Local History & Genealogy

Jane's walks this weekend!

Jane’s Walks will be held on May 4 and 5 in almost every neighbourhood in Toronto, as well as in many other Canadian centres and countries around the world. 

Named to honour writer and civic activist Jane Jacobs, several Toronto walks feature Toronto Public Library branches, including:

• Layers of Leaside (Leaside Branch)
• Lawrence Park at 100+ (Locke Branch)
• A Tour of the International Market (Maria Shchuka Branch) 
• Not a boring walk (Mount Dennis Branch)
• Making Riverside: a behind the scenes of Queen Street East (Queen/Saulter Branch)
  
• Birch Cliff: Scarborough Old and New (Taylor Memorial Branch)
• Layers of Thorncliffe Park (Thorncliffe Branch)
  
• Historical Walking Tour of Yorkville (Yorkville Branch)
  

Toronto’s Jane’s Walks are promoted thematically, and there are walks to suit a variety of interests: the history buff, the nature lover, the athlete, to name just a few. With so much to choose from, it will be difficult for me to decide which walks to take. Should I get a different perspective on the neighbourhoods that I know, or explore ones that are less familiar to me?  Either way, I am bound to learn a lot, and, as a bonus, get out and enjoy what promises to be wonderful weather with a group of kindred spirits.

For those who prefer a more sedentary approach to discover the city, check out our Toronto Neighbourhoods Map to easily locate hisroric maps, pictures, and other library resources.

Toronto Public Library helps celebrate Leaside 100

 

Reception for returned troops, 1919

The Leaside neighbourhood is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year. It was incorporated as a town by an act of the provincial legislature passed on April 23, 1913.

The centennial festivities include an archival exhibit, the Layers of Leaside, that explores the area’s cultural landscape over many years.

The exhibit will be on display at Toronto Public Library's Leaside Branch from Tuesday April 23 to Sunday April 28, 2013. (The branch will be open for regular service, 1:30 to 5, on that Sunday only.)

Jane Pitfield and Geoff Kettel will lead several historical walking tours in connection with the exhibit, including one on Sunday April 28 from 1:30 to 3:30 starting and ending at Leaside Library.

Thorncliffe Park proposed plan, 1956?

The Leaside 100 committee used some materials for its exhibit from the collections of the Toronto Public Library.  Geoff Kettel found the Toronto neighbourhoods map on the library’s website especially helpful to locate materials quickly.  “The library has the most accessible collections of all of the resources we used,” he claimed.  The neighbourood map links users to library records about Leaside and neighbouring Thorncliffe Park, which became part of the town in 1954. 

Broadway Avenue, 1949

These include digital pictures and photographs of Leaside from the Special Collections Department, Toronto Reference Library. Dating back to 1900, the majority of the images were created in the 1940s and 1950s by James Victor Salmon (1911-1958), a gifted amateur photographer who lived in Leaside for part of that time. His images of buildings, streetscapes and events are an invaluable record of the town’s mature phase of development after the Second World War.

Leaside by Jane Pitfield

Catalogue records for books about Leaside and Thorncliffe Park also are provided on the library's website.  Most titles are available for reference in the Leaside Branch Local History Collection.  Housed in the Leaside Room, the collection also includes pictures, maps and scrapbooks that library staff has gathered from a variety of sources over the years.  

Toronto's community newspapers are an important but often overlooked source of local information. Leaside Branch has several local papers. The Leaside Advertiser, published from 1941 until about 1999, claimed to be "Leaside's home newspaper - the ONLY published and printed in the town" in 1960 when our holdings begin. Current papers in the collection include Leaside-Rosedale Town Crier, which started in 1981 as the Leaside Villager, and Leaside Life News.  Microfilm copies of some titles are available at the Toronto Reference Library. There are some gaps in the library's holdings, and we would appreciate hearing from anyone who could help us fill them.  

First Leaside Library, 1946

Not surprisingly, the history of library service in Leaside is well documented at Leaside Branch. Key resources are photographs of library services and facilities, and annual reports of the Leaside Public Library Board, which operated from 1944 to 1967 when the Town of Leaside joined with the Township of East York to form the Borough of East York.

