Briar Hill, Dufferin, Eglinton
I was late in life getting a bicycle. It was the summer when I was ten. Most of my friends had bikes for a couple of years. Mom was a single parent supporting three kids as well as her own mother.
My older sister had a paper route and after performing well in a subscription drive she was given an array of prizes to choose from. Instead of picking something nice for herself, she got a bicycle for me. But prior to the expanded world that was now open for exploration, I was resigned to covering the neighbourhood on foot.
Two blocks up the road lay the venue that would dominate 9 years of my emerging life, Briar Hill Public School. The yard and entrances were delineated for boys and girls, a setup the educators of the time considered peremptory. With just a few months remaining in my final year, I inadvertently violated the boundary line while deep in discussion about current affairs with a classmate. The punishment was swift but had a silver lining which is the topic of another story. In 2014, the school was demolished in deference to Toronto’s love affair with condominiums. The wrecking crew barged in before proper permits were secured and the cornerstone of the original 1863 schoolhouse was buried in the rubble, possibly lost for all time.
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| Fairbanks. A common mistake, but this isn't Alaska. |
Directly across from Briar Hill School on Dufferin Street is Fairbank United Church, another influential part of my formative years. Before its 1889 construction, the Methodist congregation used to meet at the 1863 one-room schoolhouse. The church building remains much the same as it was with the original stained glass windows.
Having been designated a heritage site, the building will hopefully not fall prey to the condominium craze should its dwindling congregation one day decide to cease operations.
Continuing south on Dufferin Street and making a slight jog left on Ridelle Avenue was Ridelle Park, which is still there and now named J. T. Watson Parkette. There was an ice rink in the winter, divided in half by a chain link fence attached to wooden posts. One side was designated for playing hockey and the other for regular skating. A wooden shack heated by an oil stove provided welcome shelter from the cold.
After a round of hockey, I would retire to the Sky Ranch restaurant, which hasn't changed much since its 1960-ish debut. A huge oval plate of french fries was 20 cents. It was enough for 2 kids and the waiter garciously provided a second fork for the friend sitting beside me on the swivel seat at the counter. My friend would ask for gravy on the fries and I insisted that none be put on my side because I didn't think I would like it. One day I accidentally got a splash of gravy on my share and to my surprise I loved it and the waiter was no doubt relieved that he no longer had to cater to my picky tastes.
Right across from the Sky Ranch at the southeast corner of Dufferin and Castlefield was a Canadian Tire store. Today it is a car dealership. The retailer's system was revolutionary for the day. One sample of the merchandise was displayed on the main floor and the customer filled out a form with the part number which would be sent downstairs via a pneumatic tube. Guys on roller skates filled the orders down below and sent them up in a basket on a conveyor belt. Industry experts no doubt concluded it was more cost efficient to have the customers pick the item themselves from an ample supply within arm's reach.
Just to the south at Dufferin and Roselawn doing land office business was Fairbank Lumber. Right before the railway bridge was a building that looked like someone's house but with a sign that read Justice of the Peace. I never once saw anyone enter or exit through that door.
Going past the tracks meant having to step onto Dufferin Street and dodge oncoming cars because the sidewalk came to a dead end at the girder bridge. In the mid 1960s sidewalks on both sides of the street were created by tunneling through the rail overpass. At Hopewell Avenue I would cross Dufferin to the west side where Fairglen Dairy was located between Schell and Bowie Avenues. Their milk was delivered by horse drawn wagons right through the 1950s.
The fish and chip shop a few doors south of Ramsden Road was called Eglinton Fish & Chips even though it was on Dufferin. An "order" cost 25 cents or, if that was too rich for your blood, one thin dime would buy an order of chips served in a paper cone and liberally doused with salt and apple cider vinegar.
Next on the itinerary was the Kresge store which could be accessed from both Dufferin and Eglinton. The candy counter was a favourite of mine where I could choose from among the sweets and decide how much I wanted to spend. It was exactingly weighed and put in a bag. One time I had a quarter burning a hole in my pocket and I spent it all on gum drops. The size of the bag scared me and I thought I would have candy to last until adulthood.
In my early teens I would buy my 45 rpm records that comprised the top 50 on the CHUM Chart at Kresge's. They would play the song before you decided to buy and it came over the speakers through the entire store.
Crossing Dufferin and Eglinton diagonally would lead to where Vaughan Road's northwestern terminus joined the "five corners." They were just starting to build St. Hilda's Anglican Church which looked like it had been poured from a Jello mold. A few steps past the Esso station was the Colony movie theatre and the quarter burning a hole in my other pocket would get me in to the Saturday matinee to see such blockbusters as Swiss Family Robinson and Polyanna.
After the movies, I went home by a different route. And that's the subject of future posting.
