11,000 to 10,500 years ago the last glaciers melted. First Nations follow game onto the tundra here at Leslieville.
1763 The Royal Proclamation of 1763 (The Quebec Act)
1766 The British, represented by Sir William Johnson, and the First Nations signed a peace treaty at Oswego
1770 The Friends disavowed Jonathan Ashbridge when he sold a black woman named Pegg.
1775 John Graves Simcoe arrived in Boston to play a role as guerilla fighter in the American Revolution (1776-1783). Simcoe became commanding officer of the 1st American Regiment (Queen’s Rangers).
1783 The British government disbanded the Loyalist regiments and Loyalists headed north to Canada. Augustus Jones surveyed Toronto.
1787 The British conducted the Toronto Purchase with the Mississauga First Nation.
1791 Augustus Jones surveyed Toronto again. The surveyors laid out the basic grid pattern of concession and sideroad with farms stretching north-south.
1792 Simcoe arrived to construct a garrison and to establish a naval base.
1793 Ashbridges traveled on to York.
1796 the Crown granted the Ashbridges 600 acres between Ashbridge’s Bay and Danforth Avenue. Sarah Ashbridge, her sons and son-in-laws received free land grants of 200 acres each.
1799 to 1801 American contractor, Asa Danforth, built the Danforth Road.
1803 Governor Peter Hunter established the St. Lawrence Market
1804 George Leslie born.
1805 The British and Mississauga met again, this time at the mouth of the Credit River. They renegotiate the Toronto Purchase.
1809 The Ashbridge brothers built a large frame house for the family.
1812 – 1814 War with the USA.
1815 to 1817 Settlers re-built the Kingston Road, making it passable.
1817 The first useable road between York and Montreal was completed. Then weekly winter stage coach service began between York and Kingston.
1820 Most of the land was owned by a few individuals or families. They were, by lot number, from east to west, starting at the boundary with Scarborough: Lot One, John Baskerville Glegg, an aide de camp to General Brock; Lot Two, David Ramsey; Lot Three, Captain Joseph Bouchette; Lot Four, Patrick Browne; Lot Five, William Cooper; Lot Six. Mrs. Samuel Cozens; Lot Seven, Paul Wilcott (married to Elizabeth Ashbridge); Lot Eight, John Ashbridge; Lot Nine, Split lot: Parker Mills (married to Mary Ashbridge); Lot Ten, John and Thomas Matthews; Lot 11, Benjamin Mosley; Lot 12, Christopher Robinson; Lot 13, Patrick Brown; Lot 14, John Cox; Lot 15, John Scadding.
1822 Toronto’s Orange Order held its first July 12 parade.
1825 On April 1st, his 21st birthday, George Leslie sailed with his family to Canada.
1827 After a winter clearing brush in Peel County, George Leslie came to York.
1834 George Leslie helped found the Toronto Horticultural Society, Ontario’s first horticultural society
1834 The City of Toronto born.
1835An English settler named Charles Watkins built a tavern at the northwest corner of Boston Avenue and Queen Street East. Watkins liked farming more than running an inn so he rented the inn out. The first landlord, Sandy Watson, kept the inn until about 1847. Then James Shaw rented the place and it became known as Shaw’s Inn.
1836 George Leslie married Caroline Davis
1836 to 1837 workers planked the Kingston Road
1837 Upper Canadian Rebellion. The rebels march through Leslieville to Toronto.
1841 The Horticultural Society began holding annual exhibitions.
1842 George Leslie leased 20 acres of land from Charles Coxwell Small for a 21-year term.
1844 George Leslie opened a seed store just south of King on the east side of Yonge Street.
1845 George Leslie moved the store, “one of the best built frame structures of the time” to the Kingston Road site.
1845 The City bought part of George Leslie’s Yonge Street property and opened up Colborne Street through it.
1847 George Monro was a rich Toronto businessman, and former mayor as well as a Member of Parliament. Monro’s daughter, Frances Jane, married Brent Neville, an officer in the 77th Regiment, whose name is born by Neville Park Boulevard. In 1847 Neville bought 25 hectares, the western half of Lot 9, probably as a speculative venture. The land had belonged to Parker Mills who had married into the Ashbridge family.
