What do you think?
Rate this book
The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood
From the 1840s until the Second World War, waves of newcomers who migrated to Toronto – Irish, Jewish, Italian, African American and Chinese, among others – landed in ‘The Ward.’ Crammed with rundown housing and immigrant-owned businesses, this area, bordered by College and Queen, University and Yonge streets, was home to bootleggers, Chinese bachelors, workers from the nearby Eaton’s garment factories and hard-working peddlers. But the City considered it a slum, and bulldozed the area in the late 1950s to make way for a new civic square.
The Ward finally tells the diverse stories of this extraordinary and resilient neighbourhood through archival photos and contributions from a wide array of voices, including historians, politicians, architects, storytellers, journalists and descendants of Ward residents. Their perspectives on playgrounds, tuberculosis, sex workers, newsies and even bathing bring The Ward to life and, in the process, raise important questions about how contemporary cities handle immigration, poverty and the geography of difference.
The Ward finally tells the diverse stories of this extraordinary and resilient neighbourhood through archival photos and contributions from a wide array of voices, including historians, politicians, architects, storytellers, journalists and descendants of Ward residents. Their perspectives on playgrounds, tuberculosis, sex workers, newsies and even bathing bring The Ward to life and, in the process, raise important questions about how contemporary cities handle immigration, poverty and the geography of difference.
320 pages, Paperback
First published May 12, 2015
16 people are currently reading
415 people want to read
About the author
John Lorinc
17 books14 followersJohn Lorinc is an award-winning journalist who has contributed to Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Saturday Night, Report on Business, and Quill & Quire, among other publications, and was the editor of The Ward Uncovered: The Archaeology of Everyday Life (Coach House Books, 2018) and The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood (Coach House Books, 2015). He has written extensively on amalgamation, education, sprawl, and other city issues. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for his coverage of urban affairs.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
November 2, 2022
The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood was the gift I received last year at my work’s Secret Santa event. The giver must have known me and done her homework, or lucked out on a book topic I love: Toronto history. In this compilation of short essays from 2015, 48 authors wrote over sixty stories about the area known as The Ward. Bordered by College and Queen to the north and south and Yonge and University to the east and west, The Ward housed immigrants in densely populated, yet often rundown homes. For over one hundred years from the 1840’s until the Second World War, waves of immigrants, most specifically Italians, Jews, Chinese, Irish and blacks came to settle in The Ward and set up their businesses.
The Ward provided an area where these immigrant populations would be welcomed, and various authors wrote about the multicultural harmony which even led to mixed marriages. One of my favourite chapters was “Paper Pushers” by Ellen Scheinberg, about the paperboys who peddled the news, often to earn money for their impoverished families. Kristyn Wong-Tam wrote “Remembering Toronto’s First Chinatown”, which only later relocated further west to Spadina. Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris often visited The Ward to make paintings of its houses, revealed in “Lawren Harris’s Ward Period” by Jim Burant.
In a wave of urban renewal, the City of Toronto gradually expropriated lands and razed buildings in The Ward to expand hospitals, erect office buildings and build the (then) new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square. The Italian, Jewish and Chinese immigrants resettled to establish new communities. Little of The Ward is left, aside from a few row houses on the northwest corner of Gerrard and Bay, the four peaked gables running from 181-187 Dundas Street West and the former Wineberg apartment building on the northeast corner of Dundas and Elizabeth. Patrick Cummins even wrote a chapter on these areas that didn’t get demolished and explained the buildings’ histories and why they were left standing.
I have found that books that compile short essays by different authors are not always the most flowing of reads. The lack of continuity in writing styles makes an uneven reading experience after only a few chapters. Yet in this case, I could go on reading without feeling restless. The writers kept their chapters between three and seven pages, and each one was supplemented by archival photos from that specific area. It was a read I couldn’t put down, and will gladly share it with others.
July 19, 2017
Recently I had to go into the hospital and my friends knowing that I am not only a history buff, but also a Toronto history buff, gave me The Ward as a present to read during my stay.
This book is uniquely done. It is a study of the what was known as The Ward, located in the area mentioned above. There are over 60 stories and and essays in the book that were written, today and earlier looking back at the area and so many articles that were written at that time.
The Ward is also full of pictures that look at the Ward from all angles, work, play, and the awful living conditions of the area. It talks about the mixture of people, many newly landed immigrants, that found themselves living in the area together. Also told very well is the stories on how these people were viewed by the middle and upper class citizens of Toronto. It was a very racist view.
I really enjoyed The Ward and would highly recommend it. Thanks guys!
This book is uniquely done. It is a study of the what was known as The Ward, located in the area mentioned above. There are over 60 stories and and essays in the book that were written, today and earlier looking back at the area and so many articles that were written at that time.
The Ward is also full of pictures that look at the Ward from all angles, work, play, and the awful living conditions of the area. It talks about the mixture of people, many newly landed immigrants, that found themselves living in the area together. Also told very well is the stories on how these people were viewed by the middle and upper class citizens of Toronto. It was a very racist view.
I really enjoyed The Ward and would highly recommend it. Thanks guys!
July 21, 2015
Excellent, fascinating history of a neighbourhood--I loved the short essay/chapters, which gave a sense of the breadth and richness of the subject, and also the myriad short personal stories and amazing photos. I could read another collection just like this one. I wish there were more books like this about Toronto.
November 13, 2024
“The Ward is a disembodied notion now, found more in memory than in physical form.”
The short review: it took me a long time to get through The Ward, but it was 100% worth it! I learned so much about Toronto’s forgotten and hidden history that I didn’t know before.
* * *
The much, much, much longer review:
The Ward is broken down into dozens of short 2–3 page essays, each covering a topic to do with The Ward—an area that was enclosed within College and Queen, University and Yonge. From tales about architecture and design (including a proposed Federal Avenue, which was never built, but eventually became the first stage of Toronto’s underground PATH; there’s an important lesson to be learned from the failure of Federal Avenue: “Large planning gestures may have dangerous blind spots and unintentional impacts for the people who stand in the way. When we approach city-building … we must ask ourselves, where are our blind spots? We need to question whether these grand civic plans are more important than the people who actually inhabit the city”), to stories about the impact of the Eaton factories on the Ward and its inhabitants, to discussions of the Elizabeth Street playground and how it led to Toronto’s playground movement and understanding of the importance of free spaces for children to play (“[Consider the] social costs of not providing public recreation … ‘Which are cheaper? Prisons or playgrounds?”), there are so many eye-opening things to be learned within these pages.
“There are uncanny parallels between the circumstances in which playgrounds were established in The Ward in the 1910s and those of today. Then, as now, it was a gilded age, with huge fortunes ostentatiously displayed alongside conditions of abysmal poverty and environmental desecration. Then, as now, the waves of immigration that enabled economic and urban growth elicited a mixture of reactions, from a welcoming, visionary form of humanitarianism to moral panic fuelled by nativism and deep resentment from some quarters that the marginalized and the poor should benefit from tax supported programs.”
