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A
History of Markland Wood
– By Uncle Murray
Chapter
1
During the
next few issues of the Marklander, I am going to tell you some of the history
of this area.
I am
directing my history to the preteens, as I was a preteen when I grew up near
Mill Road
.
I was born in a farmhouse on
Old Burnhamthorpe Road
in 1929.
Let us start
on an imaginary bike ride in the summer of 1939.
We head westward on
Burnhamthorpe Road
into
Peel
County
— now called
Mississauga
. We wave to Mr. Dunn who is delivering mail from his old Ford car to the many
mail boxes scattered along the side of the road in Etobicoke.
While we are
only 10 years of age, it is safe to travel on the gravel road, as we will only
see about a dozen cars on our ride to
Dixie Road
and back.
After close
to half an hour, uphill peddling most of the way, we finally arrive at the
nearest store at
Dixie Road
. Gill's store is located in
Burnhamthorpe
Village
. Mr. and Mrs. Gill, as well as
their son and daughter, serve us at a counter.
"Self serve" is yet uncommon. We purchase a
"Wildfire" chocolate bar for the grand sum of ten cents and start
back the way we came. It is much
easier traveling downhill to Etobicoke and to the old steel and wooden bridge,
which crosses Etobicoke Creek.
As we cross
the bridge, we stop and watch our friends in the old swimming hole. Downstream
we see a farmer's cattle having a drink in the river; little knowing that
someday the area would be a part of the Markland Wood Golf Course. We walk our
bikes to the top of the hill and turn southward to our right on an old dusty
trail, which is
passable by car only in the summer and the fall, as in spring it is too
swampy and in winter they do not remove the snow from the trail. This is the
beginning of
Mill Road
. To our left are the future
299 Mill Condo and the future Silverthorn Collegiate.
Just below
the future collegiate location we enter the dense Silverthorn bush and pass
the future location of
Millwood
Public School
. We eventually pass a point where
someday will be the Guardian Drug store. We travel southward and finally come
out of the bush and we stop to have our lunch near a wooded bridge, which
crosses the river. As we eat our lunch on the riverbank we watch Mr. Moor, at
his saw mill cutting logs into lumber.
Again we watch some more of our friends swimming in the river. There
was a railway bridge, which crossed this point for the electric train which
ran from
Toronto
to
Guelph
. When the bridge was demolished, it left a deep depression in the river
leaving an excellent swimming hole. It
is our aim to be first in the river on Victoria Day in May. Fish are abundant
in the river. After lunch we continue to
Dundas
(No. 5) Highway. Had we traveled westward, we would not have seen any
significant number of stores until we reached the town of
Cooksville
at No. 10 Hwy. (Hurontario). We cross
Dundas
and ride to our left for less than a minute until we arrive at Michie's
grocery store, which houses the Summerville Post Office. Someday Muddy Duck's
restaurant will be near this location. In
the store we buy a soft drink for 10 cents. My favourite is "Wishing
Well" cream soda. We leave
the store and cross the highway to see Mr. Partin, the local blacksmith, who
is putting some shoes on a local farmer's horse. The blacksmith and the
grocery store are the only places of business in the area. We continue
eastward and walk our bikes up to Brown's Line. It will later be called
Highway 27. We travel north from the intersection that has the only gas
station in the area until we reach
Bloor Street
. At this point we would end up on the steps of the only local public school
in the area. We can't go westward as Bloor Street is nothing more than a dusty
trail to the west and so we must go north until we reach Burnhamthorpe Road
and continue back home.
In the next
issue we are going to visit the only public school in the area which is near
the future intersection of Bloor & the West Mall. Before we tell you,
possibly your teacher, parents, or grandparents will tell you the name of the
school.