1847 The Mississauga First Nation left the the Credit River.
1849 Judah G. Joseph and Samuel Nordheimer bought cemetery the help of Chief Justice, John Beverley Robinson.
1849 The Canadian Legislature passed the Railway Guarantee Act, to secure the bonds of new main rail lines and encourage growth.
1850 -1854 Beatty kept the Commercial Hotel on Jarvis Street, and then the Prospect Hotel until 1868.
1850 Judah Joseph’s son, Samuel, buried probably near the cemetery gate where the gravestones are all under grass.
1850 Thomas Beatty purchased a block of land at the northwest corner of Kingston Road and Greenwood’s Lane
1850 World trade boomed and so did Ashport as speculators bought land up, hoping to make money by subdividing it.
1851 George Leslie’s wife, Caroline, died.
1852 George Smith and William Cook were the ex-owners of Shaw’s Inn. In 1852 their new venture was named Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
1852 The Government announced plans to build a railway from Montreal to Toronto. The Grand Trunk Railway (GTR).
1853 Robert Baldwin made George Leslie a Justice of the Peace
1853 St. John of Berkeley (later called St. John the Baptist Norway) opened.
1854 George Leslie married Mahala Greenall (1824-1905)
1854 Jesse Ashbridge built a fine red brick house
1856 The Grand Trunk Railway advertised that it was opened “Throughout to Toronto on Monday October 27”.
1859 George Leslie helped found the Ontario Fruit-Growers Association
1859 George William Allan offered the Horticultural Society the land for use as a public garden.
1859 James Beaty, a staunch Orange Protestant, owner of the planked Kingston road, began a Sunday school in Ashport. Thomas Beatty donated a corner lot at Ashport on the Kingston Road for a Methodist church. Leslieville Methodist Church
1859 The City abolished the Liberties. The south side of Kingston Road became part of a Toronto ward. The north side remained in the Township of York.
1859 George Leslie moved his residence from his frame house to a much bigger new brick house at Jones Avenue and Queen Street.
1860 Jesse Ashbridge married Harriet Trainer, but, in 1863 she died in childbirth along with the baby.
1860 The Crown established the Ashport Post Office, with William Lambert, Post Master.
1860 There were nine brickmakers and many more labourers in Leslieville. The population was 400.
1861 William Davies opened his first meat processing operation. It was at the St. Lawrence Market.
1862 George Leslie Jr. became postmaster and the post office became known as the “Leslie Post Office” and the area around it, “Leslieville”.
1863 The County of York built a new common or public school at Leslie Street and Sproatt. Leslieville’s first principal was Alexander Muir.
1864 Jesse Ashbridge married Elizabeth Rooney. They had three children: Jesse Jr., Alfred and Wellington.
1864 John Greenwood and Kate Dwyer opened hotel at 1366 Queen St. E., the northwest corner of Greenwood and Queen street.
1866 There is the first reference to “Leslieville” in the Globe.
1867 This was the year of Confederation when Canada became a nation. In that year, Leslieville’s most famous resident, Alexander Muir, wrote “The Maple Leaf Forever” as an entry for a poetry contest
1868 John Greenwood died, Kate Greenwood continued to run the tavern, an ice business, and a market garden.
1868 Thomas Beatty retired to drive the bus on Kingston Road and make more bricks.
1870 William Harris arrived in Leslieville from England
1871 Catholics built a two-room brick school on Curzon Street.
1872 James Morin bankrupt.
1873 George “Codder” Smith and William Cook sold Uncle Tom’s. William Woods was proprietor of the “Leslie Hotel, Kingston Road” for a few years. It then passed into the hands of Henry (Hank) Callender. Callender remodeled the tavern and operated as Callender’s Hotel. (Samuel Crothers was the bartender for a number of years.)
1874 Jesse Ashbridge died in 1874 of tuberculosis. After his death his widow Elizabeth managed the farm and raised the boys.
1874 The Trustees of the Toronto General Burying Grounds hired H. A. Engelhardt, then Canada’s leading landscape architect, to lay out Mount Pleasant Cemetery
1874 The Woodbine racetrack opened in 1874, drawing crowds to the tracks and to the bars.
1875 Jubilee Riot.
1875 The Kingston Road Tramway began passenger service through Leslieville. Streetcar service was timely.
1876 St. Matthew’s Church at DeGrassi Street and Grover (later Cumming) Street. It is now a City park.
1877 Local Presbyterians established a congregation in Leslieville.
1877 The Henry Martin brick machine was introduced to Canada.
1877 Thomas Beatty and his wife, Ella Winnett, had two sons and three daughters that survived to maturity, but another two died in the epidemicd that swept through Leslieville.
1878 Leslieville Presbyterian Church opened
1878 the Diocese of Toronto created St. Joseph’s Parish. It was the first Toronto parish east of St. Paul’s.
1879 A practical working steam shovel was invented.
1880 There were eight families of butchers in Leslieville. Many, though not all, were Irish Catholics like the Hollands, the Gallaghers and the Nolans. Gooderhams, John Clarke, George Morse, Henry and Eduard Blong and others penned livestock here and fattened them for sale.
1881 Elias A. Jones took leased the hotel from Hank Calendar who continued to live there.
1881 William Frizzell came from Newmarket to be pastor Presbyterian Church in Leslieville
1882 Gardener Frank Nicholson (1850-1882), “a young man universally respected”, died of what was probably typhoid fever. He left a wife and five small children. His market garden was sold at public auction. It was part of Lot number 10 north of Queen Street East “on the east side of Greenwoods side line” and contained 100 acres. The sale advertised: “This property is planted with a fine young orchard and is well adapted for market garden purposes.”
1882 Leslies gave up the general store and post office around 1882. It was sold to Joseph Trebilcock (1850-1926), from neighbouring Norway. The brick building at the northwest corner of Curzon and Queen dates at least to 1882 when they took over the store.
1882 Martin McKee gave land on Kingston Road for Leslieville’s first Anglican Church.
1882 The murder of William Long.
1883 A large Presbyterian Sunday school.
1884 After a referendum. the City of Toronto annexed the territory north of Queen Street and south of Danforth Avenue, from the Don River east to Greenwood Avenue. It became St. Matthew’s Ward. Annexation led to significant subdivision of properties and the building of new homes in the area.
1884 After the Long murder, Callander’s briefly lost its liquor license. It operated as a temperance hotel until Hank Callender regained the license.
1884 Rev. John Carroll died, having founded both Leslieville and Woodgreen Methodist Churches.
1884 The architects of the new RC church were Kennedy, McVittie and Holland.
1885 Alfred Ashbridge also died of tuberculosis.
1887 People founded the Lord’s Day Alliance, to fight for a pure Sabbath of rest.
1887 The City annexed a strip of land 200 feet deep on the north side of Queen Street East all the way from Greenwood Avenue to the Beach.
1887 The TSR streetcar line up Broadview Avenue from Queen to the corner of Danforth Avenue
1888 St. Joseph’s Church was finished.
1888 The City of Toronto established its Streets Department with John Jones (Master of Leslieville’s Orange Lodge) as its first commissioner.
1889 Leslieville’s hoteliers included: Charles Ayres, Eastern Ave.; Henry Callender (Leslieville Hotel), 1211 Queen St. E.; E. A. Jones, 1225 Queen St E (The Morin House); and Richard O’Leary, 1366 Queen St. E. (the former Puritan Inn).
1890 The City of Toronto annexed 35 acres in a narrow north-south ribbon of land on the east side of Greenwood Avenue.
1891 Ontario’s first horseless streetcars were introduced in Ottawa. The same year William Mackenzie took over the Toronto Street Railway (TSR) from Frank Smith and renamed it the Toronto Railway Company (TRC). The TRC soon became notorious for poor service.
1893 A Toronto magistrate fined a cab driver two dollars or ten days in jail for carrying a woman on Sunday.
1893 George Leslie died on June 14
1893 Thomas Beatty (1825-1893) died after being hit by streetcar.
1894 Elizabeth Ashbridge modernized the brick house.
1895 A Toronto Branch of the Provincial Sabbath Observance Alliance was formed.
1895 The Grand Trunk Railway began stopping the local trains to pick up passengers at Queen Street East, “at the old Kingston road crossing near Leslieville”.
1895 The Leslieville Presbyterian Church became the Queen Street East Presbyterian Church.
1895 to 1912 the Steele Briggs Seed Co. nurseries were at 1514 Queen Street East, on the farm that had belonged to Levi Heath Ashbridge (1824-1895).
1896 Leslieville, fishing on Sunday, May 24, Empire Day, cost Thomas Reed, John Taylor and John Christie. They were fined a dollar and costs or ten days in jail.
1896 The County of York finally abolished the toll road system.
1896 The toll system was not abolished until 1896.
1897 There was a referendum to ban Sunday street cars. Failed.
1897 Toronto devoured at least 50 tons of vegetables and fruit a day. Most came from market gardens less than ten miles from Toronto.
1899 The parish built a new St. Clement’s Anglican Church on the south side of Queen Street East between Jones Avenue and Curzon Street.
1900 “Shale pits” lined both sides of Greenwood Avenue north of the railway track and south of Danforth Avenue.
1900 Nrickmaking was the biggest employer in Leslieville.
1900 Harris’s glue factory burned to the ground.
1900 The Grand Trunk Railway built a new brick station on De Grassi in Riverside.
1900 The Niagara Parks Commission approved a plan to build a massive hydro-electric generating station on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. Niagara powered Leslieville’s factories with cheap hydroelectricity.
1900 to 1913 was a time of world-wide economic boom, despite a few hiccups here and there.
1900 Typhoid swept Toronto; the City had to take public health seriously.
1901 A judge sentenced Frank Duffy to three months in Central Prison for keeping a common gaming house. Duffy’s shebeen, was in a shed was on Dagmar Avenue.
1901 East Enders celebrated the paving of Queen Street East from the Don Bridge to the GTR tracks: the boundary between Riverside and Leslieville.
1901 to 1916 Craftsman Magazine (Steckley).
1902 Alfred R. Clarke moved his tannery from to 633 Eastern Avenue
1903 City buys Leslie Grove, “Mosquito Park”
1903 City Directory there were ten Leslieville area manufacturers: Isaac Price, plant, 528-532 Greenwood Avenue; John Price, plant 165 Greenwood Avenue; Joseph Russell, 1318 Queen Street East; Bell Brothers, (James and George) Greenwood Avenue; Morley & Ashbridge (George Morley and Jesse Ashbridge) 165 Greenwood Avenue; John Logan, Greenwood Avenue; Walker Morley, 160 – 162 Greenwood Avenue; Joseph Russell, 164 – 198 Greenwood Avenue; Simpson Brick Company, plant, 40 Blake Street; D. (David) Wagstaff, 1140 Queen Street East
1903 Leslieville and nearby parts of Riverdale had 60 master brickmakers including many whose families started as butchers or market gardeners such as the Finucans and Hollands, or fishermen like the Wises
1903 Letter to the Globe Editor, G. Vennell called for streetcar service to the area between Broadview, Greenwood, Danforth and Gerrard, protesting that: It is a mistake to suppose that all this land is used as market gardens, brickyards and cattle ranches. There are hundreds of acres of some of the best residential sites in the city unoccupied, and only waiting street-car facilities to be taken up and built upon. As it is,
1905 to 1907 Canada lived through a brief, but deep economic depression, driven by speculation in the American markets.
1906 Alexander Muir (1830-1906)
1906 Bloor St. Presbyterian Church sponsored a small congregation that began meeting in a tent at the corner of Gerrard Street East and Reid Avenue in 1906. Rhodes Avenue. City of Toronto changed the name of Reid Avenue to Rhodes Avenue. In 1909 volunteers added an annex to the church.
1906 Contractors tore down an older Duke of York tavern, on Queen Street near Bond, downtown. Shortly after the Morin House became the Duke of York.
