York, You Horrible Marvellous Mess

Hardscrabble and hanging on, bumpy and battered, it is an undulating underdog, a threadbare borough trying to make the best of things… It is my neighbourhood.           It is the former City of York.

York is Toronto’s working-class borough, a forgotten prize-fighter living in the shadows of its smarter, richer, fresh-scrubbed sibblings to the north and west, namely: North York and Etobicoke. It is a place with no pretense. A place that was once home to Ernest Hemingway in the early 20’s when he was working for The Toronto Star.

Rough-round-the-edges, with cauliflower ears and clogged arteries, those rough edges run roughly west from Bathurst, bounded by St. Clair and Eglinton, for the most part, stretching out to the Humber River and bumping against Weston, with odd municipal bits branching off like skin tags in various ‘higgeldy piggeldy’ directions.

Even though Toronto amalgamated into a megacity in 1998, if you looked up Walt’s address you’d find that 423 Silverthorn Ave. is located smack in the borough of York within the City of Toronto. York is the second smallest of the six former municipalities, yet one of the most ethnically diverse.

The area we live in used to be known as the neighbourhood of Silverthorn by all who lived here. It was named after Aaron Silverthorn, one of York’s original founding settlers. But, despite this fact, and the fact that most people who live here wanted to maintain that name for this area, the City of Toronto, in its infinite wisdom, decided that they would have us become officially known as Keelesdale-Eglinton West.

In my opinion, this is somewhat of an affront to both the folks who live here and to the Silverthorn name itself.

It was back in 1825 that the Welland-born Aaron Silverthorn settled here with his wife and three sons. The family took up cattle farming and prospered quite nicely. The old Silverthorn homestead was located high on a hill near the present day Silverthorn and Eglinton Avenues.

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When Aaron’s son, Francis, inherited his father’s property, he continued with cattle farming and also branched out into the new and esoteric world of dietetics and healthy living. Francis was something of a pioneer in this area. He sold many health food products from salt-free biscuits to pure, unpasturized honey under the banner of the Silverthorn Honey & Hardtack Co.

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Aaron’s son Francis would die in 1894 at the ripe old age of seventy-nine.

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The Silverthorn farm was eventually sold many years later and in 1914 it was parcelled off for residential development under the name “Silverthorn Heights”. Sales were brisk and the subdivision’s land was quickly snapped up. However, it wasn’t until the late 1920’s that Silverthorn’s many residents would get the basic municipal services such as water, sewers, and paved roads that one takes for granted these days (although some of those roads still aren’t quite what I’d call ‘paved’).

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York at one time held the promise of better days ahead. However, annexation and neglect by urban planners has forced it to soldier on by sheer force of will.

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It isn’t pretty and it’s not about to win any urban planning design awards, but it’s the
place I call home and it’s a horrible marvellous mess that somehow seems to work in
spite of itself.

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The Silverthorn Neighbourhood

   

 

 

The T.O. Blue Bin Blues

People are whingeing and whining and complaining about these new Toronto Monster Blue Bins, but honestly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

 

Gabbin’ in The Blog Cabin

How apropos that everything starts with “that first post”. Whether it’s the post in your lintel or that post in a ‘good fence’, – the Druids, the Mayans and the frontier cowboy all knew the importance of that first post as something to build on. …A future.
And this is Fallingwalter’s first post.

Fallingwalter is a cheeky, low-rent nod to architecture aficionados and Frank Lloyd Wright devotees with a sense of history and humour.

Over the next ‘several posts’ we’re hoping to build something. A picture of Walt.
What Walt is, where Walt comes from and where Walt is going.

As we embark on renovations, both putting up and tearing down (posts, walls, ‘what-have-you’) we’re hoping to chronicle some of the ups and downs we encounter along the way.

We have scant details about the past and are at present more concerned with future, but there are many things to uncover about this unique house in the west end of Toronto, located at 423 Silverthorn Ave.  I’m hoping we can discover some of them together.