Life in the Ward

Toronto’s original immigrant neighbourhood was alive with the sights and sounds of many cultures.

Toronto’s original immigrant neighbourhood was alive with the sights and sounds of many cultures.

IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY, AS DIMLY LIT AND rundown homes in Toronto’s first immigrant neighbourhood, St. John’s Ward, became overcrowded, everyday life spilled into the streets and laneways. Children congregated to play and to work, peddlers made their living selling goods from roadside carts, and young mothers hung their laundry while chatting with nearby neighbours.

Nestled in the heart of the city between City Hall, University College, and the mansions along University Avenue, the Ward was home to a diverse population, including Eastern-European Jews, and Italian, Chinese, and African-American immigrants. The crowded back alleys and busy roads provided meeting places for diverse cultural identities and communities but were not free from racism or distrust.

The stories of these families are as varied and complex as the communities they created. Exploring how these stories unfolded in the streets of the Ward provides insight into the residents’ overlooked experiences, which were immortalized on film by Toronto photojournalists William James and Arthur Goss.

The storefronts of a kosher restaurant and a chicken warehouse in the Ward in 1910. Eastern-European Jews were the Ward’s largest immigrant population until about 1920. Journalist John McAree wrote about the Ward’s Jewish population in a 1912 Maclean’s article. His description reflects the early twentieth-century mindset towards immigrants: contempt mixed with curiosity. On the Jews’ use of the Ward’s streets, McAree wrote: “In the evening, this part of the Other Half lives on the sidewalks or leaning out of windows. The streets swarm with old Jews and young, flashily dressed Jews in the latest Queen Street styles, and patriarchal old Jews in gaberdine and skull cap. Strange noises and smells rise on the air and blend with a Babel of tongues.” Many Jewish people living in the Ward were unable to find secure jobs due to rampant anti-Semitism. Thus, many in the community, including children, made a living peddling.

Child labour was largely outlawed by the 1890s. However, extreme poverty kept many urban children employed well into the twentieth century. Children also found themselves on the streets performing unpaid labour for their parents, such as collecting wood and coal and picking up laundry or groceries. The older girl in this 1911 image was probably babysitting her younger siblings or other neighbourhood kids.

Families in the Ward commonly used the streets and back alleys as extensions of their tiny homes. This family was photographed in 1911 sleeping on the sidewalk to escape the heat inside their house. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, homes in the Ward became increasingly crowded as residences were repeatedly subdivided, providing cheaper but also drastically smaller homes.

Photographer William James’ images of poor children “running amuck” in unsanitary conditions were printed in local newspapers to provoke moral panic, and to bolster social-reform movements intended to “save” but also to assimilate immigrants living in the Ward. His photographs, such as this image from 1908, had real, and often negative, effects on the Ward’s residents. These popular images have also shaped contemporary understanding of poverty and everyday life in the neighbourhood.