”The story of the establishment of the Elizabeth Street Playground in The Ward should remind us of what we have lost in recent decades, and inspire us to put public recreation back on the urban agenda.”
For anyone who is interested in some of the lesser-known histories of Toronto, this book is for you. I found it absolutely fascinating, and really enjoyed learning more about my city’s past, especially the parts that have been kept under wraps and hidden away for years. I’ll definitely be thinking about this one every time I walk in the area that used to be The Ward. Although it’s nearly unrecognizable from back then, a few traces do still exist.
”To find The Ward today, we must imagine our way back into a complicated world whose physical traces have been systematically expunged. Yet The Ward’s deeply compelling stories, and its wider legacy, remain woven into the fabric of a global city now defined by the diversity it first encountered well over a century ago, within a few cramped blocks of the downtown. Now, as then, we still struggle with questions about difference and deprivation, heritage and renewal, equity and political exclusion.”
The book even includes a story from Toronto’s own Kristyn Wong-Tam, which explores how Toronto’s first Chinatown, located in The Ward, was demolished and its residents forcibly displaced in order to build the new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square that would eventually take up a majority of the area. The rest of the neighbourhood eventually underwent “urban renewal” as blocks of houses were razed for government and office buildings and hospitals to be built in their place.
One essayist described the few older buildings that remain along a stretch of Dundas as follows: “They’re like those lone gravestones poking up through the grass of a long-neglected, largely abandoned cemetery. You know there are hundreds of bodies buried there, but there are only one or two gravestones left to draw you visually.”
The book also contains dozens of historic photographs, a number of them from famous photographers (such as Arthur Goss, who is even mentioned as a character in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, and William James) who documented moments of life in the Ward and other parts of early 20th-century Toronto that would otherwise have gone unrecorded. These photos are “heartbreaking and haunting, and offer a poignant reminder of a long-lost time and place … [They] provide future generations with a rich visual record of the complex history of Toronto in the early twentieth century.”
Of particular interest to me was the essay by Alina Chatterjee and Derek Ballantyne that looked at the parallels between The Ward’s clearance (which took place with little concern for the displacement of the area’s residents) and the “revitalization” of Toronto’s Downtown East area in the 1960s, mainly George Street, whose residents currently include “new immigrants, people living in poverty, and those with severe mental illnesses and/or addictions. It’s a community largely invisible to most Torontonians. George, in short, is home to those with nowhere else to go.” As it undergoes another round of revitalization today, we must consider how to incorporate social and community infrastructure in order to create a liveable neighbourhood—as seen with the redevelopment of Regent Park, which “put people ahead of development interests.”
It also felt extremely relevant to learn about the vast number of reports that were produced about The Ward, which was seen one of Toronto’s “slum” neighbourhoods. Many of these reports recommended changes that the city could make when considering new developments, low-income communities, and immigrants. Yet few of those recommendations were taken into account, and the same continues to be true over a century later.
“Toronto, it seems, has all but forgotten what happened in and to The Ward. But unless we read into the stories of past social injustices, how can we directly confront the poverty and racism in our city today?”
Most of all, it was a shame to see just how much of Toronto’s rich history has been torn down and bulldozed over—and to realize that the same thing is still happening today. The “thoughtless eradication” of so many unique parts of the city “offers up some kind of lesson, although Toronto clearly has made versions of this mistake many times since.”
* * *
“History … is everywhere and it exists in all communities, even while the communities themselves may be constantly changing. … We need to appreciate the larger and broader histories that exist around us, and imagine our way into undocumented and unrecognized lives. We need to rebuild these forgotten, alternative histories so we can better understand our present, as well as our future.”
The short review: it took me a long time to get through The Ward, but it was 100% worth it! I learned so much about Toronto’s forgotten and hidden history that I didn’t know before.
* * *
The much, much, much longer review:
The Ward is broken down into dozens of short 2–3 page essays, each covering a topic to do with The Ward—an area that was enclosed within College and Queen, University and Yonge. From tales about architecture and design (including a proposed Federal Avenue, which was never built, but eventually became the first stage of Toronto’s underground PATH; there’s an important lesson to be learned from the failure of Federal Avenue: “Large planning gestures may have dangerous blind spots and unintentional impacts for the people who stand in the way. When we approach city-building … we must ask ourselves, where are our blind spots? We need to question whether these grand civic plans are more important than the people who actually inhabit the city”), to stories about the impact of the Eaton factories on the Ward and its inhabitants, to discussions of the Elizabeth Street playground and how it led to Toronto’s playground movement and understanding of the importance of free spaces for children to play (“[Consider the] social costs of not providing public recreation … ‘Which are cheaper? Prisons or playgrounds?”), there are so many eye-opening things to be learned within these pages.
“There are uncanny parallels between the circumstances in which playgrounds were established in The Ward in the 1910s and those of today. Then, as now, it was a gilded age, with huge fortunes ostentatiously displayed alongside conditions of abysmal poverty and environmental desecration. Then, as now, the waves of immigration that enabled economic and urban growth elicited a mixture of reactions, from a welcoming, visionary form of humanitarianism to moral panic fuelled by nativism and deep resentment from some quarters that the marginalized and the poor should benefit from tax supported programs.”
”The story of the establishment of the Elizabeth Street Playground in The Ward should remind us of what we have lost in recent decades, and inspire us to put public recreation back on the urban agenda.”
For anyone who is interested in some of the lesser-known histories of Toronto, this book is for you. I found it absolutely fascinating, and really enjoyed learning more about my city’s past, especially the parts that have been kept under wraps and hidden away for years. I’ll definitely be thinking about this one every time I walk in the area that used to be The Ward. Although it’s nearly unrecognizable from back then, a few traces do still exist.
”To find The Ward today, we must imagine our way back into a complicated world whose physical traces have been systematically expunged. Yet The Ward’s deeply compelling stories, and its wider legacy, remain woven into the fabric of a global city now defined by the diversity it first encountered well over a century ago, within a few cramped blocks of the downtown. Now, as then, we still struggle with questions about difference and deprivation, heritage and renewal, equity and political exclusion.”
The book even includes a story from Toronto’s own Kristyn Wong-Tam, which explores how Toronto’s first Chinatown, located in The Ward, was demolished and its residents forcibly displaced in order to build the new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square that would eventually take up a majority of the area. The rest of the neighbourhood eventually underwent “urban renewal” as blocks of houses were razed for government and office buildings and hospitals to be built in their place.
One essayist described the few older buildings that remain along a stretch of Dundas as follows: “They’re like those lone gravestones poking up through the grass of a long-neglected, largely abandoned cemetery. You know there are hundreds of bodies buried there, but there are only one or two gravestones left to draw you visually.”
