Toronto: Biography of a City by Allan Levine Amy Lavender Harris
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Document generated on 09/26/2021 1:54 a.m. Ontario History Toronto: Biography of a City by Allan Levine Amy Lavender Harris Volume 107, Number 2, Fall 2015 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050641ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1050641ar See table of contents Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Harris, A. L. (2015). Review of [Toronto: Biography of a City by Allan Levine]. Ontario History, 107(2), 270–272. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050641ar Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2015 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 270 ONTARIO HISTORY and staff, and, as any northerner would have Mackay of Norway House, the first Indig- understood, of the patience and intelligence enous Moderator of the United Church of required in their relationships with their dogs, Canada, might have been appropriate. animals which ensured their survival. But the vivid pictures the primary docu- Students might have welcomed a bibli- ments offer will remain with the reader. How ography which collated the many scholarly better to understand the unspoken practices references in the footnotes and introductions, of colonialism than to read of the journey of and the account could also have benefitted the portrait of Queen Victoria to its place of from some reflections on the Manitoba mis- honour in the mission. And how better to en- sions as one small part of the global expan- counter Cree and Ojibwe family life than to sion of European Christianity that accompa- read of the food sharing, the winter travel ac- nied the ‘Great Land Rush’. The absence of counts, the tenderness of Mary for the Young’s much editorial comment on the twin goals son, and the teaching him of “what is good” by of Christianity and civilization will be puz- Jackoos, who convinced the Youngs to ‘lend zling to some. And to others, perhaps some me your boy’. notes on the continuing strong presence of Indigenous Christianity in both communi- Jean Friesen, ties, and, indeed, of the work of the Rev. Stan University of Manitoba Toronto: Biography of a City By Allan Levine Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2014. 496 pages. $36.95 hardcover. ISBN 978-1-77100- 022-2. www.douglas-mcintyre.com) oronto—a city that has, in recent years, Tproduced scores of books exploring its architecture, cultural diversity, literature, music, art, neighbourhoods and political economy—has, oddly, produced only a very few wide-ranging works tracing the broad terrain of its history. Exceptions include Reverend Henry Scadding’s Toronto of Old (a chatty account of Toronto’s early years, first published in 1873), Eric Arthur’s No Mean City (currently on its third updated edition since appearing in 1964), William Kilbourn’s Toronto Remembered (1984), James Morris Careless’s Toronto to 1918 (1984) and James Lemon’s Toronto Since 1918 (1985). All have A Biography brings readers up to date on the remained classic reference works, in large city’s recent history, while adding valuable part because there has been no comprehen- analytical depth to the preceding period. Cast sive history to replace them. as a “popular-style “biography” offering “a se- Urban historian Allan Levine’s Toronto: lective, sometimes arbitrary, chronicle of To- OH autumn 2015.indd 270 08/09/2015 10:22:05 PM book reviews 27 ronto’s character in all of its different forms with one contemporary but no less contro- and contexts” (4), Levine’s book is in fact an versial political figure: ex-mayor Rob Ford. authoritative account of Toronto’s develop- Of Mackenzie’s term as mayor, Levine writes, ment from its Aboriginal pre-history to its “Toronto in 1834 needed a mayor who could contemporary identity as an “Alpha City,” a tackle the city’s debt problem, fix its muddy well-connected centre of global trade. From streets, and skillfully manage a council intent the spattered sidewalks of “Muddy York” to on arguing more than actually accomplishing the congested freeways of the T-Dot, Levine anything substantial. Mackenzie’s inclination weaves the city’s formative events—including was to act in the same dictatorial fashion he the Toronto Purchase, the American invasion had accused the Tories of ” while using “the during the War of 1812-14, the Mackenzie- patronage at his disposal for a variety of civic led Rebellion of 1837 that ultimately unseated posts to get rid of his conservative opponents Upper Canada’s oligarchical Family Compact, and reward his Reform friends.” (52) successive waves of immigration that have si- The strongest and most vivid sections of multaneously divided and enriched the city, the book are those engaging with Toronto’s