The White Settler Colonial Landscape of Toronto's
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THE WHITE SETTLER COLONIAL LANDSCAPE OF TORONTO’S WYCHWOOD PARK by Emily R.M. Lind A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in CULTURAL MEDIATIONS Carleton University Ottawa Ontario © 2020 Emily R.M. Lind Abstract Mythologized as a former artist’s colony, Wychwood Park is a gated community in midtown Toronto that encompasses fifty-eight homes built at the turn of the twentieth century. Wychwood Park’s landscape plan is one of Canada’s earliest examples of a garden suburb – a suburban design model derived from the turn-of-the-twentieth-century English Garden City movement. The Park boasts the highest concentration of Arts and Crafts domestic architecture in Toronto. Famous early residents included artists and art patrons who were instrumental in establishing what became the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Ontario College of Art and Design, and the Ontario Society of Artists. In this dissertation, I argue that Wychwood Park is a white settler colonial landscape. This argument is informed by the idea of landscape as an actor in social and political processes, rather than a reflection of them. The physical landscape of Wychwood Park, and the extent to which it reflects the ideas and values that sustain settler colonial rule, are seriously interrogated in this project. I am interested in the ways that a neighbourhood like Wychwood Park can teach Torontonians something about how patriarchy and racism work and what it means to live in an environment shaped by gendered/racialized thinking and social organization. I am informed by Richard Schein’s contentions that “discourses of racialized social relations work through landscapes”1 and that landscapes are the sites in which racialized discourses become “materialized.”2 In this 1 Richard Schein, “A Methodological Framework for Interpreting Ordinary Landscapes: Lexington, Kentucky’s Courthouse Square,” Geographical Review 99, no. 3 (2009): 396. 2 Richard Schein, “The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting an American Scene,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87, no. 4 (1997): 666. i dissertation, I situate the patriarchal and racialized social relations of settler colonialism within the material landscape of Wychwood Park. This approach highlights Wychwood Park’s engagement with the settler colonial project, addressing a gap in existing literature on the Park specifically and on Toronto history as a whole. ii Dedication For Christopher and Sophia iii Acknowledgments Completing this degree took nearly thirteen years, and in that time I was encouraged and mentored by countless people – many of whom are still in my life, some of whom are not. My sincere gratitude to my former partner, Michael Franklin, who listened enthusiastically and lovingly through countless iterations of the ideas that finally took shape in this thesis. My former best friend, Claire L. Carter, was similarly unrelenting in her belief in my talent and promise as a scholar. I carry both of their love with me always. I was accompanied by fabulous colleagues and friends in Cultural Mediations, and the long conversations, cheap beer, and seminar workshops I shared with Egemen Ozbek, Jason Green, Owen Lyons, Nicholette Prince, and Bianca Briciu broke the isolation of graduate study and moved my thinking in directions I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Helin Burkay also became a cherished friend and I continue to learn from her every time we speak. I am grateful for the opportunity to have learned from Ruth Phillips, Jill Carrick, Barbara Leckie, Franny Nudelman, Marc Furstenau, Mark Phillips, Brian Foss, Jennifer Henderson, Mitchell Frank, Justin Paulson, and Pamela Walker. Dawn Schmidt was invaluable as an ally and departmental champion for my success. I began my first year at Carleton in 2008, at the height of what is now referred to as the great recession. By the end of that first academic year TAs lost protective language in their collective agreement that capped tuition rates. Subsequently, my tuition rose to the maximum legal limit each year, while my wages were frozen under provincially- mandated austerity restrictions. I want to acknowledge the thankless work of CUPE 4600 members and staff who together served as the most significant voice on campus advocating for education as a right and a living wage for students. In particular I want to acknowledge Stuart Ryan, Leanne Parrish, Pierre Beaulieu-Blais and Dan Sawyer for working hard to protect the integrity of my collective agreement. I am so happy that union organizing introduced me to Priscillia Lefebvre and Robyn Green, two badass women I couldn’t imagine life without. I would like to acknowledge support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program