A Forgotten Monument To Soccer & Murder
Plus a plaque for Jackie Shane, the secrets of Second City, and more...
It stands empty and quiet, a forgotten landmark of the east end. Its doors have long been padlocked shut, its windows covered by plywood, its walls plastered with graffiti. But its sign still stands proudly on the side of the building in big bright orange, a name that echoes with the sounds of our city’s riotous past. This place is called the Ulster Arms. It’s a name that has caught my attention every time I’ve travelled past the abandoned old bar on Gerrard; I’ve long wondered what its history might be. So for this week’s newsletter, I thought I’d finally look for the answer. And it turns out this neglected building is a crumbling monument to our city’s sporting glories, tied to the bloody history of a bygone age, and the grisly scene of a truly bizarre murder.
It all began more than a century ago, far on the other side of the city. It was in 1914 that a meeting was held in a beautiful old building at the corner of Queen & Bathurst. Today, it’s the CB2 furniture store. You might remember it as the Reverb, Big Bop or Kathedral — the names it was known by when it was purple-painted music venue. But when it first opened in the late 1800s, it was Occident Hall — a Masonic temple built by the city’s leading architect (E.J. Lennox, who also designed Casa Loma and Old City Hall). It was often used to host meetings. And so it was there that a group of Irish soccer fans met to form their own team.
People had been playing soccer in Toronto for half a century by that point. There are records of games being played here at least as far back as the 1850s — when Toronto was just a small city of about 30,000 people, still emerging from its rough and tumble frontier days. The modern rules of the game had yet to reach Canada; they were still being hammered out in England around that same time. But the sport took off quickly from there — on both sides of the ocean.
It wasn’t long before the first Canadian leagues were formed; in fact, the first football association found anywhere outside the British Isles was born here in Toronto. And Canada was soon making a name for itself on the international stage. When a team of players from southern Ontario embarked on a tour of the UK, they held their own against top level talent, winning as many games as they lost, including a victory against Newton Heath — the team known as Manchester United today. At the 1904 Olympics, Canada won soccer gold. By then, it “ranked with hockey as Canada's national game” according to Colin Jose, one of our country’s leading soccer historians.
With that meeting at Occident Hall, a new era in Toronto’s soccer history would begin. The team they founded that day would quickly become a Canadian powerhouse. And the name they gave it wouldn’t just be a reminder of our city’s place within the British Empire, but also the vicious sectarian violence that once spilled blood in our streets.
Toronto was a very Irish city in the late 1800s. In fact, it was the most Irish city on the continent. More than a third of the people living here had been born on the Emerald Isle — many of them Protestants from northern Ireland who came here because our city was both overwhelmingly Protestant and proudly British. Toronto became known as “The Belfast of Canada” and indeed, the battles of Belfast were often fought in the streets of our city. Dozens of riots broke out between Toronto’s Irish Catholics and the Protestant Orange Order, some of them deadly.
It’s hard to overestimate just how much influence Orangemen once had in our city. The organization had been founded in northern Ireland in the late 1700s; it would go on to play an important role in the Troubles and is still a force there today. But the Orange Lodge also found fertile ground here. By the middle of the 1800s, Orangemen had a stranglehold on power in our city. For more than a century, nearly every single Mayor of Toronto was an Orangeman. Nearly all public jobs went to Protestants. And our soccer team would be Orange, too.
Most of the men who attended the meeting at Occident Hall that winter day in 1914 were members of the Orange Lodge. That fact would be reflected in the name they chose for their new team. Officially, it would be known as Ulster United — a reference to the counties of northern Ireland. It would also be nicknamed after a potent symbol of Ulster identity. A century before TFC players were nicknamed the Reds, the members of Toronto’s most popular soccer team were known as the Red Handers.