surging suburbanization, the creation of Met- long immigrant history and the struggles of ropolitan Toronto and its era of big projects, new arrivals, regularly viewed with suspicion the rise to prominence of Toronto-focused by those who preceded them. Particular vir- print and digital media and the unwanted ulence was reserved for the mostly Catholic amalgamation that nonetheless made Toronto refugees of the famines in Ireland in the late into a Megacity—into a compelling narrative 1840s, deemed “unaccustomed to the habits of a city grown fat on good fortune. and occupations of Canadians” (75) and “as Levine’s “biography” is a rich, well-re- ignorant and vicious as they are poor” (77), searched, engagingly written history, rife and Jews fleeing poverty and pogroms in with fascinating detail and nuance that Eastern Europe. Seething anti-Semitism fes- (to the undoubted delight of non-Toronto tered for decades and peaked in the 1930s, readers) occasionally pokes at points of par- by which time, as Levine writes, “there were ticular local pride. His recounting of the To- areas of the city where Jews were not able to ronto purchase, for example, underscores the rent or buy houses” and “[i]t was as if the in- extent of the misrepresentation colonial ad- creased tension caused by the Depression left ministrators brought to their dealings with no room for tolerance” (166). The Christie the Mississauga. Of the bungled 1787 deal, Pits riot of August 1933—an hours-long me- which resulted in an Aboriginal land claim lee following the unfurling of a Swastika flag not settled until 2010, Levine observes la- at a baseball game—epitomized the ongoing conically, “The deal had holes in it, however. tensions. Similar sentiments were directed at The official documents were incomplete, and Toronto’s black residents, who experienced there was no actual description of the land formal employment and housing discrimi- that had been purchased” (17). nation through the 1950s, and continue, as The often celebrated William Lyon Levine documents, to be singled out dispro- Mackenzie, whom Levine describes as “the portionately by police. most polarizing and misunderstood figure Levine’s account of the city’s spatial and in Canadian history” (46), in part because economic expansion, particularly during the his zeal for reform waxed and waned accord- post-Second World War period when, “acting ing to whether he himself had been elected, methodically and always with great debate, turns out to have a few things in common politicians, technocrats, social reformers, en- OH autumn 2015.indd 271 08/09/2015 10:22:05 PM 272 ONTARIO HISTORY trepreneurs, real estate tycoons, and planning business elite” (273)—and immediately de- visionaries, for better or for worse, reinvented votes paragraphs to them. Toronto with social housing projects, super- Similarly, Levine’s resolutely chrono- highways, sprawling suburbs, and shopping logical structure, which means that fasci- plazas” (199), underscores the reality that nating subjects (particularly those dealing contemporary debates over development with immigration, social conditions and the have a long and messy history in Toronto. conditions of everyday life) are introduced, These discussions, while absorbing, point dropped and returned to, is somewhat dis- to a shortcoming in Levine’s narrative ap- jointed. This is especially unfortunate given proach: if Toronto is personified as a biograph- that these analyses are Levine’s strongest ical persona, it is clearly male. From Simcoe and most innovative (particularly outstand- to Art Eggleton, Mackenzie to Ford, George ing are an account of Thornton and Lucie Brown to Conrad Black, and “Big Daddy” Blackburn, ex-slaves who successfully ran Gardiner to Megacity Mel Lastman, those the city’s first taxi company, and discussions credited with shaping the city’s destiny are of the immigrant “slums” of Corktown and nearly all men. Even renowned urbanist Jane St. John’s Ward). A more thematic approach Jacobs, whom Levine does credit in a chap- might have improved the book’s continuity ter titled “Jane’s Disciples,” is shunted aside and highlighted the originality of Levine’s in favour of a discussion of the longstanding reporting. acrimony between John Sewell and Paul God- Levine concludes by invoking Toron- frey. We know Toronto best in its early days to’s status as an “Alpha City”—a term aptly through the diary of Elizabeth Simcoe, but it underscoring the city’s identity not only as is her husband’s declaration, “Here let there a confident (some might say arrogant) cen- be a city,” that Levine emphasizes. In other tre, capable of throwing its economic weight places women are reduced to their supportive around, but also as a place where something and occasionally biological roles: population new is always unfolding.