The book also contains dozens of historic photographs, a number of them from famous photographers (such as Arthur Goss, who is even mentioned as a character in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, and William James) who documented moments of life in the Ward and other parts of early 20th-century Toronto that would otherwise have gone unrecorded. These photos are “heartbreaking and haunting, and offer a poignant reminder of a long-lost time and place … [They] provide future generations with a rich visual record of the complex history of Toronto in the early twentieth century.”
Of particular interest to me was the essay by Alina Chatterjee and Derek Ballantyne that looked at the parallels between The Ward’s clearance (which took place with little concern for the displacement of the area’s residents) and the “revitalization” of Toronto’s Downtown East area in the 1960s, mainly George Street, whose residents currently include “new immigrants, people living in poverty, and those with severe mental illnesses and/or addictions. It’s a community largely invisible to most Torontonians. George, in short, is home to those with nowhere else to go.” As it undergoes another round of revitalization today, we must consider how to incorporate social and community infrastructure in order to create a liveable neighbourhood—as seen with the redevelopment of Regent Park, which “put people ahead of development interests.”
It also felt extremely relevant to learn about the vast number of reports that were produced about The Ward, which was seen one of Toronto’s “slum” neighbourhoods. Many of these reports recommended changes that the city could make when considering new developments, low-income communities, and immigrants. Yet few of those recommendations were taken into account, and the same continues to be true over a century later.
“Toronto, it seems, has all but forgotten what happened in and to The Ward. But unless we read into the stories of past social injustices, how can we directly confront the poverty and racism in our city today?”
Most of all, it was a shame to see just how much of Toronto’s rich history has been torn down and bulldozed over—and to realize that the same thing is still happening today. The “thoughtless eradication” of so many unique parts of the city “offers up some kind of lesson, although Toronto clearly has made versions of this mistake many times since.”
* * *
“History … is everywhere and it exists in all communities, even while the communities themselves may be constantly changing. … We need to appreciate the larger and broader histories that exist around us, and imagine our way into undocumented and unrecognized lives. We need to rebuild these forgotten, alternative histories so we can better understand our present, as well as our future.”
April 8, 2021
Read for my book but easy to enjoy for a broad audience. The book consists of shorty vignettes about the central Toronto neighbourhood that hosted ‘difference’. A substantial Black community lived in what was then called Macaulaytown in the mid- 19th century. Then Jews, Italians, Chinese- and a reputation as a dangerous slum. The Ward was in the way of late 19th and early 20th development, from City Hall to Eaton’s, so down it came, along with its rich history. Wonderful photographs and social history in this well done book.
March 13, 2022
Really liked this book, great piece of local history that I frankly knew absolutely nothing about. All the vignettes and photographs really helped give a true sense of the what the Ward was like. Bumped to 5 stars because I keep thinking about it.
July 17, 2019
A really good edited collection from Coach House books that looks at the history of The Ward, an immigrant community in downtown Toronto that was demolished after World War II in the name of civic redevelopment. Featuring a diverse selection of authors the pieces which are only 2-3 pages in length look at the history of The Ward in different ways and through diverse eyes making for a really strong book.
"By the early 1880s, eight churches, including Holy Trinity and British Methodist, served a growing neighbourhood of about a thousand people...It was still a predominantly working-class area with pockets of poverty, whose residents were mainly of British, Scottish, Irish or African origin." 13
"Between 1871 and 1991, Toronto's population exploded, from 56,000 to over 376,000-an almost sevenfold increase that drove outward expansion and placed enormous increase on municipal infrastructure." 14
"Foreign-born residents, moreover, now accounted for almost 10 percent of the population, and a significant proportion came from non-English speaking countries. (The Ward's residents were predominantly Jewish and Italian in the early twentieth century. The area became increasingly populated by Chinese bachelors after the First World War and the passage of the Exclusion Act in 1923. The Ward's Jews migrated to Kensington Market while the Italians decamped to College west of Bathurst.)" 15
"The streets of this 'slum' teemed with newcomers who were visibly, audibly and culturally different from the majority. Today, one might describe the area using journalist Doug Saunders' resonant phrase, 'arrival city.'" 15
"Nativist sentiment was palpable, and especially directed at The Ward's Chinese residents. As a 1922 Globe article about The Ward all but shouted, 'Moral leprosy spreads.' The message was clear." 18
"In the mid-1930s, Lieutenant Governor-General Herbert Bruce recommended the development of modern public housing projects following his inquiry into slum conditions around the city. His proposal led to the post war demolition of hundreds of derelict east-end row houses and the subsequent construction of Regent Park, itself the subject of a massive redevelopment effort that has sought to undo some of the damage inflicted by well-meaning housing reform." 22
"Besides the coming and going of buses, there is lots of work taking place here as The Ward has become an institutional hub, with hospitals and courthouses, government and private-sector offices." 29
"Not surprisingly, the first Chinese immigrant in Toronto, recorded in the city directory of 1878 as Sam Ching, worked as a laundryman at 9 Adelaide Street East. By 1922, Toronto had 301 Chinese laundries, twenty of them in The Ward, the heart of which would soon develop into the city's first Chinatown." 39
"After the introduction of the prohibitive head tax within the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, most men were forced to leave their families behind in China. In 1921, there were only thirteen Chinese families in Toronto, nine of them living in The Ward. At that time, over half of the 2,134 Chinese recorded in the city census did laundry work." 40
"(King's favourable view of foreigners bears little resemblance to his record as prime minister, when the federal government adopted highly discriminatory measures, such as a moratorium on Chinese immigration in 1923, the refusal to admit Jews seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in the 1930s and the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.)" 58
"No division exists as starkly today in Toronto as the one that separated St.John's Ward to the west of Yonge Street from St. James Ward to the east. The east side of Yonge was Protestant, wealthy and respectable...The Ward, by contrast, was where the rich went for vice and the poor huddled together in one-room apartments in falling-down shacks." 61
"In the late nineteenth-century, public health had become a hot topic, with British, American and European public health experts racing to contain epidemics using a combination of vaccines, sanitation and enforceable quarantines." 91-92
"The Ontario Temperance Act of 1916 led to the closing of all bars and liquor stores in the province." 95
"Bootlegging also proved to be an extremely lucrative business for some of these small-scale entrepreneurs. Luftspring notes that selling illegal liquor allowed his father to purchase fourteen houses, with money leftover to buy his wife furs and diamonds." 96
"In 1927, the Conservative government of Ontario premier George Ferguson repealed the Temperance Act, brining an end to prohibition and establishing the Liquor Control Board of Ontario in its place. The end pf prohibition spelled the demise of many of these illegal operations." 97