The Red Hand of Ulster is an ancient symbol. It’s been used in northern Ireland for countless centuries, so long that its origins have been obscured by time. Some say it began with the story of a mythical hero placing a bloody hand on a banner. Others suggest it’s a title given to legendary warrior kings. One of the most popular tales tells of a Irish mercenary who was working for the Vikings when they invaded his homeland. As their warship approached the shores of Ulster, the Viking king promised that the first man who touched land would lay claim to it. So, the Irish mercenary grabbed his sword, chopped off his hand, and threw it onto the beach. The emblem of a red hand has appeared on flags and crests and coats of arms ever since. Today, it’s a contentious symbol, claimed by Protestants and Catholics alike. During the Troubles, it was used by paramilitary groups on both sides of the conflict — most famously by the Red Hand Commando, who murdered Catholic civilians, bombed Catholic pubs, set fire to Catholic fishing boats, and waged campaigns of terror that lasted all the way into the early 2000s.
In Orange Toronto, the Red Handers quickly established themselves as one of the country’s best and most beloved soccer teams. They started winning local championships as soon as they were founded. During the roaring 1920s, they helped create the country’s first big professional league — and immediately began winning those championships, too. They even played friendlies against celebrated international squads like Liverpool and Sparta Prague.
By the end of their first decade, Ulster United were so successful they were able to build themselves a fancy new home. The team’s ownership purchased an old brickworks in the east end of the city, near Greenwood & Gerrard. It was a large rectangular space big enough to house a whole stadium, and the sloped banks of the clay quarry were the perfect place to erect bleachers — a natural amphitheatre. Ulster Stadium has been called “one of the finest soccer stadiums in North America,” and was eventually able to seat more than 12,000 fans.
And, of course, every good soccer stadium needs a pub next door. That’s how the Ulster Arms Hotel came to be. It would play a vital role for the team, and not just as a place to drink. Visiting players could stay in its rooms while they were in town. And the Red Handers themselves used it as a clubhouse, heading out onto the field directly from the hotel’s basement, which backed on to the old clay quarry slope.
During the team’s time at Ulster Stadium, they reached the heights of the Canadian soccer world. They attracted thousands of fans, won their first national championship, and took home several provincial titles. They hosted a famously hard-fought match against the well-known Glasgow Rangers — a fiercely Protestant team with a ban against Catholic players at the time. Even the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland came to speak at Ulster Stadium; James Craig was a Grand Master of the Orange Lodge, a key architect of Irish partition, and had been a founder of one of the leading Protestant paramilitary groups.
Orange power in Toronto wouldn’t really begin to wane until the 1950s. By then, soccer’s popularity was already in decline. Ulster United never fully recovered from the blows to attendance caused by the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the time the 1960s rolled around, the club was on its last legs. The Red Handers wouldn’t survive to see the end of that decade. Their stadium was already long gone — torn down during the 1940s to make way for houses. Today, there are only a few hints it ever existed, like the name of Athletic Avenue or the concrete stairs at the end of that street, once the main entrance into the stadium.
And then, of course, there is the Ulster Arms.
The tavern survived when the stadium came down. But it was headed for a grisly future. Once known for hosting sports banquets and wedding receptions, it would eventually become one of the most notorious “kick and stabs” in the east end. The archives of The Star and The Globe are filled with reports of violence at the Ulster Arms. In 1975, a man was attacked and seriously injured while drinking at the bar. Just a few months later, a jealous boyfriend followed his girlfriend outside to find her getting off with another man — the boyfriend beat her new lover to death right there behind the building. And that wasn’t the last murder at the Ulster Arms.
