One of numerous vanished racetracks in Toronto history was the Hillcrest Racetrack, which attracted throngs of horse-racing enthusiasts to a spot near the intersection of Davenport and Bathurst almost exactly a century ago. Hillcrest Racetrack opened in August 1912. Despite its name, it was located not on the crest or top of the Davenport hill…
Tag: toronto
Opening of Toronto’s Lyric Theatre, 1909
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Grand Opening of New Jewish Theatre Quite an Up-to-Date Playhouse with All Sorts of Conveniences — Notables See the Play. From the Toronto Star, May 5, 1909 With waving of flags and the making of many speeches, the new Jewish theatre, called the Lyric, at Agnes and Teraulay streets, was opened last night as the…
Phil Givens, Toronto’s new mayor (1963)
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Hyman Gewirtz, who migrated from Belce, Poland to Canada in 1912, had little idea that some 50 years later, a son of his would become mayor of the big cosmopolitan city of Toronto, according to a story in the Canadian Jewish News of December 13, 1963. A tailor, Gewirtz settled in the Euclid and Dundas…
Memoirist grew up Jewish in Toronto’s Little Italy
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A comment that Saul Cantor’s daughter, Rochelle, made more than five years ago inspired him to write his memoirs. She said to him, in 2000, “I know some of the things about your life, but there are a lot of things I don’t know,” he writes in his recently published book, From Then to Now:…
Should Toronto police have an automobile? (1911)
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In 1911, a time when there were roughly 3,000 automobiles in the entire city of Toronto, the public debated whether it was time for the Toronto police department to acquire its first automobile so as to be able to keep up with the criminal element. The Star Weekly’s subtitles argued that it was indeed time:…
Historic photograph of 1812 veterans was taken in 1861
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No, it isn’t an actual photograph — just a sketch of a photograph of ten surviving veterans of the War of 1812 to 1814, who assembled at Rosedale some 50 years after the war, on October 23, 1861. The photo-sketch appeared in the Toronto Evening Telegram in 1910, just more than a century ago and…
Jew-baiting goes on in Victoria Street
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In this brief item, which appeared in the Toronto Star of October 28, 1910, a woman is brought into police court in connection with an episode in which she came to the defense of a Jewish mother and daughter who were being “stoned” on Victoria Street. Such incidents were certainly not unique in the Toronto…
Book examines city’s Jewish community
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Etan Diamond, an American academic, has written a full-length study of the Orthodox Jewish community of Toronto and its pioneering movement northward from the inner city into the suburbs in the postwar era. Published recently (2001) by the University of North Carolina Press, Diamond’s And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia…
How teachers tame school-children in the Ward
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Making Men Out of Street Arabs By W. F. Wiggins From Toronto Saturday Night Magazine, December 1, 1906 From an educational standpoint there is no more interesting institution in Toronto than the Elizabeth street public school, popularly known as “the school of the Ward.” Here have been taught and trained some of the worst boys…
Profile of city’s Jews — and rich Mr. Singer (1911)
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The Star Weekly ran this feature profile of “Toronto’s Hebrew population” in 1911, observing that some Jewish immigrants had risen, in only a few years, to the tops of their professions and that one — Jacob Singer — had become the biggest real estate owner in the city. The article also indicated that the Zion…
