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The Ward (formally St. John's Ward) was a
neighbourhood A neighbourhood (British English, Irish English, Australian English and Canadian English) or neighborhood (American English; see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural are ...
in central
Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
,
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, Canada, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many new immigrants first settled in the neighbourhood; it was at the time widely considered a slum. It was bounded by
College A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...
,
Queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
, and
Yonge Street Yonge Street (; pronounced "young") is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. Once the southernmost leg of provincial Hi ...
s and
University Avenue A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...
, and was centred on the intersection of Terauley (now Bay) and Albert Streets.


Population

For several decades of the late 19th and early 20th century, it was a highly dense mixed-used neighbourhood where successive waves of new immigrants would initially settle before establishing themselves. Characterized by authorities in the 19th century as a
slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...
, it was the home of refugees from the European
Revolutions of 1848 The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europea ...
, the Great Famine of Ireland, the
Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. T ...
, and then refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was the centre of the city's
Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
ish community from the late 19th century until the 1920s when the Jewish community moved west to
Spadina Avenue Spadina Avenue (, less commonly ) is one of the most prominent streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Running through the western section of downtown, the road has a very different character in different neighbourhoods. Spadina Avenue runs south ...
and
Kensington Market Kensington Market is a distinctive multicultural neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Market is an older neighbourhood and one of the city's most well-known. In November 2006, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canad ...
and was also, until the late 1950s, the home of the city's original
Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
, of many of the city's original
Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
residents centred on the
British Methodist Episcopal Church The British Methodist Episcopal Church (BMEC) is a Protestant church in Canada that has its roots in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) of the United States. History The AMEC had been formed in 1816 when a number of black congregations ...
, at 94 Chestnut Street, and of the city's Italian community until it moved west along College Street to
Little Italy Little Italy is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood. The concept of "Little Italy" holds many different aspects of the Italian culture. There are s ...
. The city's Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and numerous other non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants first established themselves in The Ward. Today, the area is considered a part of what the City of Toronto now calls the
Discovery District The Discovery District is one of the commercial districts in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has a high concentration of hospitals and research institutions, particularly those related to biotechnology. The district is roughly bounded by B ...
, the area having been consumed by the
central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...
. The old neighbourhood has not wholly disappeared. The short restaurant strip on the south side of Dundas Street between University Avenue and Bay Street still retains many buildings which were part of the Ward. The building in the right of the lead photograph in this article is still standing at Dundas and Elizabeth (it is now home to a Japanese restaurant). The YWCA at 87 Elm Street was originally the
Toronto House of Industry In 1834, the United Kingdom passed a new Poor Law which created the system of Victorian workhouses (or "Houses of Industry") that Charles Dickens described in ''Oliver Twist''. Sir Francis Bond Head, the new lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada in ...
, a workhouse established in the centre of the Ward in 1848 to serve impoverished residents. Also, a small group of row houses still stands on Elm Street just west of Bay Street, on the south side - possibly the last surviving remnant of the ward's residential character. The area was officially known as St. John's Ward,Escaped slaves helped build T.O.
/ref> one of the municipal wards that the city was divided into in the 19th century, but it quickly became known simply as "The Ward".


History


Pre-colonialism

The site where the Ward existed is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the
Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...
, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River (Ontario First Nations Maps, 2016). The area was also home to the
Taddle Creek Taddle Creek is a buried stream in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that flowed a southeasterly course about six kilometres long, from St. Clair Avenue west of Bathurst Street through the present site of Wychwood Park, through the University of Toronto ...
. Now a buried lake, it would have been a significant gathering spot for Indigenous people.


1800s

The first settler at the area was James Macaulay. He was granted 100 acres of land and divided up the land for houses. The area was named Macaulaytown in his honour. By 1834, the town was absorbed by the city and was renamed St. John's Ward. The house prices were fairly low and the town was considered a pleasant working-class neighbourhood. In the 1830s,
Thornton Blackburn Thornton Blackburn (1812–1890) was a self-emancipated formerly enslaved man whose case established the principle that Canada would not return slaves to their masters in the United States and thus established Canada as a safe terminus for the Under ...
—an
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
fugitive slave In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th century to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called free ...
—began acquiring several properties in the neighbourhood. Blackburn also provided recently arrived fugitive slaves with inexpensive housing. By 1850, many Black families settled in The Ward; five years later, the total Black population grew to 539. The earliest Jewish settlers in Toronto had come from Britain, the United States, or Western Europe. With only a few hundred Jewish citizens in the city, they settled in several neighbourhoods and mostly integrated with the rest of the city. In the 1890s, an influx of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe began arriving in Toronto. For the several thousand new arrivals, mostly impoverished and unable to speak English, the densely packed houses of The Ward became their new community. The Ward was also home to Toronto's first Chinatown as Chinese railway workers settled along York and Elizabeth Streets north of
Union Station A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...
.