A selection of materials from the Leaside Branch Local History Collection will be added to Toronto Public Library’s Digital Archive later this year. 

 

 

 

 

Toronto Parks: the aspiration of the ‘Commons’

I live near Dufferin Grove Park. I take my wee lad there at least twice a week. I’ve met friends for coffee on its benches, enjoyed camp fires at its fire circles, seen live theatre and summer dance shows, watched bicycle polo(!) last summer, and most recently, witnessed the community’s outpouring of support for other people in Canada engaged in social struggle. It’s got me thinking about the place parks in Toronto enjoy in people’s lives and about their history as the ‘third’ place.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg argues that societies need ‘third’ places – distinct from one’s home and one’s work. Such places provide a neutral ground where people can gather and interact, and “promote social equality by levelling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.” (further details)

As a setting for recreation, public association and grassroots politics, Toronto parks have a long and colourful history. In the late 19^th century, parks were for the moneyed classes to stroll through in their finery. They were certainly not for athletic endeavours or children’s play. Children were fined and put in jail for doing so! (Yesterday’s Toronto 1870-1910, p.85)

By the early 20^th century, authorities had perhaps decided that jailing ten year olds was not in the best interests of their education and sociability, and parks in Toronto had become places of sport, recreation and entertainment, including diving horses on Toronto Island (no kidding!), and horse racing at Dufferin race track across the street from my neighbourhood park. The Dufferin race track was the first track in Canada to use a starting gate, as well as the first to implement finish line cameras. The things you learn, eh?

By the 1930s, parks in Toronto would feel the weight of the world’s problems much like the rest of the city, becoming staging grounds for exactly the ‘grassroots politics’ (read: opposition) that Oldenburg envisioned decades later. The Toronto Star reports on August 16, 1933 (in this excellent database available with your library card): “Charging mounted policemen, motorcycle exhausts belching oily fumes and scores of constables on foot put a stop to speech making, but failed to disperse thousands of persons gathered in Allan Gardens last night at a meeting announced by the Worker’s ex-Service Men’s League.” The meeting – call it a demonstration – was called to “protest against treatment accorded war veterans,” and drew crowds of men, women, children, including one “young woman [who] was seen to strike a motorcycle officer across the face with a folded newspaper as she was bumped by a wheel of his machine.” Allan Gardens has since been the site of many demonstrations and political gatherings, oft focussed on problems of urban poverty and homelessness.

The date of that action is significant. I was perusing the Toronto Star’s Pages of the Past to find reportage of the famous ‘Riot of Christie Pits’, another (much larger) political action that is inextricably bound up in another Toronto park.

The Riot was unplanned, unorganized, but in no ways un-political. It was also the largest such action in Toronto’s history before or since. Reflecting the tensions of the depression and the xenophobic prejudice that was dominating European politics, the riot brought the politics of the old world to the new, and in so doing, galvanized the immigrant communities in the city and paved the way for the multi-culturalism we take for granted today.

A baseball game between teams that were primarily Anglo-Protestant on one side and Jewish on the other spilled into a punch-up when young Anglo-Saxon fans unfurled a large white banner of a Swastika in the stands. The fight ranged across the park for possession of the banner, and left at least one Jewish youth with substantial injuries. Boys on bicycles then zipped to the immigrant neighbourhoods south of Bloor with the story that a Jew had been killed. Thousands of young men (mostly) responded and a post-game dust-up morphed into a full-scale street fight.  It was the ‘culmination of a summer of conflict, and remains a disturbing, even legendary, part of the city’s history.’ You can read all the details in Levitt and Shaffir’s The Riot at Christie Pits. Or, for the Youtube generation, watch this:

You will note the showcasing of a Toronto library. ;)

With so much of any city’s space occupied by private property – whether for residence, commerce, finance, education, or governance, public space becomes more and more important to the vibrancy (even the existence) of civic life. Toronto parks have a long and proud tradition of stepping into that role; a tradition built on circumstance and perhaps chance, but also on people’s willingness to fight for it. Dufferin Grove comes by its community feistiness honestly.