1906 The provincial Railway Board ordered the Toronto Railway Company to allow transfers between its line and the proposed Civic streetcar lines. The Railway Board ruled that new Ontario Railway Act of 1906 applied. People needed to cross the city, paying only one fare when they transferred between lines.
1907 Another Anglican church began in Leslieville when St. John the Baptist Norway Church bought a lot on Gerrard Street where the Ashdale Branch Library is now. St. Monica’s Church was built in partly by volunteers and began as a small wooden building. The parent parish helped maintain and enlarge the Church. In 1919 St. Monica’s became an independent parish.
1907 The Ashbridges began to subdivide their farm for residential building.
1907 The Lord’s Day Act (Federal) passed.
1907 The Wrigley Building, 245 Carlaw Avenue, was built.
1907 to 1930 George and Ellen Chisholm ran the Duke of York. They were prominent Conservative Associations and Roman Catholics. Ellen McDonald Chisholm came from a family of publicans. A brother was proprietor of the Parkdale Hotel. Ellen and George Chisholm died in died in 1930.
1908 Consumer’s Gas Company built a large operation on the south side of Eastern Ave. The buildings were made from good red bricks from the Leslieville Brickyards. These buildings were built between 1908 and 1912.
1908 Phillips Manufacturing Co. moved to 258 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto.
1908 The temperance crusade was eliminating liquor licenses across Ontario.
1909 A new police station was built at 126 Pape Avenue. It is now Ambulance Services Station No. 43.
1909 Gustav Stickley published the first catalogue of Craftsman homes, complete with floor plans for bungalows.
1909 Sewage plant.
1909 The City of Toronto annexed the area south of the Danforth between Greenwood Avenue and the Beach. The boom was on.
1909 The Methodist Church sold the Queen Street East Church to raise money to build a new church building. The old church sat vacant until the 1920s when one of the Ashbridges built a small machine factory around it.
1909 The Toronto Board of Education built the Duke of Connaught School on six acres of the Ashbridge’s orchard. The Duke of Connaught, Prince Arthur, laid the cornerstone.
1910 Anger boiled over when the Toronto Railway Company changed its policy from an honour system to a pay-as-you board system and enforce a non-smoking policy. Torontonians rioted in the streets, defending their “right” to smoke on public transit.
1910 Joseph Russell, Queen Street East, had one of the largest brickyards in Canada, producing white and red stock brick.
1912 “brick famine”
1912 Greenwood Park appears on Goad’s Atlas maps for the first time.
1912 John Russell (1838-1912)
1912 The Ashbridges sold Ashbridge’s Woods to developers for the Monarch Park subdivision.
1912 the City widened Greenwood Avenue
1912 the Civic Car line began operating for the first time along Gerrard Street through to Main Street.
1912 Wellington T. Ashbridge published The Ashbridge Book. By that time the Ashbridge property was no longer a working farm.
1913 About 13 miles of trunk sewer went into operation. The Morley Avenue sewage plant then began handling all of Toronto’s sewage.
1913 Joseph Russell, owner of one of the largest brickyards in Canada, sold his 55-acre brickyard on Gerrard Street East. The land all around it had been developed for housing. Monarch Realty Company bought the Joseph Russell property for $150,000. Tanner and Gates, developers, subdivided the brickyard for housing. They extended Alton and Hastings, and laid out new streets including Stanton, Parkfield and Sawden. They had to do a lot of grading in the rough and cratered brickyard before it could be sold for housing.
1913 The Ashbridges tore down the log cabin and the 1809 clapboard house.
1913 The City Parks Department assumed responsibility for playgrounds
1913 The railroads, the City of Toronto, the Toronto Harbor Commissioners and the Government of Canada agreed to build the Toronto viaduct.
1913 The Toronto Railway Company built the Russell carhouse in 1913 as a paint shop.
1916 The Wrigley gum factory was built on Carlaw Avenue.
1916 The Toronto Hydroelectric System built a new building at 369 Carlaw Avenue in 1916, to supply power to industry. They added an addition to the south in 1924. (
1916 When their King carhouse burned down in 1916, they turned their Leslieville operation into a carhouse.
1917 A. R. Clarke, owner of the ltannery on Eastern Avenue, was on the Luistania off the coast of Ireland when a German u-boat sank the liner. Clarke sustained fatal internal injuries when he was dragged under by the great ship’s death throes.