"Boarding houses on Centre and Elizabeth streets overflowed in winter with Italian navvies returning from work building the Canadian Pacific Railway. Maybe they took some seasonal labour with the Toronto Street Railway, or in some other segment of Toronto's burgeoning construction industry...It was common at that time for single Italian men to emigrate repeatedly-to come and go, between Toronto and Italy, between Toronto and New York." 100
"A worldwide recession, which began in 1873 and lasted more than two decades, resulted in large numbers of unemployed men flooding into Toronto throughout the 1880s and 1890s." 117
"Before the outbreak of the Second World War-the precise dates are not certain-the company decided to shut down its Ward operations and lay off its thousands of workers. Smaller garment manufacturers could supply Eaton's with products at prices cheaper than the cost of producing them in house. Moreover, demand for prime downtown land, for office buildings and institutional development, outstripped the value of those plants." 139
"Unable to get jobs because of the colour of their skin, they mostly went into two lines of work: laundries and cafes. The cafes required more start-up capital, and involved long hours, remaining open from early in the morning until late at night, seven days a week. The owners often lived on the premises to keep costs down." 149
"Many of these restaurants survived and even thrived, but were forced to relocate to nearby Kensington Market by the 1970s and 1980s." 153
"The workers were forced to admit defeat after holding out for four months. The ILGWU was seriously weakened, and 'for a long time' after this strike, a union official recalled, 'the T. Eaton Company would not hire any Jews.' The Ward's immigrant Jewish community was devastated. Although Jewish clothing workers could seek jobs at other firms, Eaton's had been their largest employer. As a result, members of the Jewish community were forced to explore other occupational options outside of the shmatte trade." 158
"When the city of Toronto razed much of the lower Ward in the late 1950s to make way for a new civic square, slum clearance was the preferred solution for dealing with derelict and inconveniently situated neighbourhoods. By the 1960s, however, residents and planners began to recognize that the vast public housing projects that often followed slum eradication created new, and arguably more severe, social crises." 164
"Ultimately, the congregation's westward move from the heart of The Ward to University Avenue prodded both prophetic and prescient. Overcrowding in The Ward, propelled by an almost sixfold increase in its Jewish population in the early twentieth-century, catalyzed a significant population shift toward Bathurst Street." 175
"As interesting as it is to chart the Park Lots' evaluation into the imperfect grid of today's Toronto, the 660-by-6,600-foot plots granted by Graves to a new founded gentry erased any possibility for a common goal of a planned city." 177
"From the 1880s to the 1930s, the 'commercial centre' of this first Little Italy was Centre Avenue and Elm Street, and fixtures like Glionna's Hotel, just a block north, which historian John Zucchi describes as 'the first saloon for Italian sojourners in Toronto.'" 181
"Like thousands of Jews fleeing the threat of pogroms in Eastern-Europe, Moses Brody left Galician Poland in the early 1890s and made his way to Toronto. When he arrived, Moses boarded in the home of a family member, Sigmund Brody, at 73 Chestnut Street. It was Sigmund who introduced Moses to junk Peddling. By 1896, Moses was lodging at the home of Samuel Greenbaum, another peddle from Galicia, at the rear of 11 Centre Avenue. That same year, he was able to send for his wife, Sara, and their five children, and they lived together at 16 Edward Street. Two years later they had another daughter. Moses continued peddling until 1901, when he had saved enough capital to set up a small grocery store at 109 Elizabeth Street. His eldest son, Harry, however, continued to work as a travelling salesman during the early twentieth-century. After losing his spouse in 1902 to heart disease, Moses married his second wife, Hannah, and they had four children together. By 1911, the family resided in a modern, multi-storied house on Draper Street, and Moses's occupation was listed as real estate...Between 1890 and 1899, there were over 200 Jewish peddles in Toronto. Many resided on Centre Avenue and Chestnut and Elizabeth streets. By 1916, the Jewish community had grown, and at least 600 paddlers now lived in the area." 197
Denna Nathanson, "A Peddler and his Cart: The Ward's Rag Trade": 197-201
"At the turn of the century, The Ward was home to 10,527 people, mostly Italians, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and a small sprinkling of Polish, Chinese, Negro and other foreign peoples, with a few English born,' the report noted." 223
"In the 1870s Canadian contractors following the lead of their American counterparts, were beginning to employ Italian immigrants on public projects, most notably the Welland Canal. They used Italian padroni (labour agents) to bring workers from Italy, and a number of the padroni in North America were from Laurenzana." 240
"By then, The Ward itself had begun to lose it cohesion, as the next generation of Jews and Italians literally moved upwards, geographically to the north and, metaphorically, within society." 247
"Nicole Baute, a Toronto Star reporter, wrote that Pierre Berton described the Village in that era as "our ghetto, our Bowery, our Chinatown, our East Side." In the 1930s, 'our Soho, our Montparnasse." By the 1950s and 1960s it was just 'the Village,' a bohemian enclave often compared to New York's Greenwich Village." 249
"The Ward became home to everyone who wasn't white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant." 272
"The Ward;s central location meant dramatic change was inevitable. There had been very little new development during 1930s and during the war. After 1945, however, 'renewal' planning became a priority." 282
"Construction crews broke ground in 1961 and finished the $31 million structure, which came to be called the 'eye of the government,' in 1965-fully a generation after that initial wartime proposal. Journalist and critic Robert Fulford dubbed the instantly iconic structure a 'break with the past.'" 289
"By the early 1880s, eight churches, including Holy Trinity and British Methodist, served a growing neighbourhood of about a thousand people...It was still a predominantly working-class area with pockets of poverty, whose residents were mainly of British, Scottish, Irish or African origin." 13
"Between 1871 and 1991, Toronto's population exploded, from 56,000 to over 376,000-an almost sevenfold increase that drove outward expansion and placed enormous increase on municipal infrastructure." 14
"Foreign-born residents, moreover, now accounted for almost 10 percent of the population, and a significant proportion came from non-English speaking countries. (The Ward's residents were predominantly Jewish and Italian in the early twentieth century. The area became increasingly populated by Chinese bachelors after the First World War and the passage of the Exclusion Act in 1923. The Ward's Jews migrated to Kensington Market while the Italians decamped to College west of Bathurst.)" 15
"The streets of this 'slum' teemed with newcomers who were visibly, audibly and culturally different from the majority. Today, one might describe the area using journalist Doug Saunders' resonant phrase, 'arrival city.'" 15
"Nativist sentiment was palpable, and especially directed at The Ward's Chinese residents. As a 1922 Globe article about The Ward all but shouted, 'Moral leprosy spreads.' The message was clear." 18
"In the mid-1930s, Lieutenant Governor-General Herbert Bruce recommended the development of modern public housing projects following his inquiry into slum conditions around the city. His proposal led to the post war demolition of hundreds of derelict east-end row houses and the subsequent construction of Regent Park, itself the subject of a massive redevelopment effort that has sought to undo some of the damage inflicted by well-meaning housing reform." 22
"Besides the coming and going of buses, there is lots of work taking place here as The Ward has become an institutional hub, with hospitals and courthouses, government and private-sector offices." 29
"Not surprisingly, the first Chinese immigrant in Toronto, recorded in the city directory of 1878 as Sam Ching, worked as a laundryman at 9 Adelaide Street East. By 1922, Toronto had 301 Chinese laundries, twenty of them in The Ward, the heart of which would soon develop into the city's first Chinatown." 39
