The Junction
Encyclopedia
The Junction is a neighbourhood in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, that is near the junction of four railway lines in the area known as the West Toronto Diamond
West Toronto Diamond
The West Toronto Diamond is a Canadian railway junction in Toronto, Ontario.Located near the intersection of Keele Street and Dundas Street, it is near the Union Station terminal trackage operated by Toronto Terminal Railway . It links the tracks of Canadian National Railway with those of Canadian...

. The neighbourhood was previously an independent city called West Toronto
West Toronto
West Toronto was a federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1904. It was located in the City of Toronto, in the province of Ontario. The district was created by the British North America Act of 1867 and was renamed Toronto West in 1903.West Toronto was...

, that was also its own federal electoral district
Electoral district
An electoral district is a distinct territorial subdivision for holding a separate election for one or more seats in a legislative body...

 until amalgamating with the city of Toronto in 1909. The main intersection of the area is Dundas Street West
Dundas Street
Dundas Street, also known as Highway 5 west of Toronto, is a major arterial road connecting the centre of that city with its western suburbs and southwestern Ontario beyond...

 and Keele Street
Keele Street
Keele Street is a north-south road in Toronto and York Region in Ontario, Canada. It stretches 47km, running from Bloor Street in Toronto to the Holland Marsh. South of Bloor Street, the roadway is today known as Parkside Drive, but was originally part of Keele Street...

.

History

As with most Toronto neighbourhoods outside of the central downtown core, the area was primarily rural up until the 1870s. John Scarlett
John Scarlett (Toronto)
John Scarlett was an merchant-miller who played a significant role in the development of the part of the historic York Township that later became the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto.- Early Life :...

 was the first land owner and employer in the area. By 1817 he had acquired most of property that is now The Junction and much more to the north and west to the Humber River
Humber River (Ontario)
The Humber River is one of two major rivers on either side of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the other being the Don River to the east. It was designated a Canadian Heritage River on September 24, 1999....

. Runnymede Road was built by him and named after his home. From 1857 to 1876 much of the area was the site of the Carlton Race Course which was owned by the Keele family (William Conway Keele and his son Charles Keele). The track was the site of the first Queen's Plate
Queen's Plate
The Queen's Plate is Canada's oldest thoroughbred horse race. It is run at a distance of 1¼ miles for 3-year-old thoroughbred horses foaled in Canada. The race takes place each summer in June or July at Woodbine Racetrack, Etobicoke , Ontario...

. Following the arrival of the railways in the 1880s, the old racetrack and surrounding area was developed by Daniel Webster Clendenan. The approximate locations of the two main straightaways of the track are now High Park Avenue and Pacific Avenue (between Glenlake Road and Annette Street).

The Village of West Toronto Junction was founded in 1884 at the intersection of Dundas and Keele Streets. In 1889, it merged with the nearby villages of Carlton and Davenport to the north-east to become the Town of West Toronto Junction. It grew further, into the Town of Toronto Junction in 1892, then the City of West Toronto in 1908 before it was amalgamated with the City of Toronto one year later in 1909.

The Junction was a manufacturing community that rose quickly during the late 19th century. Foundries, mills, funiture assembly, meat processing, nail and wire factories were established. Notable companies, such as Canadian Cycle & Motor Co.
CCM (cycle)
CCM, formerly an initialism for Canada Cycle & Motor Co. Ltd. The company would eventually split into two separate entities both maintaining the CCM trademark, one maintaining bicycle manufacturing and the other, CCM , producing hockey equipment.-History:The formation of C.C.M...

, Campbell Milling Company
Archibald Campbell (Canadian politician)
Archibald Campbell was a Canadian politician.Born in Howard Township, Kent County, Canada West. His father was from Argyleshire, Scotland, and his mother a native of Oneida County, New York. Campbell was educated at the Public and High Schools of Kent...

 and the Heintzman piano company
Heintzman & Co.
Heintzman & Co. Ltd was a celebrated Canadian piano manufacturer, based in the Toronto area, whose instruments retain a reputation for quality of workmanship and fineness of tone.- History :...

