Sunday, January 12, 2020

With the rapid expansion of the city during the 19th century there was a need for additional cemetery grounds.  In 1887 the city purchased 100 acres of land from William Shields for this purpose.  The plans were laid out to allow maximum views which originally included Lake Ontario and the Humber River Valley.  Two ravines passed through the plot of land leading to it being named Prospect Cemetery.

Over 170,000 people have been buried in Prospect Cemetery since it opened in 1890.

Many local veterans of the First World War returned home with injuries that would soon claim their lives.  The first few were buried in various cemeteries around the city.  The Great War Veterans Association and The Toronto General Burying Grounds selected a 5 acre oval section near the St. Clair Avenue entrance to the cemetery as the site of a dedicated veterans section.  Capt. James Henderson of the Royal Army Medical Corps served in Mesopotamia and returned home on leave suffering a cold that turned into pneumonia which killed him on July 16, 1917.  He became the first interment in the cemetery having lived 39 years.  He is buried near the Cross of Sacrifice which is the centre piece of the plot.  It can be seen in the background of the cover shot.  Today there are over 3,500 veterans buried in the cemetery, many of them in neat rows in the veterans plot.

Private Griffith Evans served in Europe and returned home in the summer of 1917 suffering from fatal battle wounds.  He passed away a month before the first burial in the veterans plot and was relocated here in honour of his service.

Lance Corporal Thomas Wilson came home from the war and died on October 2, 1918.  He perished a month too soon to learn that his service was part of the victory that came on November 11, 1918.

There are many soldiers buried in the cemetery in places outside of the veterans plot.  Some of them are in graves with markers that bear no mention of their service.  Others have been commemorated with a standard design maker like the one issued to Corporal William Fraser Stagg who died on the final day of 1918.  His service record indicates that the cause of death was unknown.  The Canadian Great War Project is a searchable database that contains information on the men and women who served their country during World War 1.

Some parts of the cemetery have particularly colourful displays that people have set up to commemorate their loved ones.

Prospect Cemetery is the full 105 acre lot that ran between Eglinton Avenue and St. Clair Avenue.  It is split in a couple of places by through streets, including Rogers Road where this set of gates is found.

Inside the St. Clair Avenue gates the cemetery has built a large mausoleum known as the Mausoleum of the Last Supper.  Along with white marble-fronted crypts the mausoleum features several beautiful statues including one of The Risen Christ.  There’s also a full wall dedicated to The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.  The original painting covers an entire wall in the dining hall of a monastery in Milan.

The cemetery was chosen for the veterans interment in part because the local community had made a large contribution to the war effort.  During the course of the war around 2,500 people from the neighbourhood of Earlscourt enlisted in the military.  This made them the highest per capita district in Canada and 320 of them lost their lives in the conflict.  To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the war the cemetery installed a series of 9 plaques that describe Canada’s role in the war.  Another describes the service of Earlscourt and a final one shows the locations of key battles Canadians fought in the war.  Prospect Cemetery (part of the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries) has an electronic version of the memorial on their website.  The virtual war memorial can be found by following the link.  Here you can read all 11 of the plaques that were installed.

This is an interesting stone because it appears to mark the grave of a man who married twice.  Both wives were named Margaret.  William Alfred Francis appears to have survived his first wife, Margaret Armstrong by 22 years.  His second wife, Margaret Anderson survived him by another 20 years.  Both women who bore the name Mrs. Margaret Francis appear to be laid to rest with the husband they both loved.

Every cemetery is full of the stories of the lives it commemorates, if we only had the ability to read them.  Prospect cemetery tells the stories of thousands of people who defended our liberty, especially in World War 1.

Other cemeteries we’ve written about include Mount Pleasant Cemetery, The Necropolis and St. John’s Cemetery on the Humber.

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Saturday, January 4, 2020

Kipling Avenue comes to a dead end just north of Steeles Avenue where Thakeray Park Cricket Grounds are.  The large hill on the property is a mound of household waste that was placed here when Thakeray Landfill was in operation.  The site is 45 hectares and contains 2.2 million tonnes of non-hazardous waste.  After closing in 1978 it was turned over to the city in 1979 to be managed as a park.  However, ongoing methane gas leakage has caused the site to be under utilized until now.  A proposal has been put forward to convert the methane into electricity as is currently done at Beare Road Landfill site in Rouge National Urban Park.  The city earns $2 million each year selling electricity back into the grid.  To check out this park we used the free parking for the cricket grounds.

A fresh coating of snow was on all the trees as we set out for our walk, reminding us of how beautiful winter can be.