"After the introduction of the prohibitive head tax within the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, most men were forced to leave their families behind in China. In 1921, there were only thirteen Chinese families in Toronto, nine of them living in The Ward. At that time, over half of the 2,134 Chinese recorded in the city census did laundry work." 40
"(King's favourable view of foreigners bears little resemblance to his record as prime minister, when the federal government adopted highly discriminatory measures, such as a moratorium on Chinese immigration in 1923, the refusal to admit Jews seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in the 1930s and the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.)" 58
"No division exists as starkly today in Toronto as the one that separated St.John's Ward to the west of Yonge Street from St. James Ward to the east. The east side of Yonge was Protestant, wealthy and respectable...The Ward, by contrast, was where the rich went for vice and the poor huddled together in one-room apartments in falling-down shacks." 61
"In the late nineteenth-century, public health had become a hot topic, with British, American and European public health experts racing to contain epidemics using a combination of vaccines, sanitation and enforceable quarantines." 91-92
"The Ontario Temperance Act of 1916 led to the closing of all bars and liquor stores in the province." 95
"Bootlegging also proved to be an extremely lucrative business for some of these small-scale entrepreneurs. Luftspring notes that selling illegal liquor allowed his father to purchase fourteen houses, with money leftover to buy his wife furs and diamonds." 96
"In 1927, the Conservative government of Ontario premier George Ferguson repealed the Temperance Act, brining an end to prohibition and establishing the Liquor Control Board of Ontario in its place. The end pf prohibition spelled the demise of many of these illegal operations." 97
"Boarding houses on Centre and Elizabeth streets overflowed in winter with Italian navvies returning from work building the Canadian Pacific Railway. Maybe they took some seasonal labour with the Toronto Street Railway, or in some other segment of Toronto's burgeoning construction industry...It was common at that time for single Italian men to emigrate repeatedly-to come and go, between Toronto and Italy, between Toronto and New York." 100
"A worldwide recession, which began in 1873 and lasted more than two decades, resulted in large numbers of unemployed men flooding into Toronto throughout the 1880s and 1890s." 117
"Before the outbreak of the Second World War-the precise dates are not certain-the company decided to shut down its Ward operations and lay off its thousands of workers. Smaller garment manufacturers could supply Eaton's with products at prices cheaper than the cost of producing them in house. Moreover, demand for prime downtown land, for office buildings and institutional development, outstripped the value of those plants." 139
"Unable to get jobs because of the colour of their skin, they mostly went into two lines of work: laundries and cafes. The cafes required more start-up capital, and involved long hours, remaining open from early in the morning until late at night, seven days a week. The owners often lived on the premises to keep costs down." 149
"Many of these restaurants survived and even thrived, but were forced to relocate to nearby Kensington Market by the 1970s and 1980s." 153
"The workers were forced to admit defeat after holding out for four months. The ILGWU was seriously weakened, and 'for a long time' after this strike, a union official recalled, 'the T. Eaton Company would not hire any Jews.' The Ward's immigrant Jewish community was devastated. Although Jewish clothing workers could seek jobs at other firms, Eaton's had been their largest employer. As a result, members of the Jewish community were forced to explore other occupational options outside of the shmatte trade." 158
"When the city of Toronto razed much of the lower Ward in the late 1950s to make way for a new civic square, slum clearance was the preferred solution for dealing with derelict and inconveniently situated neighbourhoods. By the 1960s, however, residents and planners began to recognize that the vast public housing projects that often followed slum eradication created new, and arguably more severe, social crises." 164
"Ultimately, the congregation's westward move from the heart of The Ward to University Avenue prodded both prophetic and prescient. Overcrowding in The Ward, propelled by an almost sixfold increase in its Jewish population in the early twentieth-century, catalyzed a significant population shift toward Bathurst Street." 175
"As interesting as it is to chart the Park Lots' evaluation into the imperfect grid of today's Toronto, the 660-by-6,600-foot plots granted by Graves to a new founded gentry erased any possibility for a common goal of a planned city." 177
"From the 1880s to the 1930s, the 'commercial centre' of this first Little Italy was Centre Avenue and Elm Street, and fixtures like Glionna's Hotel, just a block north, which historian John Zucchi describes as 'the first saloon for Italian sojourners in Toronto.'" 181
"Like thousands of Jews fleeing the threat of pogroms in Eastern-Europe, Moses Brody left Galician Poland in the early 1890s and made his way to Toronto. When he arrived, Moses boarded in the home of a family member, Sigmund Brody, at 73 Chestnut Street. It was Sigmund who introduced Moses to junk Peddling. By 1896, Moses was lodging at the home of Samuel Greenbaum, another peddle from Galicia, at the rear of 11 Centre Avenue. That same year, he was able to send for his wife, Sara, and their five children, and they lived together at 16 Edward Street. Two years later they had another daughter. Moses continued peddling until 1901, when he had saved enough capital to set up a small grocery store at 109 Elizabeth Street. His eldest son, Harry, however, continued to work as a travelling salesman during the early twentieth-century. After losing his spouse in 1902 to heart disease, Moses married his second wife, Hannah, and they had four children together. By 1911, the family resided in a modern, multi-storied house on Draper Street, and Moses's occupation was listed as real estate...Between 1890 and 1899, there were over 200 Jewish peddles in Toronto. Many resided on Centre Avenue and Chestnut and Elizabeth streets. By 1916, the Jewish community had grown, and at least 600 paddlers now lived in the area." 197
Denna Nathanson, "A Peddler and his Cart: The Ward's Rag Trade": 197-201
"At the turn of the century, The Ward was home to 10,527 people, mostly Italians, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and a small sprinkling of Polish, Chinese, Negro and other foreign peoples, with a few English born,' the report noted." 223
"In the 1870s Canadian contractors following the lead of their American counterparts, were beginning to employ Italian immigrants on public projects, most notably the Welland Canal. They used Italian padroni (labour agents) to bring workers from Italy, and a number of the padroni in North America were from Laurenzana." 240
"By then, The Ward itself had begun to lose it cohesion, as the next generation of Jews and Italians literally moved upwards, geographically to the north and, metaphorically, within society." 247
"Nicole Baute, a Toronto Star reporter, wrote that Pierre Berton described the Village in that era as "our ghetto, our Bowery, our Chinatown, our East Side." In the 1930s, 'our Soho, our Montparnasse." By the 1950s and 1960s it was just 'the Village,' a bohemian enclave often compared to New York's Greenwich Village." 249
"The Ward became home to everyone who wasn't white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant." 272
"The Ward;s central location meant dramatic change was inevitable. There had been very little new development during 1930s and during the war. After 1945, however, 'renewal' planning became a priority." 282
"Construction crews broke ground in 1961 and finished the $31 million structure, which came to be called the 'eye of the government,' in 1965-fully a generation after that initial wartime proposal. Journalist and critic Robert Fulford dubbed the instantly iconic structure a 'break with the past.'" 289
October 7, 2016
A collection of stories on Toronto's first immigrant neighbourhood. This is a fascinating collection describing the unbelievable poverty, lack of housing, overcrowding in an area bounded by Queen, College, Yonge & University.