                                       

 

Sources

The Great Good Place: cafés, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day. (Oldenburg, Ray, 1989)
307.0973 O47  - Humanities and Social Sciences, 2nd Fl., Toronto Reference Library

Old Toronto: a selection of excerpts from Landmarks of Toronto, by John Ross Robertson (Robertson, J. Ross, 1954)
971.3541 R - Canadiana, 6th Fl., North York Central Library

Riot at Christie Pits. (Levitt, Cyril et. al., 1987)
971.3541 L - Canadiana, 6th Fl., North York Central Library

Toronto Star's Pages of the Past - online archive includes over 30,000 complete issues. The digitized full-image version of the complete contents of the Toronto Star newspaper since 1894. Available at any Toronto Public Library branch (with valid library card)

Yesterday's Toronto 1870 - 1910. (Shapiro, Linda, 1997)
971.3541 SHA - Canadiana, 6th Fl., North York Central Library

 

 

 

Fire Insurance Plans for Toronto

This guide was revised to include recent online Additional Sources which help in navigating the atlases.

Getting Started

Toronto Public Library has fire insurance plans for the City of Toronto dating from 1858 to 1973. Digitized versions of many of these maps up to 1910 are available on our website. 

Sometimes called Goad's atlases, after Charles E. Goad who initiated fire insurance mapping in Canada in 1875, fire insurance plans are large scale aerial drawings of municipalities. They often show not only the locations of current buildings, but their size, shape and construction materials, as that was important information for insurers.

Fire Insurance Plans: why are they useful?

Today, researchers find fire insurance plans an invaluable information source, using them for a variety of purposes, including to:

• narrow the date when a building was constructed.
• determine earlier street numbers of individual buildings and previous names of streets which may have changed.
• locate a building on the street and in relation to other buildings on the block. This is useful in resolving confusion that sometimes happens in directory research. Sometimes a directory will indicate that a building, which is now located in mid-block, as being at the corner if no closer buildings to the corner have yet been built.
• determine the lot number, block number (if there is one), and the registered plan number of a property. These can be useful with assessment and title searches.
• indicate buildings that may have been demolished or recently constructed.
• track how buildings have been used and altered over time.
• indicate a building in relationship to its neighbourhood, such as schools, churches, industries.
• show how a neighbourhood has changed over the years.
• indicate sites where soil may be contaminated from former noxious uses.

Detail of Atlas of the city of Toronto and vicinity. (Goad) 2^nd ed. 1893 Plate No. 47

For a guide to the symbols and colours used on the fire insurance maps, see the detail below from the   Insurance plan of the city of Toronto, Ontario. (Goad) 1880 edition revised to 1889.  Plate No. 3.

   

Searching the Library Website for Digitized Toronto Fire Insurance Maps

Suggested keywords and subjects:

• fire insurance Toronto [name of neighbourhood] e.g. fire insurance Toronto Riverdale

Sorting the results by date will make them easier to use.  If you know the Plate Number, enter the year of the atlas and the Plate Number preceded by two zeros  e.g.

• goad toronto 1884 0025
• goad toronto 1889 0007

Note: for 1910, zeros on Plate Numbers are not required.

What's my Toronto neighbourhood called?

Toronto fire insurance maps must be searched on the website by neighbourhood, not street.  To find out what the area you want is called, check out the neighbourhood map. Fire insurance plans focused on built up areas, so that the digitized plans available on this website are primarily for the old city of Toronto, or former municipalities, Weston for example. This neighbourhood map link also allows you to retrieve other digitized items such as photographs, as well as information on the local history books the library owns. To limit your search to maps for your neighbourhood, click " microforms, maps and computer disks" on the left of the screen , under "Type".