As we made our way along the north side of the former landfill we began seeing sets of coyote tracks.  Their footprints tend to run in a single line unlike a dog which shows left and right side as distinctly separate tracks.  We could hear two coyotes howling nearby and wondered if they may have entered mating season a little early.  The season doesn’t usually start until late January but we found a site where a coyote had urinated and left considerable amount of blood as well.  This could indicate a female in heat.

The sides of the former landfill have been planted with trees to promote an eventual forest cover for the site.

The Canadian National York Subdivision was built to connect the new MacMillan Yard with various lines on the east end of Toronto.  The line was started in 1959 and completed in 1965 through what was open farm land at the time.  The bridge over the Humber River was built in 1962 and has been added to the list of Humber River Heritage Bridges.  It features rare A-Frame reinforced concrete piers that carry a single line over the river.  The line expands into double track just west of this bridge.

The railway approaches the river on a high berm that affords great photos of the frequent trains.  The early morning snow fall had already melted away by the time we had walked north to the Vaughan Sports Complex and back.

Taking the trail to the left we climbed the hill that represents the former land fill.  A grove of trees stands at the top of the hill.  Another trail beside these trees leads back down the hill toward Steeles Avenue.  The Trail continues under the road and eventually leads to the site of the former Country Hospital For Sick Children.  We followed the trail for a short distance before returning to look at the mini airfield on the top of the land fill.

Radio controlled aircraft became popular in the late 1960’s and for several years people met at the Keele Street Reservoir south of Steeles to fly their aircraft.  Fear of fuel leaking into the water supply led to the banning of flying there in 1972.  The club moved around looking for a home until 1982 when they located the Thackeray Park site that became their new home.

Initially the landing strip was made of dirt and as the landfill started to settle it became very uneven.  Water would pond in the field in the spring time.  In 2000 about ten truck loads of soil were brought in to level the ground again.  The sun shelter was added in 2002 and a solar power charging station installed in 2012.  By 2014 there were a lot of smaller airplanes using the field and they were having a hard time taking off and landing on the grass runway.  It was decided to install a Geo Textile runway along with six pilot stations to meet the needs of the club for the near future.  Sixty feet of grass landing strip is maintained for those who prefer this option.

The Humber Valley Radio Control Flyers have a membership of over 100 who work together to maintain the field, keep the litter picked up and cut the grass on the landing strip.

It will be interesting to see what Toronto Parks does with the old landfill site when it is declared safe for use as a park.

Another story of a park located on a former landfill site can be found at this link: Beare Road

Google Maps Link: Thackeray Park

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Saturday, December 28, 2019

Utopia is a few minutes west of Highway 400 near Barrie and on a recent trip to see the family in Gravenhurst to celebrate Christmas I made the side trip to see the old grist mill that stands in the local conservation area.  Eugene Smith was the first settler in the hamlet of Utopia and he arrived with his family in 1845.  By the 1870s there was a hotel, blacksmith shop, general store with post office a school and two churches along with a saw mill and grist mill.  The town served the local farmers in Essa Township.

Church was often the focal point for early communities.  The rural farmers would often see each other once a week when they got together for worship services.  Sunday shopping hadn’t been invented yet and so Sunday was a day of rest when people would hang around after church to discuss the crops or catch up on the news.  In Utopia the faithful started meeting in homes and the school with services being held under a large tree at the corner of the 5th concession and 25 side road.  In 1873 John Jennet donated a parcel of land to build a permanent church for the Anglican parish in Utopia.  Reverend W. Bates was the first to hold services in the new church building.  It was originally known as All Saints but changed its name to St. George’s in 1874.

I parked at the entrance to the Utopia Conservation Area and went for a walk.  The road to the old mill has been blocked by several truck loads of fine gravel which has been dumped there.  This will likely be spread out on the trails in the spring.  Beyond this a gate across the road bears a sign indicating that the area is closed to the general public.  I carried on in the interest of photographing and reporting the current condition of the old building.   The original mill lane runs between rows of cedar trees.

At the bottom of the lane the mill pokes out from behind the trees.  James Pink had built the original mill on this site in 1864 and soon added a saw mill down stream.  The water flow in Bear Creek was insufficient to run both mills at the same time so the saw mill was operated during the day and the grist mill at night.  Richard Bell had worked at the mill for three years when he bought it in 1879.  His brothers John and Manuel operated it until it burned to the ground on May 29, 1903.

The mill was rebuilt and opened again on January 1, 1904.  The mill sits on a foundation made of stones that is four and a half feet thick.  It is claimed that quicksand forced the foundation to be set 30 feet deep.

The mill had its own brand of flour including Gold Coin which was intended for baking bread.  Snowflake was milled with pastry in mind.  They also chopped grain for feed for the local farmers and by the 1940s this was the sole business of the mill.

