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. 6

Historicist: Forgotten Urban Squalor of The

Ward- By Kevin Plummer

Slum – Price’s Lane (August 27, 1914). City of Toronto Archives, Series 372, Sub Series 32, Item 320. In Low Life, Luc Sante writes of how slum districts in contemporary New York—despite the gentrification of the Lower East Side—are essentially the same neighbourhoods that were slums in the nineteenth century. He writes: “Places that seem consigned to eternal repetition of poverty and low life and carnival traffic are made so by accrued prejudice.” Perhaps no one remembers the tannery that originally characterized a neighbourhood, “but it was succeeded by a rookery, then by two generations of tenements, and then by a housing project, which has now gone to seed.” As a result, mention of the Bowery today evokes the same rough-and-tumble spirit it did at the turn of the twentieth century. Mention the Ward, however, and most Torontonians aren’t likely to be horrified by images of the filth and disorder of inner city poverty, though we probably ought to be. The Ward was Toronto’s worst slum. Taking its name from the old St. John’s Ward electoral district, it encompassed the area between College Street, Queen Street, Yonge Street, and University Avenue. Erased from the map by redevelopment, the Ward has been likewise effectively erased from the subconscious lore citizens carry about the place they live. The problems the neighbourhood hosted, however, did not disappear when the district was razed. Slum courtyard. 142 Agnes Street. (November 26, 1913). City of Toronto Archives, Series 372, Sub Series 32, Item 259.

The Ward was a warren of narrow lanes densely packed with ramshackle cottages, dingy storefronts, and street-corner preachers hassling the locals to convert. Muddy alleys were cluttered with garbage, wash-baskets, and clothes hanging to dry. The air smelled of rot and waste. Conditions were just as deplorable indoors. With leaky roofs and peeling wallpaper, the homes were a far cry from the architect- designed houses of the city’s newest subdivisions on Euclid Avenue and Palmerston Boulevard. In his history of Toronto, Michael Kluckner quotes a City Health Department inspection report (about the property pictured above) from November 26, 1913: In the rear of a store located at 142 Agnes Street were found living quarters consisting of three rooms, one of which was used as a storeroom for all kinds of rubbish. The bedroom contained four beds, used by a father, mother and two children. The third room was a kitchen, which a daughter of about eleven used as a sleeping room. Under the bedroom was a cellar full of dirt, wood and rubbish. The cellar was inspected because a very decided dampness and strong odor was noticed when inspecting the bedroom. It was found that two tin or lead pipes which connected the sink of the kitchen with a tile drain were overflowing. 7

For these miserable households, according to Kluckner, people paid $10 to $12 per month. Demand was so high that absentee landlords never had to trouble themselves with any repairs or improvements. In one boarding house, six Polish labourers were sharing accommodations in two small rooms that the Health Department did not think could reasonably house more than three. In other lodgings, families lived in abysmal rooms in dank cellars. Overcrowding and unhealthy living conditions were common, but a lack of resources meant that when the Health Department did in fact close a property, the lack of follow-up inspection and high demand almost ensured that it would open right back up. In a 1913 report, the head of the Health Department, Charles Hastings, noted that there were at least 3,000 houses each being occupied by two to six families. Hastings’s efforts and campaigning went a long way in demonstrating to the broader public that poverty was not a consequence of vice, but a dictate of necessity. People had to live this way; they didn’t choose or deserve it. Residents survived on the optimism that they would have a chance to move elsewhere. Throughout its history, the Ward was a gateway neighbourhood for the most beaten down and penniless immigrants seeking refuge from the 1848 European rebellions, the Irish potato famine, and oppressive regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe. With little public assistance available to immigrants upon their arrival, the Ward became a staging ground for nascent immigrant communities to establish themselves before escaping to colonize other parts of the booming city. The Ward was a demographic chameleon. Speaking in broad strokes, the Ward was dominated by Jewish immigrants by the First World War. They lived side-by-side with Italians, Poles, Macedonians, Lithuanians, Chinese, and those from countless other countries. As the Jewish population settled further west to establish Kensington Market as the heart of their new community, the Italian population came to dominate the Ward. They too eventually escaped to College Street and beyond—as did the Poles to The Junction and other Eastern Europeans to their own vibrant pockets of the city. By the dawn of the Second World War, the Ward had become Toronto’s first Chinatown. It was probably no coincidence that along with this immigrant-fuelled population boom in the 1920s—when the city grew from 522,000 in 1921 to 826,186 in 1929—came growing public concern over crime, poverty, and drug abuse. It would be easy to imagine faceless immigrants as social threats, defined by their strange accents and mannerisms rather than their individual and personalizing characteristics. While the majority of the Ward’s population was hard-working and undeserving of the added stigmas of vice and criminality, that element certainly existed there. The neighbourhood was rife with bootlegger dive bars (in the era of the Ontario Temperance Act), gambling dens, and brothels. Centre Avenue was the city’s most notorious red-light district, where prostitutes openly solicited from their doorstep while young boys earned their pay keeping watch for the police. Police targeted lower classes at least partly out of concern that their poverty and urban squalor would contaminate respectable society. Police reports, according to sociologists Helen Boritch and John Hagan, characterized the foreigners who ran the Ward’s illegal gambling houses as “vicious criminals” and “racketeers.” Whether an accurate or salacious assessment, this view reinforced that the department’s intention was to be heavy-handed in their enforcement of morality laws based on the belief that doing so would prevent more serious crime. For the rest of the city, it would probably have been comforting to relegate these social, economic, and ethnic “others” to a neatly bounded geographic corner of the cityscape. The majority of the Anglo-Protestant population in Toronto certainly didn’t want to confront unsavoury aspects of their city. When Morley Callaghan published his first novel, Strange Fugitive (1928), the story of an out-of-work lumberman turned bootlegging gangster, the setting was unmistakably Toronto. Callaghan was hailed as a bright new talent in New York. But the escapades of anti-hero Harry Trotter—who turns his back on respectable domestic life for a journey into an alienated world of crime, adultery, rum-running, and murder—made very little impact in his hometown. 8

Despite his sparse style, Callaghan brought the character of the city’s underbelly to life. Elizabeth Street, in his hands became “the street of Chinese merchants, chop-houses and dilapidated roughcast houses used for stores. Some cafes were of new tan brick, with electric signs. Chinese men sat on steps or stood in groups under street lights. No women were to be seen.” But Torontonians didn’t want to acknowledge that there really were Harry Trotters running around. Nor did they want to admit that, as depicted in the novel, the Ward was the destination for respectable people to find vice. Callaghan’s novel is now praised, in the words of Randall White, as a “the human geography of the place.” The Ward shrank over the twentieth century, first with the demolition of eight acres for the construction of Toronto General Hospital, then with streets widened to allow the commercial district’s office towers, hotels, and, more recently, condos to stretch northwards. The biggest change came with the controversial expropriation of much of the Ward as the site of the new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square in the late 1950s. Now effectively erased from the streetscape and memory, the Ward does live on in the city in at least one unfortunate way: the problems of under-valued immigrants and the struggle for a better life still persist like the ghosts of Sante’s New York. With the Ward’s disappearance, they’ve just changed neighbourhoods.

Source: Plummer, Kevin. "Forgotten Urban Squalor of The Ward." The Historicist. N.p., 11 Oct. 2008. Web. 21 Oct. 2013.