February 3, 2017
A very broad reaching and thorough overview of Toronto's lost St. John's Ward neighbourhood, now buried somewhere beneath Nathan Phillips Square and New City Hall. The Ward was the first stop of many immigrant families — first predominantly Jewish and Italian, later Chinese — as they arrived in Toronto.
This book is a collection of short stories and essays from a wide variety of authors. Some are excellent, most are good, and a few are thankfully short. The editors chose not to organize the pieces in chronological order, which they point out but don't explain in the intro, leading to a narrative that jumps all over The Ward's timeline. I found it interesting but difficult to keep straight, especially as many of the pieces mention the same people, places, or incidents.
Hidden at the back is a "ghost map", showing where The Ward's old streets align to today's buildings. I wish the map had been at the front as I only found it part way through reading. I really wanted two maps, side-by-side, one showing The Ward as it was in the 1920s and a second showing how it sits today. I also wanted to learn more about the expropriation and eventual demolition of most of The Ward to make way for Nathan Phillips Square, which is lightly covered but not in much detail. The City of Toronto archives have a pretty good collection of photos of the construction itself (http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/con...) but not much of The Ward coming down.
I would recommend the book if you're very curious about that part of Toronto's history, but suggest that you feel free to skip pieces and jump around. It's perhaps best considered as The Ward itself was: a somewhat motley collection whose sum is greater than its parts.
This book is a collection of short stories and essays from a wide variety of authors. Some are excellent, most are good, and a few are thankfully short. The editors chose not to organize the pieces in chronological order, which they point out but don't explain in the intro, leading to a narrative that jumps all over The Ward's timeline. I found it interesting but difficult to keep straight, especially as many of the pieces mention the same people, places, or incidents.
Hidden at the back is a "ghost map", showing where The Ward's old streets align to today's buildings. I wish the map had been at the front as I only found it part way through reading. I really wanted two maps, side-by-side, one showing The Ward as it was in the 1920s and a second showing how it sits today. I also wanted to learn more about the expropriation and eventual demolition of most of The Ward to make way for Nathan Phillips Square, which is lightly covered but not in much detail. The City of Toronto archives have a pretty good collection of photos of the construction itself (http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/con...) but not much of The Ward coming down.
I would recommend the book if you're very curious about that part of Toronto's history, but suggest that you feel free to skip pieces and jump around. It's perhaps best considered as The Ward itself was: a somewhat motley collection whose sum is greater than its parts.
September 12, 2017
The Ward was a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, bound by College Street, Queen Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue. For several decades of the late 19th and early 20th century, it was a highly dense mixed-used neighbourhood where waves of new immigrants would initially settle before establishing themselves. It was characterized by authorities in the 19th century as a slum. It was the centre of the city's Jewish community from the late 19th century until the 1920s and until the late 1950s, the home of the city's original Chinatown.
The old neighbourhood has wholly disappeared. The Ward was slowly demolished as land was expropriated for office buildings, hotels, Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall.
This book is a collections of essays written by a variety of people including authors, journalists, photographers, politicians, historians, doctors and nurses, etc. about the Ward. As such, there are many perspectives and interesting stories, with some of the stories being about the same thing but with a different twist. Did you know that "America's Sweetheart", Mary Pickford (aka Gladys Louise Smith), was born and lived in the Ward at 211 University Avenue? Though there is a hospital there now, there is a plaque commemorating that she'd lived there.
There are lots of great pictures in the book showing what the Ward looked like. It's hard to imagine because things have changed so much!
Blog review post: http://www.teenaintoronto.com/2017/09...
The old neighbourhood has wholly disappeared. The Ward was slowly demolished as land was expropriated for office buildings, hotels, Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall.
This book is a collections of essays written by a variety of people including authors, journalists, photographers, politicians, historians, doctors and nurses, etc. about the Ward. As such, there are many perspectives and interesting stories, with some of the stories being about the same thing but with a different twist. Did you know that "America's Sweetheart", Mary Pickford (aka Gladys Louise Smith), was born and lived in the Ward at 211 University Avenue? Though there is a hospital there now, there is a plaque commemorating that she'd lived there.
There are lots of great pictures in the book showing what the Ward looked like. It's hard to imagine because things have changed so much!
Blog review post: http://www.teenaintoronto.com/2017/09...
May 14, 2022
Such a great collection of essays, representing different communities within a neighbourhood that's not really talked about. Certainly I -- a born-and-raised Torontonian -- had no idea The Ward existed, and the book was an eyeopener.
Whether looking the themes of different cultures and how they tried to adapt, adjust and thrive within a still very Victorian city; the lives and conditions of the poor in this neighbourhood in the early 20th century; or even the discussion of the buildings and locales which once stood (and discussion of the preservation - or lack thereof - of sites with their own histories), it's a very educational read.
When I now pass Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, I'll now be aware (and respectful!) of the people who were there before.
Whether looking the themes of different cultures and how they tried to adapt, adjust and thrive within a still very Victorian city; the lives and conditions of the poor in this neighbourhood in the early 20th century; or even the discussion of the buildings and locales which once stood (and discussion of the preservation - or lack thereof - of sites with their own histories), it's a very educational read.
When I now pass Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, I'll now be aware (and respectful!) of the people who were there before.
March 18, 2017
This is a collection of essays about the Ward, a neighbourhood in Toronto that was home for multiple waves of immigrants arriving in the city before being largely demolished to make room for City Hall and Nathan Philips Square. It's a great collection of viewpoints, with different writing styles and different perspectives on a fascinating and largely lost piece of Toronto history. I learned a lot that I didn't know about this city. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. A handful of essays weren't to my taste, but since each one is only 2-4 pages long, it's easy to read through. Highly recommended!
May 29, 2017
Loved the short vignettes, it made for ready reading. A great book, loved it all.
December 28, 2022
Dit is een bijzonder boek: het biedt een caleidoscopische geschiedenis van 'The Ward', een overbevolkte, armmoedige en hyperdiverse wijk in het hart van Toronto. In talrijke bijdragen wordt het typisch imago van de stad als 'Toronto the Good', een plek waar enkel kuise, protestante, Engelse inwoners thuishoorden, beetje bij beetje bijgesteld.