On October 14, 1954 Hurricane Hazel caused Bear Creek to rise to the point where the front porch of the mill was washed away.  The water ran through the building and out again without causing any structural damage.  The mill dam was destroyed and rather than replacing it Harold Bell decided to install a diesel generator.  The mill operated like this until it closed in 1965.

The Nottawasaga Conservation Authority obtained the property soon after this and have been slowly restoring the mill as funds have become available.  New windows have been installed and the front porch replaced.  Although the siding is coming off in a few places it still looks like the building is being protected from excessive deterioration.  Inside, many of the old shafts, pulleys and belts that operated the mill remain in anticipation of possible future use as a working mill.

The dam was replaced with a new concrete one in 1969 to help control the flow of water in times of flooding conditions.

Grain was shipped to the mill from the prairies via a grain shed on the Canadian National Railway Line just north of the mill.  The rail line is abandoned today and clearly marked as no trespassing.

It will certainly be interesting to see if the mill will continue to be restored to a fully functional grist mill.

For our earlier story on The Barrie Light Company click on the link.

Google Maps Link: Utopia Conservation Area

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Saturday, December 21, 2019

When the completed Queen Elizabeth Way opened in 1939 it had the distinction of being the first super-highway in Canada and the also first one to be fully illuminated at night.  (Although that was delayed until war-time electricity restrictions were lifted in 1945.)  Several bridges were built over the major ravines and the one over the Credit River in Mississauga has been given an historic designation. In April 2019 the Provincial Government announced funding to rehabilitate the bridge and build a second one directly to the north to allow for increased traffic flow.  By November they had decided to demolish the bridge and build two new ones in a modern box design.  Public outcry has resulted in the recent announcement that the government will only seek tenders that include the preservation and restoration of the historic bridge.

I decided to stop by and see what the bridge looked like and get some pictures in case the ongoing flip-flop continues and we end up without this structure.  It can be most easily seen from Stavebank Road north.  The bridge was built in 1934 and was partially financed under the New Deal that was a government spending program intended to spur the economy during the Great Depression.  The bridge is 840 feet long with seven spans and is historic for its Art Deco design.  Also significant is the fact that the highway was commissioned by the king and queen during the first ever visit to Canada by a reigning monarch.

The bridge, along with the highway, was officially opened on June 7, 1939 by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.  Initially conceived in 1931, the highway was simple and intended to relieve congestion on Dundas Street and Lakeshore Road.  The new road would run between the two and be known as Middle Road for that reason.  This early version of the highway contains the historically significant Middle Road Bridge.  With the election of Mitch Hepburn’s Liberals in 1934 the plans were altered significantly in favour of a superhighway like the autobahns being built in Germany.  This resulted in the first cloverleaf in Canada being built for the interchange with Hurontario (Highway 10).  The Middle Road section of the highway opened in 1937 and was the 39 kilometres between Highway 27 and Burlington which included this bridge.  This picture features the view downstream.

The view looking north up The Credit River from under the bridge.  Much of the eastern side of the river is wetland and marsh through this reach.

There is a steel structure that has been installed between the main arches of the bridge and dates to the 1960 addition of two extra lanes in the middle of the bridge.  This allowed the highway to expand from four lanes to six.

The bridge has been maintained several times including 1977, 1987 and 2014 but the weather and road salt is getting at it in several places again.  This looks like another opportunity for some patching of the decay.  There’s  few cavities but no root canal or extraction appears to be warranted.

Part of the restoration will include replacing the road deck which is starting to rust in a few places.

This Ministry of Transportation image shows the twin box design bridges that we almost got at this site.  It would seem that the new bridge on the north side of the existing one may use this design as it is a current favourite with the government.

The architecture of the bridge is interesting in that the supports for the arches have their own arches included.  No such Art Deco design elements would be included in a replacement bridge.

The bridge features some interesting lamp posts with the letters “ER” in the iron work.  This is Latin for Elizabeth Regina, or Queen Elizabeth.  It would be easy to conclude that this refers to Queen Elizabeth II, our current monarch.  However, she was only a 13-year old princess when and it was opened.  It was actually named for King George VI’s wife whose name was Elizabeth.  She was later known as the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II is her daughter.  The government plan for the demolition of the bridge would have seen the ornate lamp posts preserved and re-installed somehow in the new structure.  Fortunately they can be preserved in their current position on the rehabilitated bridge.

Each day over 165,000 vehicles pass over this bridge but apart from the lamp posts most of them will never see the architecture of the bridge.  So, why care about a design that only a few fishermen and local residents will ever see?  The issue has far reaching implications because once heritage structures start to be demolished for economic reasons the entire designation system will become powerless to protect our remaining history.

