Scadding Cabin is a 1794 log cabin on the grounds of Exhibition Place. It was constructed for a pioneer named John Scadding and is now the oldest surviving building in Toronto.
The cabin was originally built on the property of John Scadding, an immigrant from Devonshire, in order to fulfill his settlement duties to the Crown. The cabin stood at the east side of the Don River south of Queen Street East on a 253-acre land grant that stretched north from Lake Ontario to present-day Danforth Avenue. Scadding lived in the cabin until he returned to England in 1796.
When Scadding returned to York in 1818, he sold his property, and cabin, to a farmer named William Smith, who used the cabin as an outbuilding. The cabin remained in the Smith family until 1879 when the cabin was offered to the York Pioneers (Ontario’s oldest historical society, and the second-oldest historical society in Canada).
1879 was also the beginning of the Toronto Industrial Exhibition (later the CNE) and the York Pioneers worked with the Exhibition’s founders to move the cabin to its current site (2 Strachan Avenue) to celebrate the fair’s inauguration. The cabin was dismantled, moved and reconstructed by the York Pioneers on the grounds of the first Industrial Exhibition (now Exhibition Place) on August 22, 1879.
Current use
The York Pioneers currently operate Scadding Cabin as a museum. The cabin is furnished as a pioneer home from the 1830s to early 1840s, although there are artifacts that date back to the 1790s. The oldest item is a baby’s cradle, made by Scadding himself. Furnishings include two spinning wheels and a wool winder, equipment for making bread and butter, a candle mould and utensils for cooking on an open hearth.
Scadding Cabin is open during the CNE. The cabin is also open through special arrangements and for community events during the summer months such as Toronto’s Doors Open. In the past the cabin has been open during the Luminato Festival and annual CHIN picnic when these events are held at Exhibition Place.1
The Victory Peace Monument is located in Coronation Park, 711 Lakeshore Boulevard West, just beside Lake Ontario. Victory Peace was unveiled on November 14, 1995, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, built in honour of those who died.
Designed by John McEwan, a Toronto-born artist, the structure is made up of two bronze arcs that sit on the ground quite close to the lake. When looking at the monument from afar, it appears as though the arcs form the sides of a boat’s bow. You can see the lake peeking through an opening between the two arcs, as if you’re on the boat headed through the water. The other opening faces inland.
The powerful words SACRIFICE and HOPE are part of the monument, within engravings of maple leaves.
The words for “peace” in multiple languages are engraved on the plaques on the ground.
A plaque sits at the monument that says, in both English and French: “A tribute to all Canadians at home and overseas who served their nation with courage, hope and sacrifice during World War II”
A work entitled Cross Section, comprised of large bas-relief panels made from terra cotta, covers the walls of the underground passageway between Dundas subway station and the Atrium on Bay.
Installed in 1984, Cross Section was created by Canadian artist William McElcheran, For the installation, the terra cotta pieces were oven-fired in two-foot-square tiles prior to assembly.
William McElcheran conceived the Dundas subway stop as being a cross section of Toronto. It gave him an opportunity to sculpt and celebrate the increasing diversity of Toronto’s population.
You’ll notice in the work, the presence of the rotund business man in the trilby hat. The business man seems to be rushing somewhere in each panel, occasionally bumping into people, making them spill their parcels.
Artist William McElcheran (above, right) supervises the construction of his bas-relief art piece at Dundas subway station. In McElcheran’s words, “While the sculpture shows a busy cosmopolitan scene, it is also attempting to communicate the hopes carried in people’s hearts under their overcoats, and the dreams locked in their briefcases”. Photo taken for the Toronto Archives in April 1984.
“The Businessman” seems to be a recurring character in McElcheran’s works of art. His sculpture Businessman On A Horse, found in a small square at U of T’s St. Michael’s College, exemplifies this:
My earlier post for Businessman On a Horse can be found here if you’d like to check it out.