Zoals dat gaat in bundels zijn niet alle bijdragen even goed geschreven of even interessant. Opmerkelijk genoeg zijn het de teksten van de redacteurs die me het minst van al konden bekoren. Beter redactiewerk had ook de overlap hier en daar net wat meer kunnen verminderen - al kan ik begrijpen dat in dit veelstemmig boek redactionele ingrepen tot een minimum werden beperkt.
Wat ik daarentegen maar moeilijk begrijp, is de ontoereikendheid van de fotobijschriften. Verschillende bijdragen gaan over foto's van 'The Ward', en dan in de eerste plaats het werk van Arthur Goss. Vreemd genoeg worden bij de talrijke illustraties geen fotografen benoemd: wie hun naam wil kennen, moet in de illustratieverantwoording duiken. Dat is weliswaar maar een klein gebrek: in de literatuur over Toronto verdient The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood een voorname plaats.
Zoals dat gaat in bundels zijn niet alle bijdragen even goed geschreven of even interessant. Opmerkelijk genoeg zijn het de teksten van de redacteurs die me het minst van al konden bekoren. Beter redactiewerk had ook de overlap hier en daar net wat meer kunnen verminderen - al kan ik begrijpen dat in dit veelstemmig boek redactionele ingrepen tot een minimum werden beperkt.
Wat ik daarentegen maar moeilijk begrijp, is de ontoereikendheid van de fotobijschriften. Verschillende bijdragen gaan over foto's van 'The Ward', en dan in de eerste plaats het werk van Arthur Goss. Vreemd genoeg worden bij de talrijke illustraties geen fotografen benoemd: wie hun naam wil kennen, moet in de illustratieverantwoording duiken. Dat is weliswaar maar een klein gebrek: in de literatuur over Toronto verdient The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood een voorname plaats.
July 31, 2023
Until fairly recently, I lived and worked very close to the area this book is about. I walked through parts of what used to be the Ward nearly every day for most of my adult life. I picked this up (at the awesome Spacing store) while staying with my kid in a hotel inside the boundaries of the Ward.
Did I know much about anything in this book? Not really.
This is excellent Toronto history — a series of essays of varying lengths, lots of great photography, maps and diagrams of Toronto in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, when the area dominated by commerce and government was mostly homes and small businesses, mostly immigrants, desperately poor.
The book is easy to pick up and leaf through, and it's also easy to get lost in. It will make you want to go on a little scavenger hunt for the locations it discusses (what’s left of them, anyway).
On top of that, and what surprised me most, was how the themes haven’t changed — land use, poverty, immigration, the role of government and social services.
It’s a book I can imagine taking with me back to the city next time I’m there to use as an itinerary for a very interesting walk.
Did I know much about anything in this book? Not really.
This is excellent Toronto history — a series of essays of varying lengths, lots of great photography, maps and diagrams of Toronto in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, when the area dominated by commerce and government was mostly homes and small businesses, mostly immigrants, desperately poor.
The book is easy to pick up and leaf through, and it's also easy to get lost in. It will make you want to go on a little scavenger hunt for the locations it discusses (what’s left of them, anyway).
On top of that, and what surprised me most, was how the themes haven’t changed — land use, poverty, immigration, the role of government and social services.
It’s a book I can imagine taking with me back to the city next time I’m there to use as an itinerary for a very interesting walk.
January 6, 2019
An interesting collection of stories about a lost area of Toronto. It’s amazing that the ward’s history is relatively recent but unknown to many Torontoians. Many of the social issues raised are still relevant today, such as funding for community spaces, transit for the inner core vs suburbs and public health.
Unfortunately the book suffers from the editing. The editors choose to present the essays in a seemingly random order, perhaps to reflect the chaotic nature of the ward. But it is hard to get a sense of the changing space and communities as we move back and forth between different eras. Many of the essays are also repetitive with each other. A linear or themed sections may have made a more cohesive narrative.
This is my pick for the TO library reading challenge in the category “a book set in Toronto”.
Unfortunately the book suffers from the editing. The editors choose to present the essays in a seemingly random order, perhaps to reflect the chaotic nature of the ward. But it is hard to get a sense of the changing space and communities as we move back and forth between different eras. Many of the essays are also repetitive with each other. A linear or themed sections may have made a more cohesive narrative.
This is my pick for the TO library reading challenge in the category “a book set in Toronto”.
June 8, 2020
Well. That was effing sad. Outlook on immigrants, mental health, and racism still pretty much the same from 1800s to now - as per this collection of The Ward's history.
I'm so sad but at the same time glad? (is that even the right word?) that this book is out there for Canadians to see how not far we've gone on segregation between poor and wealthy, races and cultures - fear of the newcomers succeeding - and when they actually succeed, make laws so they have to pay for succeeding... Or you know, just take away their land...sound familiar? *eyeroll* sooooo done with racism right now but if you want to see the ghost of The Ward come to life, this book is it.
It's a bit confusing going back and forth in time for each of the essays but the photographs and maps are just treasures.
Def recommend for all Torontonians.
I'm so sad but at the same time glad? (is that even the right word?) that this book is out there for Canadians to see how not far we've gone on segregation between poor and wealthy, races and cultures - fear of the newcomers succeeding - and when they actually succeed, make laws so they have to pay for succeeding... Or you know, just take away their land...sound familiar? *eyeroll* sooooo done with racism right now but if you want to see the ghost of The Ward come to life, this book is it.
It's a bit confusing going back and forth in time for each of the essays but the photographs and maps are just treasures.
Def recommend for all Torontonians.
March 2, 2019
Few sources and lots of meandering and unreliable anecdotes putting a personal spin on what their ancestors got up to. This book sadly muddies the water further and is of no value to the historical study of Toronto's Russian Jewish community that was known in the early part of the Twentieth Century as "The Ward".
Particularly abysmal is Ellen Scheinberg's "Strenge Brew". This is so lacking in anything that it seemed as if she wished to distract readers from what is in fact an important part of Ontario's history.
Avoid this book.
Particularly abysmal is Ellen Scheinberg's "Strenge Brew". This is so lacking in anything that it seemed as if she wished to distract readers from what is in fact an important part of Ontario's history.
Avoid this book.
May 14, 2025
The Ward focuses on a small section of inner Toronto that was once a neighborhood of immigrants, but it gives a great glimpse of the city overall in the 19th and early 20th century. It's so interesting to see how urban landscapes grow, change, and adapt to the needs of the community and the interests of those in power.
The many photographs were the highlight of this book, particularly since not much of what the authors describe still exist.
3.5 stars, and a useful preparation for my visit to Toronto next week.
The many photographs were the highlight of this book, particularly since not much of what the authors describe still exist.
3.5 stars, and a useful preparation for my visit to Toronto next week.