1917 Rolph-Clark-Stone Limited built its new building at 201 Carlaw Avenue. Rolph-Clark-Stone Limited was “one of Canada’s largest graphic arts companies.”
1917 The “Leslieville Ratepayers’ Association” changed its name to the “Riverdale Ratepayers’ Association”.
1917 The Munitions Board built a $3 million plant on the Eastern Harbor Temrinals.
1918 Wrigley Canada built a private firehall, at 87 Boston Avenue, to service its factory.
1919 A new Jewish Cemetery on Jones Avenue, just north of Leslieville, was consecrated.
1919 A new Loblaws Store opened at Queen and Logan. Loblaw’s with its experimental “We Sell For Less” cash-and-carry format, quickly became so popular.
1919 Dominion Stores incorporated.
1919 Elizabeth Rooney Ashbridge died in 1919. The house and remaining land passed to Wellington and his wife Mable Davis). Their daughters were Dorothy and Betty.
1919 The Volstead Act passed in the U.S. and the rum-running era began. There was a referendum on prohibition.
1920 Albert Wagstaff built the Vera Apartments around this time, named after his only daughter.
1920 The Dunlop Football Grounds occupied part of the old Leslie Nurseries.
1920 The Greenwood Athletic Field was renamed Greenwood Park. The new park was created, graded and leveled.
1920 One Toronto ratepayers’ association asked that virtually all of Toronto be covered by the brick limits: “The purpose is to prevent the erection of wooden shacks.”
1921 The City of Toronto built the Coxwell Stables in 1912 to house City Works’ Department horses
1921 The Toronto Transportation Commission (now the Toronto Transit Commission) was founded in September 21, 1921, and took over the streetcar companies and their lines. They found the Russell carbarns unsafe.
1923 66 houses were built on Berkshire Avenue.
1923 The THC completed landfill operations.
1923 The TTC called for tenders for the demolition and the erection of a new carhouse. The new building opened 1924. The Traffic office was located at the northeast corner of the property.
1924 The Rhodes Avenue congregation voted for Union in 1924 and some members left to start St. Matthew’s Presbyterian Church on Eastwood Avenue.
1925 Lakeshore Boulevard East was built.
1925 mid-1920s “Leslie Gardens” was laid out and neat rows of bungalows built on Larchmount, Berkshire, Rushbrooke, and Marigold.
1925 Riverdale Methodist, WoodGreen Methodist, Rhodes Avenue Presbyterian and other churches joined to become the United Church of Canada.
1925 Workers built Canada Metals on landfill south of Eastern Avenue, near the paint factories and the tannery.
1926 Prohibition was repealed in Ontario in 1926, only 15 breweries remained.
1927 The United Church of Canada built a $25,000 church at Queen Street East and Greenwood Avenue, St. Stephen’s United Church, at 1369 Queen Street East. The church opened in 1928.
1929 Stock market crash. The Great Depression begins.
1930 Toronto Nurseries bankrupt.
1933 Balmy Beach the Swastika Club, inspired by Hitler’s Nazis, formed. Thugs attacked Jews at the Beaches. Jews and Italians fought Nazi supporters in the Christie Pits Riot.
1937 The Men of the Trees placed a plaque on the old silver maple
1944 Ontario passed its Racial Discrimination Act. Discrimination by restrictive covenant was challenged in the Wren and Wolf cases. Racist restrictive covenants were finally outlawed in the 1950s though changing attitudes took longer.
1945 to 1946 The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation built 1328-1338 Queen Street, Greenwood Court, as veterans’ housing.
1945 World War Two ended with 40,042 Canadians killed.
1955 Orange Order Mayor Leslie Saunders openly campaigned as a “Protestant” and appealed to the victory at the Battle of the Boyne. Nathan Phillips offered himself as a mayor for all the people. He became Toronto’s first Jewish mayor.