William McElcheran is also the sculptor of Untitled, found outside the Kelly Library, St. Michael’s College (U of T), 113 St. Joseph Street:
Click here if you’d like to read my post on Untitled.
Also true to McElcheran’s style and worthy of mention is his 1981 work Conversation, found on Stephen Avenue in downtown Calgary:
William McElcheran died in 1999, leaving behind an impressive legacy. In Toronto, he created two twenty foot high marble reliefs at WaterPark Place at the foot of Bay Street, and a monumental sculpture of Daedalus and Icarus for the head office of the DuPont Corporation in Mississauga. His piece entitled The Family in Guelph has been adopted as a symbol of that city.
Earlier this year a new park opened in downtown Toronto. Dubbed Love Park, it is located at the southern foot of York Street and Queens Quay (96 Queen’s Quay West, to be exact). The 2-acre park responds to the need for flexible public space in the southern Financial District and Harbourfront neighbourhood.
Talk about making ugly turn beautiful: the former use of this space was the York-Bay-Yonge eastbound off-ramp of the Gardiner Expressway. During 2016-17, the ramp was removed and the space reclaimed for public use.
The project timeline went something like this:
June 2020: Design
July 2021: Construction starts
Spring 2023: Construction complete
June 23, 2023: Park opens with ribbon-cutting ceremony and community celebration
Here’s how Love Park looks from above:
Disclaimer: Not my image
Love Park is a deliberate departure from the hard surfaces dominating downtown Toronto, with healthy existing mature trees retained and dozens of new trees being planted. Tree-lined sidewalks outline the entire perimeter and internal pathways of the park site, marking the transition into a calm urban refuge. Rolling elevated grassy mounds provide further buffer from the adjacent roadways and offer space to relax and enjoy the park at different vantage points.
Love Park’s pond was designed and built as a natural pond, which mimics a wetland and uses a natural water filtration system, not chlorine. Foggy pond water with a green hue can occur for a few weeks while the water system balances its water chemistry. The pond water remains safe and is monitored and maintained as required. The changing water hue and clarity can be affected by fluctuating water temperatures, rainwater, sun and shade.
Plenty of little critters around the park…
If you’d like to learn more about the creation of Love Park, click here to go to the architect’s website, Claude Cormier & Associés.
Time for another post from what I call From The Vaults – pictures and events from Toronto’s past. Here is a Toronto event I’ll never forget as long as I live. Twenty years ago, everyone that summer was asking…
…Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?
On Thursday, August 14, 2003 at 4:11 PM, everything stopped.
In my memory, two big events occurred in Toronto that summer of 2003: one was SARStock (click here to read my post on my general blog My-Ramblings) and the other was the power blackout that affected all of Ontario and parts of the northeast and midwestern United States. It was the world’s second most widespread power blackout in history, with 50 million people affected by the outage. For some, the blackout lasted a couple of days, for others it was as long as 14 days, depending on where you lived.
Ontario originally caught the blame for the gigantic outage, but over time the source would be traced to a stretch of road in suburban Ohio. Weak areas in the electricity grid of U.S. and Canada further exacerbated the situation.
For a high-level technical explanation of the situation, I’ve borrowed some text from blogTO.com.
Cause
August 2003 had been a scorcher. Hot weather and heavy demand for electricity had put the local grid in Ohio under unusual strain, causing power lines to sag into overgrown trees and short out. When the Eastlake coal-fired station near Cleveland went offline it was like knocking over the first in a line of 50 million dominoes.
One by one, power stations across the northeast U.S. became overloaded then automatically powered down as they tried to compensate for other downed stations in neighbouring areas. The blackout rolled northeast from Ohio, round Lake Erie into Ontario, knocking out power to cities and towns as it went.
Systematic faults meant tools used to track and monitor blackouts either failed or didn’t work as intended. Ontario was left 8,000 megawatts short – 500 megawatts usually spells trouble – as nuclear plants in Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington became hopelessly hobbled. When the blackout finally stabilized, 50 million people were left without power in the United States and Canada.