 set up in the area. Other firms came because land, labour and taxes were cheaper than in Toronto, and the Canadian Pacific established a major operation there, establishing yards from Keele Street as far west as Scarlett Road. In addition, the town acquired an official port of entry in the 1890s, allowing local businesses to clear their goods locally as opposed to using the downtown Toronto port. These factors also attracted many immigrant or second generation Irish Catholics to the area, many of whom moved there from then poor, crowded tenement housing in areas of the city such as Cabbagetown
Cabbagetown, Toronto
Cabbagetown is a neighbourhood located on the east side of downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It comprises "the largest continuous area of preserved Victorian housing in all of North America", according to the Cabbagetown Preservation Association....

 and Brockton Village
Brockton Village
Brockton Village is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It comprises a section of the old Town of Brockton which was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1884. The town encompassed the area from Bloor Street on the north, Dufferin Street on the east, High Park on the west and ranged from...

 during the 1880s. Many also came from working-class English industrial cities such as Birmingham and Manchester. They were soon followed by many from non-English speaking countries, including Italians
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

, Poles, Macedonian
Macedonians (ethnic group)
The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...

 and Croatian immigrants, many of whom worked in the meat industry.

The Junction was prone to booms and busts during its tumultuous history; while the period between 1888 and 1890 was a prosperous one, the period between 1893 and 1900 saw significant poverty in the area due to an economic recession. The Long Depression
Long Depression
The Long Depression was a worldwide economic crisis, felt most heavily in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. At the time, the episode was labeled the Great...

 saw the closing of factories and the end to construction in the area, and the municipality could not support its citizens because of a large civic debt.

Pubs and taverns became permanent fixtures in The Junction, as was the case with many railway and factory workers' towns. By 1903, alcohol was such a serious problem for families and a public embarrassment (as drunks were visible from passing trains), that a temperance movement
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...

 grew in the area, led by the strong Methodist
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

 community. The town voted to go dry in 1904, and continued to enforce local option
Local Option
Local Option is a term used to describe the freedom whereby local political jurisdictions, typically counties or municipalities, can decide by popular vote certain controversial issues within their borders. In practice, it usually relates to the issue of alcoholic beverage sales...

 as late as 2000, at the time being the last area of Toronto to ban the sale of alcohol.

Toronto annexed The Junction in 1909 and the two have gradually grown together, though residents have retained their community identity and remained very loyal to the neighbourhood, despite further economic hardship. The commercial stretch of Dundas Street went into decline, attributed at least partly to the prohibition. The prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...

 law dissuaded restaurants from establishing themselves there, and bars were not permitted.

The area between Keele
Keele Street
Keele Street is a north-south road in Toronto and York Region in Ontario, Canada. It stretches 47km, running from Bloor Street in Toronto to the Holland Marsh. South of Bloor Street, the roadway is today known as Parkside Drive, but was originally part of Keele Street...

, Runnymede Road, St. Clair
St. Clair Avenue
St. Clair Avenue is a major east-west street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was laid out in the late 18th century by the British as a concession road , north of Bloor Street and north of Queen Street....

, and the CP railway lines, was for many decades the location of the Ontario Stockyards. For a time, this was Canada's largest livestock market and the centre of Ontario's meat packing industry
Meat packing industry
The meat packing industry handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock...

, and reinforced Toronto's nickname as Hogtown
William Davies Company
William Davies Company was a pork processing and packing company in Toronto, Canada. At one time, it was the largest pork packer both in Canada and the British Empire, and it operated Canada's first major chain of food stores...

. The Ontario Stockyards closed at this site in 1993 (moving to Cookstown, much further north of the city), and most of the meat-packing plants that surrounded it closed shortly thereafter. Much of the lands has been redeveloped with new housing and retail uses. The main Stockyards site is now the location of a large bloc of big-box stores, including Metro, Home Depot, Canadian Tire
Canadian Tire
Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is one of Canada's 60 largest publicly traded companies. The firm operates an inter-related network of businesses engaged in retailing hardgoods, apparel and petroleum as well as financial and automotive services, employing more than 58,000 people across Canada...