Google Maps Link:  QEW Bridge

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Saturday, November 16, 2019

Long before the arrival of Europeans, the local peoples used The Carrying Place Trail north along the Humber River.  They crossed a pristine Emery Creek near today’s Finch Avenue and Weston Road intersection.  In the 1950s this area was built into an industrial park and the creek was buried in a concrete pipe.  Unfortunately the creek came to carry industrial contamination which included lead, zinc and copper.  During large rain events sewage was also carried directly into the Humber River.  A recent project to improve the water quality is the result of over twenty years of work by local environmental and residential groups.  We decided to investigate the results and so we took advantage of parking at Habitant Arena from which we set off on the west side of Weston Road.

Eastern Red Cedar have a three year cycle.  Their fruit begins as a flower in the first year.  It then turns into a green berry for the second year and ripens into a blue berry in year three.  The berries are harvested and dried after which they turn black.  They are used as a spice and high in vitamin C.  They may also help fight cancer because they are high in antioxidants and flavoniods.

North of Finch Avenue the headwaters of Emery Creek are buried under the industrial sprawl that became its poisoning.  Once it flows under Finch it passes behind a four tower residential complex before emerging back into daylight.  Emery Creek briefly flows in a naturalized watercourse before it reaches the storm water management ponds.

Milkweed seeds are blowing in the wind.  The little parachute that carries the actual seed is known as the pappus.  When attempting to grow milkweed on your property as an aid to monarch butterflies it is recommended that this part be removed.  You can then disperse them on some gently disturbed soil without fear of them blowing away on you before they germinate.

The health of a river begins in the tributaries and so a $14 million dollar project was devised to use natural processes to remove and contain the main pollutants from Emery Creek.  Starting in March 2016 three storm water management ponds were constructed beside Emery Creek.  The plan is to clean the water before it is discharged into the Humber River.  The first pond is designed for sedimentation and the bulk of solid particles are removed here.  The water then flows through a short pipe into a shallow pond where the remaining heavy metals are removed.  The third pond is the biggest one and the fine particles are removed here before water is discharged through a pipe into the Humber River somewhat upstream from the original confluence of the two.  The concrete weir that diverts the waters of Emery Creek into the first pond was cast in place but includes a wooden section that allows for moderation of the water flowing into the ponds.

In spite of the fact that it is mid-November the water in the three ponds had frozen over.  There are sometimes interesting patterns in the ice and these can take the shape of a circle.  Ice circles form in slow moving water as it reaches freezing temperature.  They usually occur where there is a bend in the water flow that causes an eddy.  The water on the surface continues to move in the direction of the eddy as it freezes and this causes the ice circle.

If the rotational shear force is great enough the ice circles can cut away from the surrounding ice and form ice discs.  These discs have been observed as large as 50 feet in diameter.  The new ponds on Emery Creek have set up the slow moving water patterns to allow for sedimentation of solids in the water before it is discharged into the Humber River.  This appears to have also set up the ideal conditions for ice circles to form.  This one below looks like someone was getting ready for a faceoff in a hockey game.

The Humber River was in the process of slushing over with ice forming along the edges where the water is moving slowly or sitting in pools.

Not everyone is willing to hang around and look for food when they require open water to dig for water plants..  Most of the Canada Geese have formed into skeins and flow for easier foraging grounds.  A group of geese in flight is also known as a team because they place the weakest ones behind the rest to take advantage of the air currents generated by the ones in front.

The ponds and trails around them were pretty quiet this morning but are perhaps enjoyed a little more in the summer sunshine.

Someone has thrown the life preserving equipment into the pond where it is now frozen in place.

Not all robins migrate south for the winter and seeing them in the colder months is becoming more common.  Robins move around in response to food rather than temperature.  Birds that move south follow their ability to collect worms and other insects for food.   In the winter robins switch their diet to fruit and the bulk of them move to places where there are sufficient berries for everyone.  The ones that stay behind move around as the sources diminish in each area.

This view from Google Earth shows the area as the area looked in 2002.  Emery Creek flows into the Humber River from the right hand side of the image.  In its original creek bed the watercourse followed the southern embankment of a much wider ravine.

By 2019 Google Earth is showing a greatly altered geography.  The creek has been diverted through the three new ponds and now enters the river farther north.  The old creek still has a minimal flow of water that gets over the diversion dam and keeps it from becoming stagnant.  The abandoned portion of the old creek has been coloured in orange.

From the opposite side of the Humber River we were able to locate the original mouth of Emery Creek.  The water coming out of here is moving very slowly compared to the main river and you can see a line of ice forming across the mouth of Emery Creek.

The engineering work has paid off in that the water that enters the Humber River is a lot cleaner than it was before.   Given time, the new ponds will become home to their own ecosystems and the disruptions will be a thing of the past.

Google Maps Link: Emery Creek

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