1955 TheLeslie Street Spit or “East Headland” was begun
1956 Name of the original race track was changed to Old Woodbine.
1956 The Toronto Brick Company closed
1957 An older timer said that, “Pigs, flowers and bricks” were the making of Leslieville.
1958 The Orange Association of Canada put its own plaque at Maple Cottage, replacing the 1937 one.
1963 The racetrack became Greenwood Racetrack.
1963 TheCanadian Authors Association offered a $1,000 prize for a new set of lyrics to The Maple Leaf Forever.
1965 The City of Toronto Board of Control approved zoning changes to allow a high-rise and town house complex in the old Price 16-acre brickyard, on the east side of Greenwood Avenue, south of Felstead Avenue, on Torbrick Road. Torbrick Investments Ltd.
1966 The Toronto Board of Education agreed that a new high school was needed in the area.
1967 to 1972 Toronto’s last Orange Mayor, William Dennison, a New Democrat, led the city.
1968 The Maple Leaf Forever Tree was believed to be 160 years old. A January ice storm damaged the Silver maple and a large branch was downed. The City installed a protective fence around the yard to safeguard the tree from trucks turning into Memory Lane.
1972 The new Lakeview Secondary School was in partial use. In September 1972 it opened with 950 students. It was later closed because of lack of students and sold to the Toronto Separate School Board. It is now St. Patrick Catholic Secondary School.
1973 Concerned about high levels of lead in their children’s blood, a local citizens’ group demanded that the government start blood tests of residents in the area around the foundry. Ontario’s Environment Ministry ordered Canada Metals to stop emitting lead and lead compounds. Four days later a court disallowed the he Stop Order because the judge decided that no health hazard could be attributed solely to Canada Metals.
1976 The Ministry of the Environment issued a control order to abate fugitive emissions and from plant spills. Workers excavated contaminated soil from neighbourhood lawns and gardens in June and July 1977 at a cost of $80,000.
1980 O Canada, by Calixa Lavallée and Adolphe-Basile Routhier, became Canada’s official national anthem.
1980 The courts gave Canada Metals a suspended sentence after it pled guilty to charges of air pollution. The judge said argued that it was justified to suspend the sentence because Canada Metals was a good corporate citizen, because there is “no physical possibility of recurrence of the offence”, and because there was little, if any, harm done.”
1981 An arsonist burned St. Stephen’s United Church down. Riverdale Housing Co-op now occupies the site.
1981 The Toronto Historical Board placed Maple Cottage and the Maple Leaf Forever Tree on its list of Heritage Properties.
1987 Terry and Bruce Brackett, owners of etc…news pushed the City of Toronto to erect street signs with “Leslieville” above the street name.
1991 Ontario’s Conservation Review Board of the Ontario Ministry designated 62 Laing Street, Maple Cottage.
1993 Live racing at Greenwood ended.
1994 St. Joseph’s and Our Lady of Good Health Parish was established to serve the Tamil Catholic community. It included the old St. Joseph’s of Leslieville.
1994 The Tango Palace opened at 1156 Queen Street East.
1995 Citizens asked the City to name the lane behind 62 Laing, Maple Leaf Cottage, Memory Lane.
1997 Archaeologists Marti Latta with Dena Doroszenko of the Ontario Heritage Foundation, excavated the site of the Ashbridge log cabin.
1998, 1999 and 2000 The Ontario Heritage Foundation partnered with the University of Toronto’s archaeological field school to dig the Ashbridge site.
2000 The City began renovating Maple Cottage. It spent over $300,000 repairing and furnishing the building and another $128,000 landscaping the property and Maple Leaf Forever Park next door.
2000 The private lane at 1307 and 1309 Queen Street East was named Agnes Lane at the request of Eastend Developments.
2001 Fire destroyed the A.R. Clarke Limited building as it was being converted into a film sound stage.
2002 The Neighbourhood Unitarian Universalist Congregation bought St. Monica’s Anglican Church on Hiawatha Road.
Leslieville Historical Society 