Maybe now they’ll learn to shut the lights off up there…
An American woman on a local newscast, trying to blame the outage on Canada’s power consumption
In Toronto…
My Memories of the 2003 Blackout in Toronto
At that time in my life I was still working at Canada Life Assurance in the downtown core of Toronto, at Queen Street and University Avenue. I remember the outage hitting just at the start of everyone’s commute home from work. It foiled a lot of attempts to get home that Thursday afternoon – the GO trains weren’t running, there was no subway, the downtown core was so clogged with cars that no one could move. Out of our team of about a dozen people at work, I was the only one who lived downtown so guess where everyone came for food, rest and some strategic planning to get home.
It was Vince’s day off that day so he was at home. He had put on a huge slow cooker of stew early in the day, which luckily was now ready. I had been unable to reach him to let him know there would be a dozen of us descending on the house; the phone lines were all overloaded and jammed so it was impossible to get through. It was a big surprise for him when a dozen people showed up on our doorstep for dinner! Over the course of the next 4-5 hours we all ate stew, had lots to drink and watched the Jarvis Street pedestrian parade and revelry from our balcony – oh, the sound from the streets! It was one really big party out there – the streets were jammed with people, cars and party fiends who were simply making the most of the unusual event.
Cell phones did not work during the blackout (no power=no functioning cell towers), so there were only land lines available (imagine no cellular service for a day!). Using my one wired phone on a land line, one by one my guests for the evening took turns calling their homes to arrange a pickup or to give a status update to their respective families.
When one has a dozen guests eating and drinking for any length of time, there is an inevitable need to use a bathroom. When you live in a high-rise, one of the downsides of a power failure is the lack of water (water is electrically pumped up to the units), so guess what – the toilets can’t flush. The bathroom turned into a communal toilet during the course of the evening (was I ever glad when the water came back on!). It was all good though – by the end of the evening everyone found their way home, be it by cab, shared ride or pick up from a family member (no Uber or Lyft in those days).
Along with many other things that day, the streetcars came to an abrupt halt.
For about three days, the hustle and bustle of Toronto came to a stop. People slowed down, became friendlier, and just seemed to enjoy life a little more during this unusual time. I have memories of Vince and I sitting in the food court in College Park, just killing time along with so many others. These were calm, happy, patient people – something you rarely find in downtown Toronto. Our part of the world, or so it seemed, had stopped all its rushing about and bustle.
There was a definite party atmosphere on Toronto streets during the blackout
Darkness descends on Toronto
Meanwhile, In New York City…
Chaos reigned supreme:
It was an amazing and unique time no matter where you lived in the blackout region. I’ll never forget that hot summer of 2003 when the lights went out.
So, where were you during the blackout that summer in Toronto? Please feel free to leave a comment or remembrance in the Comment form below.
A sombre Remembrance Day ceremony took place today around the Cenotaph at Old City Hall, 60 Queen Street West.
The City focused this year’s events around the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement that brought about the end of the Korean War. Other milestones honoured today were the 75th anniversary of Canadian participation in peacekeeping missions for the United Nations and the centennials of the Naval Reserve of Canada and HMCS York, a Royal Canadian Navy Reserve Division in Toronto.
The ceremonies began at 10:45 AM, starting with the singing of our national anthem, a reading of In Flanders Fields, a two-minute silence at 11:00, and a trumpeteer playing The Last Post:
A fly-past by the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association (CHAA)Mayor Chow delivered her Remembrance Day messageThe laying of wreaths on the CenotaphThe ceremony concluded with people leaving their poppies on the CenotaphA special “Toronto Remembers” presentation on Queen Street West, outside Old City Hall
Video of today’s ceremony at Old City Hall can be found here.
Other locations for today’s Remembrance Day ceremonies were:
Scarborough War Memorial: 2190 Kingston Road
East York Civic Centre – Memorial Gardens: 850 Coxwell Avenue
York Cemetery – Cenotaph: 160 Beecroft Road
York Civic Centre Cenotaph: 2700 Eglinton Avenue West
Etobicoke Civic Centre – Cenotaph: 399 The West Mall
Fort York National Historic Site: 100 Garrison Road
Banksy is the pseudonym of a UK-based street artist, political activist and film director, whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, Banky’s satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stencilling technique.