The most bizarrely gruesome tale comes from 1986, when an owner was murdered by one of his own waiters. The server lived upstairs in an apartment. That evening, the owner had interrupted him in the middle of entertaining his girlfriend, reminding him that he wasn’t allowed to have guests. The waiter waited until after last call, then put on a ninja costume, wrapped a chain around his waist, grabbed a knife and a sawed-off shotgun, and headed downstairs — punching a hole through some windows along the way, in order, it seems, to psyche himself up. Inside the tavern, he’s said to have confronted his boss — a conversation that ended with the waiter firing off a shotgun blast that tore through the owner’s throat and sent him flying through the air into the bar. The victim died instantly. The killer was hit in the face by the recoil of the shotgun, thrown to the ground with his nose broken, his heart instantly filled with regret. He tore off his headband and cradled the man’s body. “Sammy, Sammy,” he cried, “I didn’t mean to do this. I’m sorry.” It wasn’t long before the police rushed in, guns drawn. He was sentenced to life in prison. They say you can still see traces of the blood on the ceiling. Some claim the building is haunted to this day.
The Ulster Arms finally shut down in 2013, but a decade later it still stands there on Gerrard. Its future now seems uncertain. It’s unclear whether the building will be demolished to make way for a condo, following in the footsteps of the stadium it once served. Or whether there might be any hope of the bar getting refurbished someday, reopening as a new establishment, a lasting reminder of soccer glory and of the deadly, drunken feuds that once made this place one of the most notorious watering holes in the east end. Maybe, just maybe, someday in the future, scarlet-clad TFC fans will raise a glass in celebration of the Reds winning a championship for the modern, multicultural city… and do it in the same old tavern where fans of the Red Handers once did the same thing in a very different time in a very different Toronto.
As I mentioned above, I’ve been meaning to dig into the history of the Ulster Arms for many years, but I was finally inspired to actually do it by Katherine Taylor’s recent tweet about the bar, which lets you see what it looks like these days:
It wasn’t until I was finishing up this piece that I read the replies beneath her photos and learned that she’s been working on a post about it, too! So my sincere apologies for stepping on your toes, Katherine — and I’ll be sure to share that piece in the newsletter when it’s done!
In the early days of the Red Handers, the sport was still often known as “football” in Canada. But the word “soccer” actually dates back to the late 1800s and comes from England. It was slang for “association football” — shortening that name down to “soc” and adding “er” at the end because that’s what all the cool kids were doing with words back then. It wasn’t until the last 50 years or so that people in Britain have stopped using “soccer” and “football” interchangeably, all because they felt “soccer” had become an American word.
The Leslieville Historical Society has written about the history of the Red Handers here. Filmmaker Kire Paputts has created a series of short videos about Gerrard Street East, including one about the Ulster Arms which you can watch here. And you can also watch footage of that famous match between Ulster United and Glasgow Rangers at Ulster Stadium here:
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QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
A PLAQUE FOR JACKIE SHANE NEWS — There’s a new campaign underway, aiming to raise money to erect a plaque in honour of Jackie Shane. I wrote about the 1960s soul singer back in November, when she was featured in a new Heritage Minute (as well as having included her story in The Toronto Book of Love). Not only was she once of the greatest performers our city has ever seeen, she was a Black trans woman who talked pretty openly about her sexuality on stage. Read more.
SAD FRANCOPHONE HISTORY NEWS — Toronto lost another one of the champions of its history this month. Lisette Malett had served as the president of the Société d'Histoire de Toronto for the last six years, an organization dedicated to sharing the francophone history of our city. She was the member of other local history groups as well, including the Toronto Historical Association, and worked on the development of the Le Sentier Partagé - The Shared Path, in the parks along the Humber River telling “the story of the First Nations, the arrival of the first francophones and anglophones, and the beginnings of the development of the city of Toronto.” She passed away on January 13. Read more.
SAD QUEEN’S PARK NEWS — Former Lieutenant Governor David Onley also passed away this month. Raised in Scarborough and a graduate of U of T, Onley had been left partially paralyzed by a childhood case of polio. He worked in broadcasting, including a series of on-screen roles with CityTV, before becoming one of the longest-serving Lieutenant Governor’s in Ontario. He even popped up in an episode of Murdock Mysteries playing one of his predecessors, Sir Oliver Mowat. Read more.