for financial assistance in completing my degree. It was a big honour to receive these scholarships but I think the sector would be better served if government funding was redistributed to lower everyone’s tuition rather than ranking us against each other and promoting elitist rituals of distinction among folks who have to take on debt anyway. On the long road to completion countless friends treated me to dinner, let me crash on their couch, listened to me theorize poorly in circuitous loops, and pretended not to notice as the years went by and I still hadn’t graduated. Allyson Marsolais, Stefanie Hurst, Adrienne Gruber, Brecken Hancock, Liz Nelson, Stefan van Doorn, Rosa Kouri, Liz Majic, and Matthew J. Trafford offered comfort in the storm and kept the smile on my face. Thank you, I love you. Andrea Flowers and Michael Hodgins opened their house to me and loved me like family for several of the years I thought I was on the cusp of finishing. They cut my rent by half, gave me an extra room as a home office, and were always keenly interested to hear my progress. Living with them included some of my happiest years. Saqib and Andy iv Ali similarly adopted me in Ottawa and fed me more meals than I can count. They continue to be some of the best people I have ever known. As I was completing my research Victoria Freeman, Phil Macintosh, Alla Myzelev, and Peter Goheen gave generously of their time to discuss archives related to Wychwood Park and the settler colonial history of Toronto at length. Their assistance and insights were invaluable and had major impacts on my work, particularly Victoria Freeman and Phil Macintosh, whose own dissertations I read in full, several times. Their work continues to be essential reading for me. I am grateful to the staff of the Toronto Land Records Office, who helped me locate the earliest land transactions in Wychwood Park following colonial alienation. Staff at the Archives of Ontario, and the Toronto City Archives, particularly Lawrence Lee, were endlessly patient as I sifted and re-sifted through boxes of maps, Wychwood ephemera, and census data. Neil McFadyen forgave what was probably hundreds if not thousands of dollars of library fines without judgment. His grace allowed me to keep reading, be forgiven for my disorganization, and during personal crisis, forget about my obligations altogether. In the spring of 2018, Peter Hodgins signed on to become my supervisor at a time when I was at my most fragile and disaffected. Not only did he believe in the work, he compelled me to believe in myself, and assembled a stellar dissertation committee who reinvigorated my thinking and gave me the tools to reshape this thesis into the document it is today. I will be forever grateful for his smarts, his wit, his emotional intelligence, and mentorship. David Hugill brought an encyclopedic knowledge of settler colonial studies and urban landscapes, and read my dissertation with generous precision. I have never met anyone whose every reading recommendation is perfect, but his always were. Peter Thompson was a strong ally of the thesis, playfully supporting “team Marmaduke” through the process, and I am grateful for his efficiency, professionalism, and camaraderie. I am profoundly grateful for Ann Cvetkovich and Audrey Kobayashi who served as my external examiners. Their feedback was rigorous, exciting, and encouraging. I am eager to apply their suggestions in future iterations of this work. For years, Mark Phillips served as an unofficial mentor as I worked to learn a new field of study and deepened my intellectual practice. He excelled at asking deep questions with sincere curiosity and holding space the size of a “Northrup Frye silence” until the answers came. We worked in vastly different fields, and had very little in common, but he gifted me with training in how to think and how to be that I will never forget. It is impossible for me to overstate the impact he had on this work; his mark is on almost every page. Samantha Cutrara re-emerged front and centre in my life midway through this degree as a staunch ally, project management wizard, and confidante who is always, always right. I could not have done this without her. May Friedman supported me in indescribable ways; she became my home away from home, mentored me, deferred to me, listened to the same anxiety over and over and acted as though I deserved steadfast love and grace even when no one else could possibly have. Not only did she believe in every word and iteration of every draft, she refused to let me give up, and included me in her own emerging research that brought me back to life when I was ready to leave the academy and not look back. I am so lucky to be a part v of her family. Thank you to Dan, Noah, Molly, Izzy, Sasha and Sabrina for counting me among your own.