 

Where to Find Toronto Fire Insurance Plans from Toronto Public Library

Location code: TRL SC: Toronto Reference Library, Special Collections 

                       TRL HSS: Toronto Reference Library, Humanities & Social Sciences

                       NYCL CA: North York Central Library , Canadiana Department

• 1858 Boulton Atlas of Toronto. (W. S. and H. C. Boulton)  
  TRL SC

      1858 Boulton digitized maps  

• 1880 Insurance plan of the city of Toronto, Ontario. (Chas.E. Goad) 1st ed. 
  TRL SC 

                Not digitized

•  1884 Atlas of the city of Toronto and suburbs from special survey and registered plans showing all buildings and lot numbers. (Goad) 1st edition   
  TRL SC   NYCL CA

         1884 Goad digitized maps

• 1889 Insurance plan of the city of Toronto, Ontario. (Goad) 1880 edition revised to 1889  
  TRL SC

        1889 Goad digitized maps  Note: mislabelled as 1892

• 1890 Atlas of the city of Toronto and vicinity from special survey... (Goad) 2nd ed.  
  TRL SC

        1890 Goad digitized maps 

•  1893 Atlas of the city of Toronto and vicinity.(Goad) 1st revision of 2nd edition.  
  TRL SC

         1893 Goad digitized maps 

• 1894 Atlas of the city of Toronto and vicinity.(Goad). 2nd revision of 2nd edition. 
  TRL HSS (microfilm only)

                  Not digitized

• 1899 Atlas of the city of Toronto and vicinity...(Goad) 3rd revision of 2nd edition.  
  TRL SC

        1899 Goad digitized maps

• 1903 Atlas of the city of Toronto and vicinity...(Goad) 4th (last) revision of 2nd (1890) edition. 
  TRL HSS (microfilm)  TRL SC (photostat)   NYCL CA (catalogued as 1890 edition)

                  Not digitized

•  1904 Area of fire, wholesale district, Toronto, Canada April 19, 20. (Goad)
  TRL SC (T1904/4Msm) and NYCL CA

         1904 digitized map Great Fire Toronto

• 1903 - 1918 Insurance Plans for the city of Toronto (Goad)  
  TRL SC (912.71354 G573.6 microfilm only)

                  Not digitized

• 1910 Atlas of the city of Toronto and suburbs. (3 vols). (Goad) 
  TRL SC

               1910 Goad digitized maps 

• 1912 Atlas of the City of Toronto and suburbs (3 vols)  3rd edition (1910) revised to May 1912. (Goad) 
  TRL HSS (microfilm)   NYCL CA  (1912 not indicated in date)

                  Not digitized

•  1914 - 1918 Insurance plan of the city of Toronto [including Toronto Juntion]. (Goad) 
  TRL SC (microfilm only)

                  Not digitized

• 1923 Atlas of the city of Toronto and suburbs  (3 volumes) (Goad) 2nd revision of 3rd edition (1910). 
  TRL HSS  (microfilm only)

                  Not digitized

• 1924 Atlas of the city of Toronto and suburbs  (3 volumes) (Goad) 2nd revision of 3rd edition (1910). 
  TRL SC  NYCL CA (Ontario Genealogical Society collection)

                  Not digitized

•  1904- 1951 Insurance Plans of the City of Toronto 
  TRL SC (microfiche in 9 vols., various years)

                  Not digitized

•  1952 - 1973 Insurance Plan of the City of Toronto. (Underwriters' Survey Bureau)  
  TRL SC   NYCL CA  (1952-1969 only)

                  Not digitized

 

Additional Sources:

City of Toronto Archives has digitized selected plates from fire insurance plans, 1880 to 1924

Access by Plate Number is provided on  Nathan Ng's blog "Recursion"

Library and Archives Canada has digitized the following editions:

• 1884
• 1890
• 1894
• 1899
• 1903
• 1910 vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3
• 1912 vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3

Detailed information on all Toronto and Canadian fire insurance plans is available in:

Catalogue of Canadian fire insurance plans 1875-1975

 

For further assistance contact:

Special Collections Department, Toronto Reference Library, 416-393-7156

Canadiana Department, North York Central Library, 416-395-5623

 

Land Records

Getting Started

This guide has had minor revisions in June 2013.

Historical land records in Ontario are with the Ontario government, either with the Archives of Ontario or in local land registry offices. The Archives of Ontario website has useful research guides on land records. The Toronto Public Library houses various indexes and guides to land records  as well as microfilm copies of some material from the Archives of Ontario and Library and Archives Canada. The Canadiana Department at North York Central Library also has material related to North York.