December 10, 2018
Interesting to learn about this period of time and place that no longer exists. However it is a compilation of subjective essays, it is not written as an unbiased documentary exercise. I would rather learn more about the Ward, than about the author's opinion of something going on in the Ward. What I found really surprising is that there are no works cited (!). Where does all the information for the essays come from?
November 19, 2022
A fantastic collection of short essays and stories about a neighbourhood in the heart of the city that no longer exists. I found myself frequently putting down the book and opening Google Maps on my computer to look at the present day locations and what few remnants of The Ward still exist today in between new growth and development.
A must-read history of this city.
A must-read history of this city.
July 24, 2019
Incredibly interesting account of the history of Toronto's first immigrant neighbourhood.
November 13, 2019
Very in-depth and interesting.
December 13, 2022
A series of very short essays exploring the history of an often overlooked part of Toronto’s history. There tends to be a lot of variety in the quality of the essays
June 29, 2023
It informative and really in depth
July 11, 2024
I was thrilled to find this book at the gift shop at the Spadina Museum, a gorgeous old restored house in Toronto. Toronto has been on my mind as I have learned that my grandfather was born and raised in the Ward (1888 to 1943). I loved the stories of people in this book and the photographs. The narratives capture specific eras and comment on how newcomers are treated. Well done!
December 8, 2025
The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood is a collection of 62 essays on the Ward, Toronto's first immigrant neighbourhood. These essays cover a range of topics from the slum-like living conditions, to the life of a Jewish peddler, to the Ward's red light district, stories about growing up and working in the ward, Prime Minister Mackenzie King's research and efforts to improve the housing conditions in the Ward, stories of discriminatory laws and behaviours that targeted residents of the Ward, and many other fascinating stories.
The Ward, which no longer exists (it is now home to Toronto's City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, and all the hotels and offices in the area), was always a home to immigrant families. It was first a Scottish and Irish neighbourhood, then in the 1850s, it was home to African-American slaves who fled to Toronto via the underground railroad. In the 1890s, the Ward became an Italian neighbourhood, then home to the Russians, Jews, and eventually, home to Toronto's original Chinatown.
Toronto's first Chinatown now looks like this:
What I enjoyed the most about this book were the series of historic photographs depicting the people of the Ward and what the Ward used to look like. It would have been nice to have before and after pictures. I would also have preferred if the essays were in chronological order. Finally, the reason why I'm not giving this book 4 or even 5 stars, is because most of the essays became quite repetitive and focused on similar (if not the same) topics. I think I read variations of the same introductory paragraph at least 10 times.
The Ward, which no longer exists (it is now home to Toronto's City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, and all the hotels and offices in the area), was always a home to immigrant families. It was first a Scottish and Irish neighbourhood, then in the 1850s, it was home to African-American slaves who fled to Toronto via the underground railroad. In the 1890s, the Ward became an Italian neighbourhood, then home to the Russians, Jews, and eventually, home to Toronto's original Chinatown.
Toronto's first Chinatown now looks like this:
What I enjoyed the most about this book were the series of historic photographs depicting the people of the Ward and what the Ward used to look like. It would have been nice to have before and after pictures. I would also have preferred if the essays were in chronological order. Finally, the reason why I'm not giving this book 4 or even 5 stars, is because most of the essays became quite repetitive and focused on similar (if not the same) topics. I think I read variations of the same introductory paragraph at least 10 times.
September 20, 2016
This is a trimmed down version of my review, to view the full review visit The Book Ramble.
The Ward tells the story of the, now demolished, original immigrant neighbourhood in Toronto’s downtown core. The history of this nieghbuorhood is told through a series of short essays, they vary in their length, their content, their points of view, and their arguments. There is a wide range of information and view points available to readers of The Ward. There is a lot to learn and a lot to argue about this forgotten neighbourhood.
I really enjoyed this book, it was such a smooth read. A lot of the focus of this book was of course on the very immigrants that the book mentions in its title. The Irish, Jewish, Chinese, and Italian immigrants that resided in this neighbourhood until city “improvements” forced them to relocate to other parts of the city. This book really makes you consider the ghosts of the city's past, and the things it has hidden away.
This book has a lot to offer to readers, there are a lot of different topics being taken on with various approaches. This is a diverse book with a lot of angles to it, which I loved. I highly recommend this book.
The Ward tells the story of the, now demolished, original immigrant neighbourhood in Toronto’s downtown core. The history of this nieghbuorhood is told through a series of short essays, they vary in their length, their content, their points of view, and their arguments. There is a wide range of information and view points available to readers of The Ward. There is a lot to learn and a lot to argue about this forgotten neighbourhood.
I really enjoyed this book, it was such a smooth read. A lot of the focus of this book was of course on the very immigrants that the book mentions in its title. The Irish, Jewish, Chinese, and Italian immigrants that resided in this neighbourhood until city “improvements” forced them to relocate to other parts of the city. This book really makes you consider the ghosts of the city's past, and the things it has hidden away.
This book has a lot to offer to readers, there are a lot of different topics being taken on with various approaches. This is a diverse book with a lot of angles to it, which I loved. I highly recommend this book.
August 9, 2015
The Ward is a captivating series of short essays full of interesting nuggets of history easily digested by the masses. I found myself drawn into the stories and tales shared, so much so that in numerous cases found myself suddenly filled with disappointment that the essay ended.
This peoples history is filled with little pieces of history of a former Toronto neighbourhood now taken up by shopping centre, city hall, embassies, office buildings. To observers of current social conditions of the city, key matters of policy which fill the pages of stories from the 1800s and mid 1900s, are still relevant today: the affordability of housing and adequate living conditions, a city divided between neighbourhoods of the wealthy and poor, of differences in the neighbourhoods of recent immigrants and established Canadians, the necessity of adequate transit connecting a city together. All of these issues remain to this day, a serious challenge for politicians and citizens alike. Indeed, the city-building of yesterday continues on today.
This peoples history is filled with little pieces of history of a former Toronto neighbourhood now taken up by shopping centre, city hall, embassies, office buildings. To observers of current social conditions of the city, key matters of policy which fill the pages of stories from the 1800s and mid 1900s, are still relevant today: the affordability of housing and adequate living conditions, a city divided between neighbourhoods of the wealthy and poor, of differences in the neighbourhoods of recent immigrants and established Canadians, the necessity of adequate transit connecting a city together. All of these issues remain to this day, a serious challenge for politicians and citizens alike. Indeed, the city-building of yesterday continues on today.
August 16, 2015
Excellent book -- well written and chock-full of interesting information and stunning archival photos. The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood tells the story of Toronto's first immigrant reception neighbourhood and the changes that occurred over the years. Contributors include descendants of Ward residents, politicians, historians, journalists and health care specialists. They offer varied perspectives on the dynamics of a downtown immigrant neighbourhood in transition.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews