Susan Goldenberg At 8:20 a.m., June 13, George Bullay finishes his soft-boiled egg, toast and coffee, butts his cigarette in the ashtray, washes his hands, picks up the garbage and takes it to the waste disposal closet at the end of the hallway. At 8:25 when he opens the door he is aghast to see …
Between 1967 and 1983 when Toronto was divided into boroughs, the boundary line between the City of Toronto and the borough of North York partly went through Havergal College at Avenue Road and Lawrence Avenue! Some classes therefore were in Toronto and others in North York, in the same building! .September 17, 1926 will mark …
Susan Goldenberg On October 16, 1952 North York career politician Fred (Frederick Joseph) McMahon was in criminal court. He wasn’t on trial. He was representing in his other role as a private practice lawyer, Canada’s most notorious bad guy, serial bank robber and prison escapee Edwin Alonzo Boyd, The law says everyone, including those accused …
“The first twelve years of my life I lived on the second floor of the funeral home R. S. Kane started by my parents Robert Simpson and Gwendolyn Kane in 1950 in a former residence at the northwest corner of Yonge and Sheppard,” John Kane told me recently. “Dempsey’s hardware store was our neighbour. “The …
Susan Goldenberg In 1954 when she was twenty-three Beverley Bell, then a Victorian Order nurse, met J. (John) Douglas Salmon, one of only four black medical students at the University of Toronto, through his sister. He graduated in 1955 and they married in 1956. Like her, he achieved remarkable success; he became the first black …
Susan Goldenberg “Trailblazer” is the word most used about North Yorker politician, anti-racism and community activist Beverley Salmon (1930-2023). Her father was black; her mother, white.. She was founding chair in the 1960s of the Toronto Board of Education’s Black Liaison Committee, promoting anti-racism training for teachers and Black Heritage studies.. In1979 she became the …
Susan Goldenberg On Sunday November 2, 1930 a northwest North York farmer’s cabbage field near the Toronto Aerodrome located in North York at Dufferin and Wilson, became an inferno when a stunt flying joyride plane spiraled into it. All on board, the pilot Harry Teggart and his two passengers sisters Jean and Kathleen McColl were …
Susan Goldenberg Pioneer Christmases in Ontario were do-it-yourself decorations, gifts, meals, entertainment, far different from today’s commercialism. The pioneers’ small cabins lacked space for a Christmas tree. Instead, evergreen boughs were fashioned into garlands that were hung throughout the cabin and on the outside of the front door. The decorations were a mixture of natural …
Susan Goldenberg Here’s more information on the fascinating multi-generation family saga attached to the historic North York home at 111 Harrison Road that we introduced you in our last newsletter.. The saga begins with Christopher Harrison, born in Yorkshire, England in 1755, who emigrated to New Jersey in at eighteen, becoming a horse groom. During …
Susan Goldenberg North York’s large York Cemetery, at Beecroft Road, one block west of Yonge Street between Sheppard and Park Home Avenues near the North York Civic Centre, has a veterans’ section, rows of small stones dedicated to individual veterans. According to a group called the Friends of York Cemetery, there were 237 veterans interred …
