Share your Harbord Village stories from the 1930s to ’80s

by Justin Skinner
City Centre Mirror

January 1, 2013
See article online at InsideToronto.com

The Harbord Village Residents’ Association (HVRA) is seeking out the stories of current and former residents as they prepare to bring their community’s rich history to life through art.

The HVRA recently received an $18,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to create an exhibit that will highlight the people, cultures and transitions that have helped shaped Harbord Village from roughly 1930 to 1980.

“We’re putting together an oral history of the neighbourhood and trying to capture memories to show what life was like in the area over those years,” said Nicole Schulman, HVRA member.

The association has already started conducting interviews with current and former residents and aims to put together a show and an interactive website.

With roughly 50 interviews already completed, the group certainly has no shortage of material from which to draw.

“There’s such a range of people who we’ve gotten to contribute,” Schulman said. “It’s really interesting to see how it’s changed over a span of time.”

Schulman noted Harbord Village was once considered a poor neighbourhood and that residents would typically only live there until they had saved enough money to move elsewhere.

That was followed by waves of immigration. While it was very Anglo-centric into the 1920s, it soon gave way to a rising Jewish community.

In the 1950s, it saw an influx of Italian and Portuguese immigrants and became a popular place for Chinese-Canadians to settle in the 1970s.

“There was also a black community in the neighbourhood that goes way back and has continued,” Schulman said. “It was always a very mixed community, but you can definitely see (demographic) shifts.”

In the 1930s, ’40s and even into the ’50s, many of the homes were divided into multiple units and would often house large groups of people.

“The houses would have 11 people living in them and sharing one bathroom,” Schulman said. The area became more gentrified in the 1980s and many of the homes were renovated and returned to single-family status. Schulman added the project could look at specific themes, such as the prominence of Harbord Village’s laneways throughout its early days.

“One thing we’ve heard a lot is that the laneways were really important to kids,” she said. “They were a place where they socialized and a place where the older ones might have learned the facts of life a little bit.”

While the exhibit will not be implemented until later next year, the HVRA is looking to collect as many stories as possible. Some of the stories will be shared online, through plaques and at local venues.

“We want to help people in the neighbourhood and throughout Toronto to learn about a different time in our history,” Schulman said.

Anyone with a story to share about life in Harbord Village from the 1930s through the 1980s is asked to contact Schulman at n.m.schulman@gmail.com

"Community Clean-up Competition: Harbord Village Residents Association challenges the Annex Residents' Association to first competitive clean-up", by Jacqueline Schifano. The Annex Gleaner, December 2012, p.11.

also see:

"The Community Event Every City Should Emulate", by Chris Schryer. In The Huffington Post Canada, posted: 12/13/2012 9:18 am.

Bloor Borden Farmers Market Returns
by Victoria Prouse The Annex Gleaner, June, 2012, page 2.

Excerpt:

Toronto Star: Grubby garbage day goes glam

Columnist Royson James, The Toronto Star, April 19, 2012, p. GT2.

Excerpt:

To go gently into that good night:
When quality of death can enhance quality of life
Lisa Priest The Globe and Mail, March 17, 2012, page F1.

Kensington Hospice — our neighbourhood palliative care facility

On March 17, the Globe and Mail published a long article in its Focus section, “To go gently into that good night,” featuring Major Street’s Kensington Hospice. Journalist Lisa Priest and photographer Peter Power spent four weeks visit-ing this 10-bed facility, which opened last August. The building, at the northeast end of Kensington Gardens on Major Street, was originally a convent and chapel, founded in 1892 by the Anglican Sisters of St. John the Divine. Today, it is a place of calm and dignity allowing its resi-dents to die while surrounded by family and friends. The article observed that it is a “model that many experts consider the future of end-of-life care – a more compas-sionate, all-encompassing Loving our laneways ( experience for patients and families, and more affordable and sustainable for the burdened health-care system.”

Excerpt:

Dustin MY TORONTO
PETER'S GARAGE
Dusan Petricic for The Toronto Star, April 1, 2012, page IN2.

Excerpt:

Toronto's first black postman.
The story of Albert Jackson and the man who wants a lane named after him
by Isabel Teotonio
Life Reporter
Toronto Star, February 11, 2012

Excerpt:

Strolling down memory lane
New laneway names rooted in Toronto’s history
by Tamara Baluja
Globe and Mail, December 26, 2011

Harbord Village naming laneways to memorialize community members — and help emergency services get around

Excerpt:

The judges’ first choice went to “The Brunswick Bend”. Neighbourhood participants preferred “Canopy Park”.
New parkette inches to reality
by Perry King
The Annex Gleaner Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012, p.2

Excerpt:

Clean-up supported by Central Tech School students and neighbourhood businesses.
Harbord Village clean-up a success
by Justin Crann
The Annex Gleaner Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012, p.4

Excerpt:

A fresh-on-the-scene contractor saves a Harbord Village heritage home on the brink of demolition.
From neglect to respect
by Dave Leblanc, columnist, The Architourist
The Globe and Mail September 2, 2011, p.G7

Excerpt:

History project to rely on older residents and archival research.
Of Harbord Village's past
by Sile Cleary
The Annex Gleaner June 2011, p.5

Excerpt:

Richard Longley is determined to fix urban eyesore,
the parkette at the foot of Brunswick St.
Money could make park dreams real
by Catherine Porter
Toronto Star, June 11, 2011

Excerpt:

Tree Huggers
by Susan Grimbly
ON nature Magazine, Spring, 2010

Better air quality. Pollution control. Habitat for wildlife. These are just some of the reasons why a band of dedicated volunteers is determined to save the urban forest.

Excerpt:

CBC Radio Metro Morning
Monday, Dec 21, 2009
Audio WMA file

Selling Energy
Guest host Jane Hawtin interviews our own Susan Dexter, One of the first eight people in Ontario to sell power to the province from her solar panels.

Tired of living where lanes have no name
Downtown neighbourhood residents say naming laneways will speed up emergency response times
by Tamara Baluja
Toronto Star, January 25, 2010

Harbord Village resident Rory Sinclair started a community initiative to name the area's anonymous laneways, which don't show up on maps.

Excerpt:

The Annex Gleaner
FOCUS: Your holiday wish list

Oil portraits in the above Gleaner cover © Susan N. Stewart

Question: If you could have one wish for the community this year, what would it be?

Contributions from Harbord Village residents

  
David Booz
Borden Street

The holidays are a beautiful time of year, and Harbord Village (where I live) and the entire Annex and downtown areas are beautiful neighbourhoods.

My wish is that the litter-grinches, the garbage-bin-grinches, the graffiti and poster-grinches, and the trash-inthe-front-yard-grinches would all go back up to their mountains and leave our neighbourhoods neat, tidy, and beautiful; leaving only holiday decorations and maybe a dusting of snow (on Christmas only, please).

  
Rory 'Gus' Sinclair
Major Street

What a fine thing you are doing here.

When it comes to making wishes, whether it concerns our neighbourhood, or one of the many communities we inhabit in a great city like Toronto, and no matter that we and our communities often times intersect and just as often don't, we can spend our time thinking about what we don't want.

"If only [fill in the blank] would stop doing [flil in another blank] my life would proceed on a trajectory that is mine.

We don't want people to keep kvetchin', and whinin' about just about anything you can name.

We don't want young kids to keep being disrespectful of everyone, not just their elders.

We don't want old people to keep on being slow.

We don't want people who drive cars to keep cutting us off in traffic.

We don't want cyclists to keep on cycling like there is no one else who has a right to the road.

We don't want people to be disrespectful of the homes they live in by taking away architectural detail that has survived 100 years.

We don't want neighbours to be disrespectful of their neighbours as if their own agenda was the only one worth maintaining.

Here is what I wish for:

More kids at Halloween (we get tons, always room for more though).
More folk talking to each other on the elevator, on the street, and in streetcars.
More chat with the cashier at Metro ... make his or her day with a cornball joke.
Laugh more at cornball jokes.
More telling people they look great — try it three times a day for starters.
Give way in traffic at least three times a day ... yep for starters.
When you think you should give a compliment, do it. You may not get another chance.
When you think you should give a hug, do it, see above for consequences.
Tell someone you know and love that he or she has made a difference in your life.

In short:
Prime the pump; even when it is old and looks like it hasn't produced water in years... or is so new, that it may never have produced a drop in its whole life. You just never know when water might come flying out of that thing.

  
Wendy Smith
Harbord Village

In Gus's spirit, my wish:
More kindness to strangers, especially those with reason to expect otherwise from us.

Brunch is a good idea
Judy Perly found success when she ran her cafe like a Jewish grandmother
by Ben Kaplan
National Post, December 19, 2009

Excerpt:

Name that lane
Fighting Crime and local pride are two reasons for new project
by Beth Macdonell
The Annex Gleaner, November, 2009

Excerpt:

(HV note to all: east/west Harbord Village boundaries are Spadina Avenue to Bathurst Street, not as described in this article. The boundaries mentioned, between Bathurst and Ossington, actually enclose the Palmerston and Bickford Park neighbourhoods.)

Harbord Village tree program coming to a close
Initiative will help save community's urban forest

by Justin Skinner
Inside Toronto
Oct 07, 2009 - 10:00 AM
See article online

Residents in the Harbord Village Residents Association (HVRA) will conclude a project funded by the City of Toronto to maintain their community's urban forest later this month.

The association received a grant two years ago from the city's Parks, Forestry and Recreation department to help subsidize backyard trees for local residents.

