Toronto Local History 3-Book Bundle. Scott Kennedy
was created in 1922, it had a population of 6,000 and a police force of one. Roy Risebrough, fourth generation North York farmer, born on the family farm near today’s Bayview and Cummer, was definitely his own boss. Not only was he the lone constable on a force of one, he was also the chief. It’s not surprising that Roy would hold a position of prominence in the early days of North York, as it can be said without exaggeration that without Roy’s efforts, there might not even be a North York.
Roy was one of five disgruntled farmers who criss-crossed the area in 1921 gathering signatures on a petition to secede from the Township of York. He was also one of the people charged with raising money to pay for the lawyer, who would be required to conduct the secession proceedings. As the urban population of Toronto grew, fewer and fewer farmers were being elected to York Township Council until, in 1919, for the first time, no farmers were elected at all. The farmers, who were paying nearly 25 percent of the township’s taxes, decided that something had to be done. In 1921, James Muirhead, John Brumwell, W.J. Buchanan, and W.C. Snider piled into Roy Risebrough’s Model T Ford and visited all the farmers in the area to drum up support. Their efforts paid off quickly and in grand fashion. In 1922, the province granted their request and the Township of North York was born. Roy’s contributions were significant as he was the only one of the five who had a car, which made reaching all the farmers that much easier.
The new council had its work cut out for it, as North York was on the cusp of an unprecedented growth spurt. By the time Roy retired as police chief in 1957, he would be dealing with over 182,000 residents, a far cry from the 6,000 he had to worry about in the beginning. And, yes, by 1957, he had plenty of help.
Roy was born on the farm where he would live his whole life. Located on the northeast fifty acres of Lot 22-1E, on the southwest corner of Bayview and Cummer, the farm had been in the family since 1862. Roy was born there thirty years later. Forty-five years after Roy’s birth, the family farmhouse would gain a new neighbour when St. John’s Convalescent Hospital opened on part of the Montgomery/Elliot farm in 1937, just to the west of the Risebroughs’ farm
Roy studied at the little red-brick Newtonbrook Public School on Drewry Avenue before graduating from Richmond Hill High School and the Ontario College of Agriculture in Guelph. He would spend the next six or seven winters inspecting dairy cattle throughout the province and farming in the summer. He married Ida Congram of Wingham and together they had two daughters.
At the time Roy was appointed chief of police in 1922, he was also given the posts of school attendance officer and sanitary inspector, and yet he continued to inspect dairy cattle in the winter and farm in the summer. The fact that he was able to wear so many hats says a lot about the relative lack of crime in North York in the 1920s. With automobiles still beyond the reach, or taste, of most North York residents, crime was much more localized than it is today. In addition, Roy was dealing mostly with people he knew on a personal level. After all, his family had been farming here for over eighty years by the time North York was created. Crime was often minor: the odd burglary, a little rustling, public drunkenness, and domestic disputes were the types of things that Roy was likely to encounter. He never wore a gun and only wore a uniform twice — on ceremonial occasions.
As the population grew, Roy was obliged to hire additional officers. John Harrison was perhaps the most significant of Roy’s early hires. He joined the force in 1930, becoming deputy chief in 1946, and working in the community on such projects as the restoration of the Zion Primitive Methodist Church, usually going beyond the call of duty. The descendant of another pioneer family, John would become district chief when the North York force was absorbed by the Metropolitan Toronto Police in 1957. He is buried in the Zion Church cemetery that he helped to restore.
John Harrison wasn’t the only addition to the force, which had grown to thirteen officers by 1944. The township population had grown to 25,000 by this point, but it would be the post-war years that would see a real explosion in both population and crime. By 1953 the population of North York had exploded to over 110,000. Crime grew as well, for now the area was well-serviced by hundreds of new roads and nearly everyone had access to a car. Bank robbers, in particular, took aim at the new, isolated suburban banks, which offered a more enticing choice of getaway routes than their downtown contemporaries. It was Roy’s men who, in 1952, captured two members of the notorious Boyd gang[1] who had escaped from the Don Jail and were hiding out in an abandoned barn on the old Hildon Farm near Finch and Leslie.
The unfettered population growth and the corresponding expansion of the police force meant that the force seemed to be constantly looking for new police stations. In 1955, the twenty-nine member division that served Don Mills had to be housed in one of the barns at the former Don-Alda Farm, near the corner of Don Mills Road and York Mills Road. By 1957, the North York force had grown to two hundred officers. Through it all, Roy’s influence continued to grow. He became somewhat of an elder statesman whose opinion was sought and valued by members of the community. His endorsement often meant the difference between victory and defeat for local politicians, in a time when it was considered perfectly normal for municipal employees to involve themselves in this way
Several months before the North York Police Force was absorbed into the new Metropolitan Toronto Police Force in 1957, Roy Risebrough retired. It seemed a perfect convergence of events for the former one-man show. He had reached retirement age that year and had certainly earned his leisure, but he was also able to neatly sidestep being rolled into the huge new bureaucracy, a near miss that probably pleased this rugged individual. He retired to the family farmhouse on Cummer, staying involved through local service groups, police associations, and the Newtonbrook United Church.
In a time before graffiti, there was a certain elegance in abandonment, and a chance to explore and appreciate what once was, before it was defaced. The empty, haunted eyes of this massive Risebrough farmhouse, photographed on the south side of Cummer Avenue, just east of Bayview in 1961, beckon a visitor to enter an interior that would have offered the senses a visceral education to shame the most elaborate video game or surround-sound movie. It was demolished in the mid-1960s and high-rise apartment buildings took over the site.
Photo by Lorna Gardner, North York Historical Society, NYHS 42.
Roy’s ancestors did historians no favours by making sure that they were all named “Robert.” His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and brother all carried this handle with only the odd middle initial to differentiate them from one another. Robert I started it all when he left the county of Norfolk in England and sailed to Canada with his wife and six children in 1837. After a nightmarish thirteen weeks at sea they finally arrived in Upper Canada, sick, tired, and hungry. One source indicates that they first farmed the northeast corner of Lot 22-1E, the section near Bayview and Cummer, but this is difficult to prove.
The land, which had previously been home to Alexander and John Montgomery, was owned by the Cummers when the Risebroughs arrived, so if they did start there it would have been as tenants. What is certain is the fact that Robert I bought the east quarter of Lot 21-3E on the northwest corner of Finch and Woodbine in 1852. It was not until 1862 that his name appeared on the deed to the northeast corner of the lot on Cummer. The same year he also bought the western half of Lot 22-2E on the southeast corner of Bayview and Cummer. When Robert I died in 1871, he left the farms to his son Robert II, who had been born in England in 1827 and survived that hellish Atlantic crossing at the age of ten. In 1891, Robert II bought the southwest corner of Lot 23-1W and expanded an existing farmhouse there on the northeast corner of Bathurst Street and Drewry Avenue.
In 1890, William Risebrough, one of Robert Risebrough II’s sons, bought sixty acres of the seventy-five-acre Lot 22-4E, north of Finch on the east side of Woodbine. The remaining fifteen acres was part of the Myers family holdings. By 1891, the Risebroughs had a farm in every one of the four concessions east of Yonge Street, as well as one farm west of Yonge. They were also farming in Scarborough, to the east of Victoria Park Avenue.
As already seen with Roy, the family continued to farm until after the Second World War, when pressures from the growing city began to gobble up all of the remaining farmland in North York. But, the family’s contribution to farming still wasn’t over.