Black Creek Living History Project

In 2010 the York Woods branch took on a massive undertaking to create the Black Creek Living History website, which chronicles the changes that have taken place in the Black Creek neighbourhood throughout the past sixty years. The project included a bus tour, speaker series and the recording of interviews with Black Creek residents. The purpose of the project was to create a portal that people could use to see how the neighbourhood has changed from rural to suburban in a short amount of time.

Selections of the interviews with Black Creek residents, available on the website as videos and transcripts, shed a different light on the neighbourhood than what is normally presented through the media. Long-term residents of the Black Creek area talk about how the neighbourhood has changed through the years, as well as what their community means to them. There are also wonderful photos such as the one above, which shows what the south west corner of Finch Ave West and Jane St looked like in 1962.

Below is a clip from one interview that talks about the rapid growth of the Jane-Finch community: