Beach Memories: Rescheduled Historic Walk through East Toronto set for this Saturday

By GENE DOMAGALA

Back on May 23, the weather was so cold, windy and rainy that for the first time in decades I had to cancel one of my Historic Walks.
However, I will now be holding that walk through the former Town of East Toronto on Saturday, June 20.

Hopefully, the weather is nicer than it was last time.

For those wishing to take part, we will meet at the northwest corner of Main Street and Danforth Avenue at 1 p.m.

East Toronto was a town of 5,000 people with its own police station, fire hall, hospital, library, city hall, hydro services, and school.

It was located east of the City of Toronto, with these political boundaries: Woodbine Avenue to the west, Scarborough Road to the east, Danforth Avenue to the north, and Lake Ontario to the south.

The town owed its existence to the Grand Trunk Railway. The East Toronto area was once home to the largest railway centre in Ontario. The Grand Trunk Railway later became part of Canadian National Railway (CN) and employed approximately 500 workers.

East Toronto was a town from 1888 to 1909. Main Street was, both then and now, the town’s most important street. We will see why on my walk.

We will also learn about the people and businesses that made East Toronto such a bustling community 140 years ago. There is a great amount of history still in East Toronto.

Did you know that Dawes Road used to go down to Kingston Road? Later, part of the former Dawes Road became Main Street.

East Toronto was also home to one of the area’s earliest baseball fields, where teams played many games just off Main Street. The area had one of Toronto’s first funeral parlours, and one of the oldest curling rinks as well.

It also had one of the first motion picture houses. That movie house was the Ideal Theatre, and it was on Main Street.

There were also many religious institutions in the Town of East Toronto and that can still be seen today.

Agriculture was a big part of the Town of East Toronto. There were chicken farmers, dairy farmers and fruit and vegetable farmers. The community had one of the first farmers’ markets which was located in the Main Street and Gerrard Street East area.

I also want to raise a personal point, which will be included on the walk, and that is how long I have been writing Beach Memories for Beach Metro Community News. It has been more than 40 years, which is about the time I’ve been doing my walks.

The June 20 walk will stop at the paper’s offices on Gerrard Street East, just west of Main Street. We’ll learn a bit of the paper’s history, and I will encourage anyone who wants to make a donation towards our non-profit community newspaper to do so.