1900s

The development of the neighbourhood caused much consternation in Toronto, including
anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
riots and government clearance efforts. In 1909, of The Ward were demolished to build the
Toronto General Hospital The Toronto General Hospital (TGH) is a major teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the flagship campus of University Health Network (UHN). It is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto along University Avenue's Hospital ...
. The neighbourhood also began to change in character. As the Jewish immigrants became more settled, they moved westwards to the
Kensington Market Kensington Market is a distinctive multicultural neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Market is an older neighbourhood and one of the city's most well-known. In November 2006, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canad ...
area and the Ward increasingly became a centre for Italian immigrants, who were then arriving in great numbers.Zucchi, p
36
Son to Italian immigrants, Johnny Lombardi was born in The Ward in 1915, and went on to found one of the first multilingual
radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
s in Canada,
CHIN The chin is the forward pointed part of the anterior mandible (List_of_human_anatomical_regions#Regions, mental region) below the lower lip. A fully developed human skull has a chin of between 0.7 cm and 1.1 cm. Evolution The presence of a we ...
in 1966. By the 1920s, most Italians had moved west of Bathurst Street and the College-Clinton area had emerged as the city's major
Little Italy Little Italy is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood. The concept of "Little Italy" holds many different aspects of the Italian culture. There are s ...
. By the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the Ward had become Toronto's first Chinatown.
Central Neighbourhood House Central Neighbourhood House (CNH) is a settlement house in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1911 by social reformers J.J. Kelso and Elizabeth Neufeld, it is Toronto's second oldest settlement house. It is currently located in the Regent Park ar ...
was established in 1911 as a
settlement house The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and s ...
to assist new immigrants in the Ward. In 1911, the City of Toronto's Department of Health began an investigation into the Ward. This was initially resisted by the
Toronto City Hall The Toronto City Hall, or New City Hall, is the seat of the municipal government of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and one of the city's most distinctive landmarks. Designed by Viljo Revell and engineered by Hannskarl Bandel, the building opened in ...
, but was eventually overturned by then-newly appointed Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Charles Hastings who commissioned the in-depth study. The 1911 report detailed over 5, 000 homes that contained various health risks, from leaky roofs and peeling wallpaper to overflowing outdoor privies. A section in the report described the severity of overcrowding, due to both a housing shortage and subdivisions by landlords to extract the most money. It was common for the houses in the Ward to have six or more people share a single, "filth-ridden" room, and for families to build houses in their backyard to fit more people. The shocking report gave rise to various reforms for the Ward that can be seen as bitter sweet: While the response to the report birthed stricter housing regulations, food safety measures and education programs, the report also resulted in the livelihoods of the individuals and the communities in the Ward to be dispersed. From the 1920s the Ward was slowly demolished as land was expropriated for office towers and hotels, and, most prominently, the first Chinatown, centred on Elizabeth Street, was expropriated in the 1950s to make way for
Nathan Phillips Square Nathan Phillips Square is an urban plaza in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It forms the forecourt to Toronto City Hall, or ''New City Hall'', at the intersection of Queen Street West and Bay Street, and is named for Nathan Phillips, mayor of Toro ...
, named after a mayor of Toronto. Most businesses there moved West to establish what is now considered the "old"
Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
, centred at Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street. For many decades, the area was almost wholly commercial and institutional, but recent years have seen a return of residents to what used to be the Ward, with multiple condominium towers being erected in the area.


Notable people

*
Thornton Blackburn Thornton Blackburn (1812–1890) was a self-emancipated formerly enslaved man whose case established the principle that Canada would not return slaves to their masters in the United States and thus established Canada as a safe terminus for the Under ...
– an
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
fugitive slave In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th century to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called free ...
who started Toronto's first taxicab company * George Ethelbert Carter – the first Canadian-born black judge * Rev. Thomas Henry Jackson – one of the last Ministers of the British Methodist Episcopal Church on 94 Chestnut St * Johnny Lombardi – an
Italian Canadian Italian Canadians ( it, italo-canadesi, french: italo-canadiens) comprise Canadians who have full or partial Italian heritage and Italians who migrated from Italy or reside in Canada. According to the 2021 Census of Canada, 1,546,390 Canadians ...
who founded one of the first multilingual radio stations in Canada,
CHIN The chin is the forward pointed part of the anterior mandible (List_of_human_anatomical_regions#Regions, mental region) below the lower lip. A fully developed human skull has a chin of between 0.7 cm and 1.1 cm. Evolution The presence of a we ...
, in 1966 * Edward Lye - a cabinet maker in England who turned into an organ-builder in Toronto, founded the Lye Organ Company * Edward and Donna Pasquale - Italian immigrant couple who founded Pasquale Brothers, a specialty food store, now known today as Unico * William C. Wong – a
Chinese Canadian , native_name = , native_name_lang = , image = Chinese Canadian population by province.svg , image_caption = Chinese Canadians as percent of population by province / territory , pop = 1,715,7704.63% of the ...
activist who advocated for the rights of the Chinese-Canadian community


References


External links


- Toronto's First Synagogues - Dr. Stephen SpeismanHistoricist: Forgotten Urban Squalor of The Ward
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Toronto, The Black Canadian culture in Toronto Black Canadian settlements Chinese-Canadian culture in Toronto History of Toronto Jews and Judaism in Toronto Neighbourhoods in Toronto Historic Jewish communities in Canada History of immigration to Canada Ethnic enclaves in Ontario Chinatowns in Canada European-Canadian culture in Toronto Immigration to Ontario Former neighbourhoods in Canada