, Future Shop
Future Shop
Future Shop is Canada's largest consumer electronics retailer. Future Shop currently operates a total of 146 stores across all of Canada's provinces as of December 2008....

 and Rona
Rona (company)
Rona Inc. is a Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, home improvement and gardening products. Rona was founded in 1939. Rona operates a network of some 700 stores and is the leading distributor and retailer in its market with approximately 51,594 employees. The Rona network represents...

, along with several smaller stores. There are still some smaller meat-packing facilities in the area and the name "Stockyards" is still used for the area.

Since the early 1920s, the area by Dundas and St. John's Road has been known as "Little Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

" (getting signs to that effect in the 1990s) with several Maltese-Canadian businesses present, as well as a distinctly Maltese church. The Maltese-Canadian community has partially spread out to Mississauga and other Toronto suburbs, but still has a visible presence in this area.

As a consequence of the local abattoirs and other industries which produced volumes of toxic waste, the residents of the neighbourhood are highly concerned about pollution issues, and the city of Toronto has put significant efforts into cleaning up former industrial sites.

The elimination of prohibition has had a positive effect on the community, however. Rapid gentrification has meant new chic restaurants and bars have opened up along Dundas Street, attracting young hipster
Hipster (contemporary subculture)
Hipsters are a subculture of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with musical interests mainly in alternative rock that appeared in the 1990s...

s, while lower rents make the neighbourhood appealing to artists. Some see The Junction as the next big "hip place to live" with a surplus of vacated industrial space and warehouse loft conversion possibilities.

In 2009 the West Toronto RailPath
West Toronto RailPath
The West Toronto RailPath is a multi-use asphalt trail running from Toronto, Canada's The Junction neighbourhood toward downtown Toronto. The RailPath has been developed and funded by the City of Toronto for bicycle and pedestrian use by local area residents and is an example of an urban...

 opened, providing a direct link for pedestrians and cyclists from The Junction to the Dundas and Lansdowne area. There are plans to eventually extend the path further south to the Liberty Village
Liberty Village
Liberty Village is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is bounded at the north by King Street West, the west by Dufferin Street, the south by the Gardiner Expressway, the east by Strachan Avenue, and the northeast by the CP railway tracks...

 neighbourhood.

Boundaries

Today, the term "The Junction" is generally applied to the area north of Annette, south of St. Clair, and between Runnymede Road and the Canadian National Railway corridor to the east which intersects with the Canadian Pacific Railway corridor at West Toronto Diamond
West Toronto Diamond
The West Toronto Diamond is a Canadian railway junction in Toronto, Ontario.Located near the intersection of Keele Street and Dundas Street, it is near the Union Station terminal trackage operated by Toronto Terminal Railway . It links the tracks of Canadian National Railway with those of Canadian...

. Historically, the boundary lines cover a considerably larger area.
The City of West Toronto as annexed by Toronto in 1909 had a northern boundary well past St. Clair to Rowntree Avenue, an eastern boundary zig-zagging along the Canadian National tracks, a southern boundary of Bloor Street, and a western boundary as far as Jane Street in the southwest between Bloor and Annette http://wtjhs.ca/jmap2.gif. Since the 1920s, the commercial development on Bloor Street has caused the area between The Junction and Swansea
Swansea, Toronto
Swansea is a neighbourhood in the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, bounded on the west by the Humber River, on the north by Bloor Street, on the east by High Park and on the south by Lake Ontario...

 to rise in prominence, and thus many current residents of the former Junction area identify more with Runnymede-Bloor West Village.

Events

The Junction hosts a variety of public events during the year including:

Schools

  • Annette Street Public School - A public
    Public
    In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...

     elementary school
    Elementary school
    An elementary school or primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America, where the terms grade school and grammar...

     located at 265 Annette Street. The original east building was constructed in 1886 and the west wing was added in 1960. The school shares the facilities (including the library, gym, pool and playground) with High Park Alternative School. It also shares space with The Junction Daycare and the Toronto Parks and Recreation Department.
  • High Park Alternative School - A public elementary school sharing space in the Annette Street Public School, it was founded in 1981. The school has grown from its original 3 classrooms to its current 7 classrooms. It is committed to:
    • family involvement in all aspects of the school
    • small school environment
    • non-competitive environment and evaluation
    • multi-age grouping
    • community-based curriculum

Community groups


Historical photos


Neighbourhood profiles

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