So far, roughly 60 trees have been planted in backyards in Harbord Village and nearby areas, with an additional 20 trees planted on the grounds of Central Technical School using funds raised within the community.

The initiative came about after an inventory of trees in an area bounded by Bloor and College streets on the north and south borders and Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street to the east and west, turned up some unsettling omens.

"We saw that the big trees that are very characteristic of our streets were in decline," said Margaret Procter of the HVRA. "Many of them are 50 or 60 years old or older. We realized we'd lose our tree canopy if we didn't start replacing them."

Dedicated residents took training courses to learn to identify trees in the area and assess their health. Then, volunteers went through the community with clipboards and measuring tools to look at the neighbourhood's tree population in more detail.

With the funding they secured, the HVRA was able to begin its tree planting program in earnest. The organization charges residents $20 to have a new tree planted in their backyard.

"That's a bit of a token compared to the real cost of the tree," Procter said. "Trees can cost anywhere from $60 for a smaller one to $150 or $200 for the larger, rarer ones, and that doesn't cover the cost of having a truck bring the tree in or the (planting) labour."

Residents and volunteers from local high schools do the dirty work themselves, with tree recipients responsible for care and maintenance of the trees once they are planted.

Thus far, the tree planting has been a success in the community, though the city grant is about to run out.

In addition to preserving the area's green canopy, the initiative has had other benefits as well.

"Backyard trees fit in a city initiative to hold back soil when there's overflow from the sewer system," said Dinny Biggs of the HVRA.

With their own community having benefited from the grant, the association is reaching out to nearby communities to help spread the remaining cash around.

"We think we've saturated our neighbourhood," Biggs said. "When we got this chunk of money, we wanted to outreach to other communities to see if they wanted to do backyard planting of their own."

Procter said residents can still order trees, with the type and size of the tree to be determined by the space they have available. She said the deadline for ordering trees has been pushed back from Sept. 30 until Oct. 15 or 16.

Take a parking lot, put up a paradise
One cheese shop employee's vision for the community
by Claire Roberts
The Annex Gleaner, November, 2009

Excerpt:

Remembrance Day: The boys of Major Street
— Chucky, Porky and Solly were part of a band of Jewish immigrant kids who grew up together in the city's west end. Many of them eagerly enlisted for war, and most never returned home.
by Leslie Scrivener
Toronto Star
Nov 11, 2009, page A1

Excerpt:
Who's left to remember Chucky and Porky, Solly and Harold? They are the boys of Major St. who went to war and didn't come back – lost in the Atlantic, over the Bay of Bengal and in Holland.

Dr. Joe Greenberg is one of the few left who remembers them. He counts 10 who died in World War II who grew up with him on the west-end street that runs between College and Bloor Sts. Others were wounded or became prisoners of war.

They spent their youth in the city playgrounds, Jewish immigrant kids too poor to afford a bat and ball, never dreaming they'd own a baseball mitt. They used broom handles as sticks and frozen horse droppings for pucks to play street hockey...

Read the entire article here.

JPG of front page article.

Country mouse versus city mouse
by Anna Mehler Paperny
Globe and Mail, October 14, 2009

Including an interview with
past HVRA-chair Rory (Gus) Sinclair

Read the entire article here. (pdf)

Does anyone hear if a tree falls in the city?
As a matter of fact, the arborists do, as they work seven days a week to clear the damage. It costs a bundle, too
by BERT ARCHER
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
June 30, 2007
There's nothing like a tree crashing into your backyard to get you thinking about the urban forest - though not in the way tree activists might like.

"Ugh, too many trees," says Riverdale resident Teodor Woeszczak, who had a Lombardi poplar tumble into his backyard during last Friday's storm. "It looks more like a forest. They grow too high and take all the sunshine away."

But Mr. Woeszczak was luckier than many of the unprecedented 6,000 people who have called the city for assistance with damaged or fallen
trees this year (last year's total was 4,500). He has a big family, and they all have chainsaws. By the end of Saturday, the tree was nicely
butchered and stacked...

Residents in Harbord Village are currently taking advantage of Prof. Kenney's protocol, which enables non-arborists to count, measure and assess all the trees in their neighbourhoods....

Read the entire article here (pdf)

This is an article by resident Alastair Brown that appeared in the Globe and Mail on November 23, 2007. It concerns the 2005 fire on Robert Street and its aftermath.

DISASTER RECOVERY: Years of living stressfully
by Alastair Brown
Globe and Mail, November 23, 2007

Excerpt:
Two years ago, my neighbours and I watched helplessly as fire leapt hungrily across the roofs of our houses. By the time the inferno had been brought under control, flames and water had destroyed or seriously damaged nine homes.

Built in the 1880s, our row of Victorian houses on Robert Street in downtown Toronto possessed both the virtues and drawbacks of such housing. In many ways, they represented the very heart of the city's architectural heritage...

Read the entire article here (pdf)

Read online at the G&M