His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls and bridges throughout the world. Like Toronto’s own Elicser, Banksy’s art has a style which is instantly recognizable.
Here in Toronto we are fortunate to have his Guard with Balloon Dog (2010). It used to be on the exterior of what was formerly OPP headquarters in downtown Toronto. The building was torn down to make way for residential and commercial towers, but a section of the wall with the art was saved. Menkes, the company who redeveloped the site at One York Street, preserved the concrete slab and it now has a permanent home on the mezzanine level of One York Street.
There used to be 7 Banksy works scattered around Toronto, but several were destroyed or painted over. Now only two exist, including Guard With Balloon Dog.
Everything you could ever want to know about Banksy is located here.
Shooting “Guard with Balloon Dog” at One York Street
Here are some examples of Banksy’s work (disclaimer: only the first image is mine):
I came across this piece while I was visiting St. Austell in the UK. The work resides on a door beside the Cafe Tengo. If it’s not a genuine Banksy, it’s a great imitation.
It was another very busy Halloween night on Church Street once again this year. The weather was crisp and quite cool, but there was no rain to speak of. The turnout was massive, having a lot to do I’m sure with events re-energizing after COVID-19.
The mayhem ran from Carlton Street to Gloucester Street, and every inch of the street was packed with people. There were so many inventive and impressive costumes; people’s creativity never ceases to amaze me:
In the courtyard of Symphony Place at 71 Simcoe Street, there resides an artwork entitled Lineal Order by artist George Boileau.
Created in 1990, Lineal Order is composed of three elements: a shadow on the wall; the life-size figure of a man; and a smaller figure of a little boy, both wearing a long coat. Sculpted in bronze, the man is slim, middle-aged, and wears nothing more than an overcoat. If you face the man you will see his shadow on the wall behind him, a silhouette of his timeless figure.
There is another bronze figure across from him – a small boy, also wearing just a raincoat. Both the statues are standing in the same position, upright, arms at their sides in a relaxed manner. Unlike the man, the boy does not have wrinkles or physical signs of aging, but he expresses the same haunted expression.
According to the artist’s interpretation, the sculptures are about life across generations. The boy has yet to make his impression on the world, while man’s imprint can be seen on the wall behind. I’m unsure why both figures wear a raincoat, but I’m sure it symbolizes a relevant aspect of the piece.
Several of you will instantly recognize this very familiar site! Today we take a look at the Griffins (or Gryphons) guarding the main entrance of the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library at 239 College Street.
The figures were designed and constructed by architect Philip H. Carter and sculptor Ludzer Vandermolen. The griffins took their permanent place beside the entrance when the branch opened in 1995.
Edgar and Judith
Each griffin weighs 3 tonnes or 3000 kilograms and took about 1.5 years to make. Small clay models were approved by the Library Board, then enlarged and cast in fibreglass and wax before being sent to the foundry. Since they are so big, they were cast in different sections – about 12 parts for each statue. The bronze finisher was Vince Graham.1
The griffins have their own identity and heritage: the lion is Edgar (east side of door) and the eagle is named Judith. If you study the griffins for a while you will soon see various little animals embedded into each main figure.
Judith
Judith resides on the west side of the library’s main door. It is named for the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy.
Edgar
Edgar guards the east side of the library’s main door. He is named after the benefactor of the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books.
Near the griffins, but not part of them, is this owl. Prior to taking up residence at Lillian H. Smith branch it was situated at the entrance of the old Boys and Girls House library on St. George Street.
If you’d like to read about the history of Lillian H. Smith and the Toronto Public Library in general, here are a couple of interesting articles:
Yes, it needed To go. I lived nearby and would pass this hospital many times over the years. Looking forward…