A
History of Markland
Wood
Chapter
2
In the last
issue of the "Marklander" we took an imaginary bicycle ride
through the area in 1939. We stopped briefly at the only public school in the
region, which was at the future location of the West Mall and Bloor. Our
previous story was directed toward the pre-teens, as I was one of them in
1939. Let us continue as a pre-teen as we visit the school. The school is
called Eatonville. It has just over 100 students. Immediately north of the
school on either side of Brown's Line (427) there are two farms owned by the
T. Eaton Company. It supplies dairy products to their downtown
Toronto
store. It is a three room school. Two of the rooms were added to the original
single room school, which was originally referred to as "Swamp"
school. We have no inside bathrooms. The outside unheated bathrooms, or as we
call them "shanties", one for girls, one for boys are quite cold in
the winter. On Halloween night the older boys delight in climbing to the top
of the school and cutting the rope to the school bell so that we cannot be
called to class by the bell on the next school day. There are no Catholic
schools in the area and most Catholic students attend
Eatonville
School
. Most of us are children of farmers, market gardeners and working class
parents. Most of the pupils live some distance from the school, so we have to
bring our lunch. The Women's Institute raises money to help keep the cost of
milk for our lunch as low as possible. For the grand sum of 38 cents we may
have half a pint of white or chocolate milk with our lunch. In winter, at
about 11 a.m. a mixture of half chocolate milk and half water is put on to
heat in urns on two pot belly coal stoves at the front of the original school.
At noon, we bring our cups to the urns to fill up with
"scum"-covered hot chocolate.
Let's
pretend as pre-teens it is a warm spring day in May called Arbour Day. We
clean up the debris from the school yard and start to turn the soil to make a
vegetable garden. After we complete our clean-up of the school yard and plant
some trees, Mr. Jim Dodd, the principal, allows us, after lunch, to leave our
classrooms to visit Silverthorn bush - the future Markland Wood.
We walk a
dirt trail westward from school, which someday will be the continuation of
Bloor St
. We cross the creek just west of where they will some day build
Bloordale
United
Church
. There is very little water in the creek, so we cross it into the bush in
search of blue violets, dog-tooth violets, and jacks-in-the-pulpit. We are not
permitted to pick trilliums. There is little chance that we will get lost in
Silverthorn bush, for if we travel westward we will eventually come upon a
dirt trail, which is the beginning of
Mill Rd.
It is becoming late in the afternoon and we return to our school to retrieve
our bikes and rush home in time to listen to our favourite stories on late
afternoon radio. My favourites are Jimmy Alien, Jack Armstrong and Lil Orphan
Annie. Ask your grandparents if they remember such radio programs before TV
came into our homes.
Well, see
you in the next issue of the Marklander for our next story about
transportation, communication and shopping in this area in 1939.
A
History of Markland Wood
Chapter
3
In previous
Marklander issues, we spoke to you pre-teens about the Markland area before it
was known by that name. Today we are going to tell you about travel,
communication and shopping in his area in the 1930's.
Firstly,
there are no passable streets between Burnhamthorpe and
Dundas
, west of Brown's Line (427) to Etobicoke Creek; except for the one trail
which will become
Mill Road
. The only
Toronto
buses in the area come no further than
Islington
Village
(Burnhamthorpe & Dundas). As taxi cabs are relatively unknown in this
area, you hitch a ride with some of your friends, if they have a car, to go to
the nearest shopping area, which is
Islington
Village
. It contains three grocery/meat stores, namely Claytons, Lee's and
Jantzi’s. There is also Evans’ combined dry goods store and Islington Post
Office, as well as Hank Davis’ IDA drugstore, Gordon's Dairy, a blacksmith
shop, and Kirby’s Hardware.
The nearest
movie theatres are located east of
Jane Street
. In the "Junction" area (Keele & Dundas) we can attend a
Saturday matinee at the Beaver theatre for 15 cents. One other local theatre
is the Runnymede at Bloor and
Runnymede
. Shopping for clothing is done mostly east of Jane, as the Kingsway area on
Bloor St.
is yet to be developed. Cloverdale and
Sherway
Gardens
are still farmland.
As bicycles
are a common mode of travel, some commercial salesmen travel from house to
house on their bikes to sell Watkins' or Raleighs’ ointments, etc. A man on
a bike sells radio licenses, which are required if you have a radio.
Television has not yet become available. Telephones are on a
"party-line" of six or more homes and if one person sees the radio
license man approaching on his bike, they get on the party-line to alert their
local neighbours to hide until he has gone by, so that they will not have to
buy a radio license. Telephones in the home consist of a large wall-mounted
wooden box with a crank on the side. By turning the crank a full revolution (a
long) or a partial revolution (a short) one can "ring" your local
neighbours, whose telephones sound in their homes in a combination of long and
short rings. To reach our home you ring one long and three shorts. If you want
to reach a firm or person in
Toronto
, you call the "operator". Either Jean Burton, who lives on Old
Burnhamthorpe Road or "Singing Sue" Barnes, both of whom are located
on the second floor of a telephone office building in Islington. They receive
your ring and patch you into many exchanges in
Toronto
, such as Hyland, Waverly, Junction, etc. or to other places in
Canada
or the
U.S.
