Author Archives: Leslieville Historical Society

George Leslie: Let’s go to the Ex

By Joanne Doucette George Leslie was also one of the founders of the “Ex” – the Provincial Exhibition, forerunner of the Canadian National Exhibition (C.N.E.).  He showed his seeds there in 1858 and continued to exhibit over the years, winning many prizes. When the Provincial Exhibition incorporated in 1879 George Leslie Jr. was one ofContinue reading “George Leslie: Let’s go to the Ex”

October 16 -Eureka: Remembering some special women

visiting shut-ins, distributing food and clothing, supplying glasses for children, making cancer pads; awarding scholarships to students entering university, donating a wheelchair to Bloor-View Children’s Hospital, assisting churches in purchasing hymnals…Their work, ever since that first session 70 years ago to help one needy individual, has been largely in the black community, but not confined to it. Toronto Star, Oct. 16, 1980

October: The Month from Hell

By October 12, the hospitals were triaging, turning away patients they thought might have a chance of survival or just accepting patients on a first-come-first-served basis. Doctors and nurses were not seeing those we would think would be least likely to survive: elderly, frail people and young children and infants. Those who were dying were, overwhelmingly, young and healthy men and women, in all neighbourhoods including older areas in the East End such as Riverside, Leslieville and Todmorden and new neighbourhoods spreading across the farm fields of the Ashbridges, Charles Coxwell Small, the Sammons, Cosburns and others. Even the new cottage communities along the Beach were not spared.

October 6: I hear the train a-coming…about 20 feet above me!

This series of photographs will take you on a trip from downtown Toronto to Main Street on the new Toronto Viaduct, a raised railbed that lifted the train high above the city streets, eliminating several of the most dangerous level crossings such as the one at Queen near DeGrassi Street.

October 4th in history

It was a fine autumnal morning (October 4th) when I put my equipage in motion from Queenston towards York, accompanied by a friend and a favourite pointer. The diary of traveller Lieutenant Francis Hall as he travelled from Queenston (near Niagara-on-the-Lake) to York, published in 1818. This British army officer had served in some ofContinue reading “October 4th in history”