Leslieville Historical Society Queen Street: From Davies Avenue to Munro Street

Welcome to this a mini-walking tour of Queen Street. It is just one part of a tour from the Don River to Victoria Park. You can get out your walking shoes or simply use these images to time travel the main drag of the Old East End.

By Joanne Doucette

630-660 Queen Street East 1920 City Directory

Toronto Star, 19 Mar 1915 Station 6 was opened 1919-1920

View of Queen Street East at Don bridge – May 31, 1977 detail

Queen St. Bridge approach – November 20, 1914 looking east

Crosstown Food & Restaurant Supplies, 1984 (Queen & Don Valley Parkway

Shops and People

Along the way I will introduce you not only to buildings and architecture, but to shops and individuals. Some of my choices are idiosyncratic, but doesn’t that make it all the more interesting.

A Fishmonger on Queen — but not the Hooks you might know! And a woman on a motorcycle…

630 Queen Street East, Globe, August 2, 1924

Looking east from 630 Queen Street East, June 12, 1912

Across the river by the Coleman factory

Look northeast – from the bridge over the Don River to the Coleman factory, April 30, 1941
To take a “side trip” into the history of this building to to: https://www.fadingad.com/fadingadblog/2012/01/26/the-coleman-lamp-stove-company-limited-queen-street-east-toronto-ca/

A Victorian trio

630-634 Queen Street East – June 12, 1912 The street level was raised when a new Don Bridge was built leaving this late Victorian triplex “sunk” below Queen. For a side trip into Victorian architecture: http://www.ontarioarchitecture.com/Victorian.htm

630 Queen Street East Fish Week Toronto Star, February 7, 1921

630-634 Queen Street East – June 12, 1912 front and rear

It was a poor neighbourhood and a rough one, but bootleggers, bookies and gamblers were not necessarily considered dishonourable professions by the neighbourhood at that time.

But next door lived the Buckners, a family that was well known and long-established in the East End, respectable and hard-working Cockney immigrants, who were skilled plasterers.

636 Queen St E Robert and Annie Buckner, Globe and Mail, January 16, 1943

636 Queen St E Homing Pigeons, Toronto Star, October 3, 1934

There is a myth and, some might say more than a myth, a TRUTH that the East End were all Scots, Irish, English, mostly Protestant with a sprinkling of Catholics here and there. But, as we continue our virtual walk along Queen Street, you will meet Black people, Jewish shopkeepers and tailors, Chinese laundrymen, labourers from Macedonia, etc. This was a diverse neighbourhood in a very homogeneous city; today it is a diverse neighbourhood in a Canada that has officially embraced multiculturalism, but still incarcerates a disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous people.