A call to Eaton's or Simpson's catalogue department will bring you next-day
delivery of your C.O.D. order.
Mom and Dad
listen to the early evening news read by Jim Hunter on CFRB. Late evening has
such radio programs as Jack Benny, Burns & Allen and Kate Smith, but in
mid to late morning they listened to Kate Aiken, or "The Happy
Gang".
Communication
by mail is quite simple and inexpensive. As Mr. Dunn delivers mail from his
car along Rural Route No. 2 on
Burnhamthorpe Rd.
, he will pick up any mail that you want to send, at the mail box at the road.
One simply puts a 3 cent stamp on the letter, places it in the mailbox and
turns the box facing the road, so that Mr. Dunn knows you have a letter to
send. Unsealed Christmas cards are sent for 2 cents. As there is no air mail
delivery in the 1930's in
Canada
, a letter to Western or
Eastern Canada
may take two or three weeks to arrive there.
A
History of Markland Wood
Chapter 4
In
previous chapters, I mentioned Eatonville public school as we as pre-teens
explored this area in 1939, years before Markland Wood came into being.
In
1939, one of the trustees of our school is Gideon Silverthorn Sr. He and his
wife Nell have three children, Margaret, Gideon Jr. and Don. In 1939, Gideon
Sr. has a farm on what would be the future home of the A&P warehouse (East
Mall, south of
Dundas
).
The
Silverthorn family came to this area from the
U.S.A.
as United Empire Loyalists, who remained loyal to
England
when
America
became independent in the late 1700s. Mississauga Indians lived in this area,
which they called "WAH-DO-BE-KAUGH", or a variation thereof, and
from that the name
"ETOBICOKE"
was created.
One
of the early settlers was John Silverthorn who, with his sons, built a cabin
and the area known as “The Mill Farm”, was immediately east of the
Etobicoke creek, south of Dundas.
And,
as they say in the Bible,
John
(1762-1846) begat
Arron
(1790-1872), who begat
Newman
(1829-1918), who begat
Charles
(1872-1917), who begat
Gideon
Sr. (1896-1990)
In
1812, John and his sons, Philip Cody (uncle of Buffalo Bill Cody) and others
petitioned the government of
York
to make
Dundas
a corduroy road (lined with logs) to provide a firm roadbed, upon which horse
and buggies could travel much more easily.
One
of the disaster years for the Silverthorns and others in this area was 1816,
when snow fell in June and destroyed their crops. Thus, John and his sons had
to resort to shooting game such as moose, rabbit, fox, and wild fowl to get
through the following winter. 1832 to 1834 was also a disastrous period, when
several of the Silverthorns died in a cholera epidemic.
In
previous Marklander articles I spoke of a radial (electric) train, which ran
from
Toronto
to
Guelph
. It was owned and operated by Canadian National Electric Railways. In 1917,
Charles Silverthorn was crossing the train tracks, when an unscheduled train
hit his model T Ford and he was killed. The train was in operation from 1917
to 1931. Stop #20, which is "Summerville", was immediately south of
Markland Wood, where the line crossed
Dundas
highway at Etobicoke Creek.
As
I mentioned, Gideon Sr. was a trustee of
Eatonville
School
, built in 1925, but his grandfather, Newman, became a trustee of the school
in 1872, when it was known as "
Swamp
School
", built in 1845.
Cousins
of the Silverthorns occupied a house called "Cherry Hill House”, which
was originally built in the early 1800s, and was moved to the Cawthra and
Dundas
area in the 1970s, where one can now enjoy an excellent meal.
As
we bring to a close the history of Markland, I want to thank Don Silverthorn
for his help in telling you about their family history. Silverthorn Collegiate
Institute will long be a memorial to the Silverthorn name.
For
you young folks in Markland Wood, who want to learn more about this area and
Etobicoke, there are excellent materials available, including a publication
called the "Villages of Etobicoke". If I can be help in directing
you to books etc. covering this area, please give me a call. Uncle Murray (HIRONS).
It
has been a pleasure to inform you pre-teens of my pre-teen memories of 1939.
Your
Friend, Uncle Murray
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