When Toronto’s upscale Leaside was a company town – May 17, 2018 Globe and Mail

Image from “Hidden Among Us” photo exhibit. Source: Leaside Matters.

A May 17, 2018 Globe and Mail article is entitled: “When Toronto’s upscale Leaside was a company town.”

An excerpt reads:

“The railroad thought they were going to do a Rosedale thing,” says transplanted American and architectural historian Connor Turnbull, who co-chairs the advocacy group Leaside Matters. “But Canada Wire said, ‘No, we’re going to build worker’s homes, and they’re going to be semi-detached, and they’re going to be utilitarian.’

“From our perspective,” she continues, “that’s sort of the DNA of Leaside, it’s the ‘Big Bang’ of this place.”

With the increasing development pressure in Toronto over all and leafy Leaside in particular, Ms. Turnbull thought that these homes and the factory that made them possible deserve a second look: “A lot of Leasiders tend to turn their back on the industrial and they don’t think about the fact that it had a place … and because of this new densification to the north, it’s going to really matter what Laird [becomes], and if Leasiders, at a minimum, can understand that this is part of the origin, then there’s a way that evolution of place can thread back together again.

[End]

Hidden Among Us

A previous post is entitled:

Hidden Among Us: Architectural Portraits of Leaside’s Canada Wire and Cable Company Homes exhibit took place May 11 – 13, 2018