Toronto Sketches 12. Mike Filey
southern coastline. This time 1,198 on board died. Of those, a total of 76 Canadians lost their lives. One of the last to succumb to the act of violence had actually survived the sinking. Alfred Clarke was president of Canada’s top tanning and leather manufacturing business. His large factory was at 633 Eastern Avenue, a site now occupied by Cinespace Film Studios. With war raging in Europe, Clarke was on his way to England to promote his company’s various products. That trip was cut short when without warning the ship exploded. Wrapping himself in a life jacket, he threw himself into the cold Atlantic Ocean. After several hours he was discovered floating face upward. Taken ashore, Clarke soon felt well enough to travel and continued on to London by train. But something was not right. In London he proceeded to the famous Fitzroy Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a broken rib and pleurisy. Pneumonia soon followed, and on June 20, some twenty-two days after the sinking, this prominent Canadian was dead. Clarke’s remains were removed to Toronto, where he was laid to rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The inscription on his monument reveals to all who pass by that he was “A VICTIM OF THE LUSITANIA.”
Escaping Summer by Boat
June 3, 2012
During the summers of long ago, the most popular way to get away from the stifling heat of the big city was to take a day trip on one of the many passenger steamers that were moored at the foot of Bay or Yonge streets. After boarding one of the ships with such mysterious-sounding names as Corona, Cibola, Chippewa, or Cayuga, it wasn’t long before you were in another world enjoying the cool Lake Ontario breezes as you and your fellow travellers headed for the Niagara River ports at Niagara-on-the-Lake or Queenston, or perhaps even the foreign port on the other side of the river at Lewiston in New York State.
But, as someone once said, all good things must come to an end. In the case of these waterfront icons it was due to the arrival of the automobile, and more specifically to the new superhighways like the Queen Elizabeth Way, which allowed families to drive using their own timetables to and from Niagara Falls.
That’s not to say that a serious attempt wasn’t made to retain at least one of the vessels. Cayuga had entered service in 1907 and continued her run to and from the Niagara River ports for a total of forty-four years. Citing various reasons, including the need for expensive safety upgrades brought on by the tragic fire that destroyed the upper lakes steamer SS Noronic here in Toronto Harbour in the fall of 1949, her owner, Canada Steamship Line, quietly announced that Cayuga would not operate in 1952 and would be offered for sale or simply scrapped.
Toronto’s skyline circa 1950. The tall office building is the Bank of Commerce (now Commerce Court North) on King Street just west of Yonge. Also visible is the Royal York Hotel before its 1959 addition. North and west of it is the stately Canada Life Building on University Avenue without its landmark weather beacon. In the middle of the view is the diminutive but dignified Toronto Harbour Commission Building and behind it the Postal Delivery Building, the south and east facades of which form part of today’s Air Canada Centre. Moored at the Toronto Ferry Docks is the 1910 Trillium (restored in 1975) and to the extreme right is SS Cayuga, arguably the most popular of the Port of Toronto’s several Lake Ontario passenger steamers.
The Great Lakes passenger steamer SS Cayuga as the popular vessel appeared on a circa-1920 souvenir postcard.
But enough people thought that Cayuga should continue to operate, which eventually resulted in the vessel being purchased, refitted, and returned to cross-lake service in time for the 1954 season. But it just wasn’t to be. In 1957, the new company announced that it was all over. Cayuga was tied up alongside the dock wall near where Harbourfront Centre is located today and was slowly, methodically cut into little pieces. Lake Ontario passenger boat travel had truly come to an end.
They Lined Up to Cross Niagara
June 10, 2012
If all goes as planned, next Friday all eyes will be on, or should I say above, the Canadian Horseshoe Falls as daredevil Nik Wallenda performs his spectacular tightrope walk (an activity also known as funambulism) from Goat Island on the American side to Table Rock on our side. This will be the first time this particular route across the river has been attempted.
Historically, crossing the Niagara River was first attempted by French showman Jean Francois Gravelet, who performed as The Great Blondin more than a century and a half ago. But that event, and the dozens of similar tightrope crossings that followed, were all done across the river well north of the American and Horseshoe Falls and close to the whirlpool where the river bends and the gorge is approximately 275 metres wide.
Interestingly, among the many people who successfully crossed the river on a rope or wire were four young men from Ontario. The first was Port Hope’s William Leonard Hunt, who as Signor Farini performed the feat in early September 1860. Exactly thirty years later, on September 6, 1890, Sam Dixon, one of our city’s pioneer photographers and a frequent wire walker at the Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park on Toronto Islands, became the first Torontonian to repeat Farini’s exploit. He told the newspaper reporters covering the event that his crossing would be the first of many he planned to make over the next few years. Unfortunately, Dixon drowned the following year while swimming in Wood Lake near Bracebridge in Muskoka.
Another year passed, and on October 22, 1892, twenty-two-year-old Clifford Caverley became the second Torontonian to cross the gorge. Described in the newspapers of the day as “unmarried and weighing a mere 138 lbs,” Caverley made several walks that day, one of which he accomplished in a record-setting 6 minutes, 32.5 seconds.
The third in the trio of Toronto funambulists was James Hardy, who had also perfected his talents at Hanlan’s Point. He performed his Niagara River crossing on Dominion Day, 1896. He went on to cross the Montmorency Falls in Quebec a total of seventy-four times before travelling to England, where he performed wire walking performances in front of cheering crowds.
Hardy died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four while shopping in a Queen Street West store. In his obituary that appeared in a Toronto newspaper, he was quoted as having once said, “when your time comes you’ll get it whether you are 50 feet in the air or supposedly safe on the ground.”
Both Hardy and Dixon are at rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
Torontonian Samuel Dixon is shown in this rare photograph crossing the Niagara River on September 6, 1890, at a location not far from the Whirlpool Rapids. He drowned in a Muskoka lake the following year. The bridge in the photo is the old Michigan Central Railway cantilever bridge that was built in 1883 and replaced in 1925 by the present Michigan Central steel arch railway bridge. Two other Toronto boys, Clifford Caverley and James Hardy, crossed the river at this same location in 1892 and 1896, respectively.
Where Is Our Spitfire?
June 24, 2012
Several weeks ago I had a note from a reader asking if I had any recollection of a Second World War fighter aircraft that was on display somewhere close to Ontario Place. He seemed to recall that it was located near HMCS Haida, the iconic Canadian warship that had been given a home along the Ontario Place waterfront back in 1970 after five years moored at the foot of York Street.
And, his note went on, not far away there was another artifact from the Second World War, an Avro Lancaster bomber that had sat, rather forlornly, perched atop a concrete pedestal since the mid-1960s.
Having joined the staff of the CNE in 1974, I was familiar with the small collection that had accumulated just across Lake Shore Boulevard, a collection that, to some people, was starting to look like a museum dedicated to the Second World War. And perhaps that was the problem. War is not something certain people wish to celebrate, even though it brought the lifestyle we now treasure.
But