Searching the Library website

Suggested Subject and Keywords

•   Land grants [and province or township) e.g. Land grants Ontario
•   Land titles [and country or province] e.g. Land titles Ontario 
•   Probate records [and location] e.g. Probate records Peel County

 

 Suggested Titles

•     Alphabetical index of the names of the grantees of land ..in..Quebec 1763 -1890

•     Back to the land: a genealogical guide to finding farms on the Canadian prairies

•     Complete house detective

•     From settler to land owner: the First Heir & Devisee Commissions...

•     Genealogy in Ontario: searching the records

•     Index to the Upper Canada land books [1787 - 1841]

•     Ontario Land Registry Office records: a guide

•     Researching Canadian land records

•     [Grants of Crown Lands in Upper Canada, 1787 - 1798] in Seventeenth - Twentieth Report of the Archives of Ontario 1928 - 1931

 

Using Online Resources

Recommended Websites  

 Genealogy - Land Records 

For early Upper Canada/Canada West  records you should first consult Library and Archives Canada Upper Canada Land Petitions database that provides more than 82,000 references to names of petitioners. If you find a reference of interest to you, note the microfilm, volume, bundle and page numbers in order to easily find the digitized images of this land petition. Note: the Help link is very useful in order to find the images you want.

Canadian County Atlas Project shows landowner names as of the 1870s and 1880s in Ontario.

In Library Resources 

(primarily microfilm/microfiche)

        Ontario Archives Land Records Index 1790 - 1920

        Ontario Land Patents 1793 - 1852

       Land petitions for Upper Canada and Canada West 1763 - 1865

        Land petitions for Lower Canada 1764 - 1841 (check the online index)

        York County land records 1797 - 1876

        York Township assessment rolls 1882 - 1899

 

 

For further assistance contact: 

Canadiana Department, North York Central Library, 416-395-5623

Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Toronto Reference Library, 416-395-5577

 

Walk the walk Toronto style

Walking tours are a wonderful way to discover Toronto.  Tours are as varied as the city, and focus on everything from neighbourhoods to architectural landmarks, artwork, literary sites, ravines, river valleys and much more.  Toronto Public Library’s website is a good place to start your tour plan. 

If you prefer to explore the city at your own pace, consider borrowing tour and guidebooks from our collections. 

A few recent titles are Stroll: psychogeographic walking tours of Toronto, Shawn Micallef’s personal take on 32 neighbourhoods, and Larry Richard’s University of Toronto: the campus guide: an architectural tour, which covers 170 buildings in nine walks of the university's three campuses. 

Some older books also are helpful. My personal favourites are Patricia McHugh’s masterful Toronto architecture: a city guide and Greg Gratenby’s comprehensive Toronto: a literary guide, which provides 58 walking tours showcasing Canadian and international authors who have spent time in the city.

The library has produced historical walking tours of five Toronto neighbourhoods: Kensington Market and College Street, the Danforth, Kew Beach, Deer Park and Lawrence Park.  These can be borrowed or viewed digitally; copies of the latter two titles still are available to buy at selected library branches. 

Many self-guided walking tours are online. The library links to recommended websites and the City of Toronto provides a self guided walking tours database.

If you have difficulty getting around or are feeling lazy, take an armchair tour.  In addition to books and internet links, the library has a good selection of DVDs from the Structures television program featuring Toronto places, past and present.

For those who prefer guided tours, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM Walks) and Heritage Toronto give  free walks in many parts of the city all spring and summer.  Toronto Public Library is partnering with Heritage Toronto and the North Toronto Historical Society for a tour of Lawrence Park on September 10 at 10:30 am.  Other organizations also provide guided walks.  

The success of the annual Jane’s walk honouring Jane Jacobs – 170 were planned in Toronto on May 7 and 8 - demonstrates how Torontonians love to show off their city.  Building on this idea of citizen-guided walks, the City of Toronto is offering organizations and individuals the opportunity to create self-guided tours, with a limited number of grants up to $500 to cover production costs.