FUNNY PEOPLE NEWS — John Semley has put together an oral history of Toronto’s Second City for Toronto Life, including contributions from Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas and Robin Duke. Read more.
SCIENCE FICTION LEGEND NEWS — Judith Merril would have turned 100 years old this month. The science fiction author moved to Toronto in the 1960s, having been horrified by the police brutality she witnessed being used against anti-war protesters in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. She would eventually donate 5,000 books to our library system, the beginning of The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy which now boasts more than 80,000 volumes. The Toronto Public Library shared the story of her life and work. Read more.
16MM STREETCAR NEWS — Another Toronto history crowdfunding campaign is underway. This one is led by James Bow of Transit Toronto, who is raising funds to digitize nearly two miles-worth of archival footage of our city from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Read more.
DRIVING THE ARTISTS OFF QUEEN WEST NEWS — Hogtown 101 takes a look back at the cultural history of Queen West:
Click to read the full thread.
CLARA AT THE DOOR WITH A REVOLVER NEWS — A new book tells the story of the murder of a young Parkdale man in the late 1800s and the trial of his accused killer. The crime caused such a sensation that I included it in my Toronto’s Most Notorious Murders course (which I’ll probably be offering against this year if there’s enough interest). It has a whole lot to teach us about race and class and gender in Victorian Toronto:
FOUNDRY NEWS — Nick Westoll checks in on the Foundry. It was saved by a court injunction after Doug Ford’s demolition crews began dismantling the century-old site on Eastern Avenue two years ago. What’s left of the heritage buildings are expected to become part of a new condo development, but actual details of the plan still seem hard to find. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
TORONTO’S EARLY HISTORY TREASURES WITH JOHN GODDARD
February 1 — 7pm — Online — Swansea Historical Society
“When he left the Toronto Star a few years ago, John delved into the City’s early-history museums. Not being a car owner, he used public transit to visit the many, widely-scattered sites. They proved a revelation, but he had one complaint — after each visit he wanted to know more. When he learned there was no guidebook to buy, not even a pamphlet to take away, he resolved to write the book he wanted to read. In this presentation, he focuses on what he calls ‘the most prized objects’ from six museums, artifacts of special value that illuminate life in early Toronto.”
Free!
THE LEGACY OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN CANADA
February 2 — 7pm — Gerrard/Ashdale Library
& Feburary 15 — 12:30pm — City Hall Library
“Author Andrew Hunter presents a reading and conversation about his new book "It Was Dark There All The Time: Sophia Burhen and the Legacy of Slavery in Canada". Joining the author will be Karen Harkins (Toronto Culture Division), Adrienne Shadd (author; "The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!") and Charmaine Lurch (artist/educator) as they discuss the book and provide an examination and reflection on the history of chattel slavery and its legacy of racism in Canada.”
Free! Registration is encouraged for the February 15 event.
BY THE LIGHT OF THE COAL LAMP: AUTHOR TALK WITH RUTH CAMERON-HOWARD
February 2 — 7pm — Toronto’s First Post Office
“Many people who reside in Toronto share the common experience of growing up in other parts of Canada before they moved to the big city. On the evening of February 2nd, join author Ruth Cameron-Howard in a virtual presentation of her book, “By the Light of the Coal Oil Lamp” as she recounts her experiences of growing up in a rural Saskatchewan town in the 1940s.”
CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES: RESOURCES FOR THE GENEALOGIST
February 27 — 7:30pm — Both online & at Lansing United Church — Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society
“Do you have family tree roots in Toronto? You can discover a lot about a person by researching where they lived. Jessica Algie, from the City of Toronto Archives, will demonstrate, step-by-step, how to find your ancestors in municipal archival records. We’ll start with online resources including maps, city directories and photos, before diving into local tax assessment rolls, which can be treasure troves of information.
“Finally, archivist John Dirks, will give you a sneak peek at an exciting, newly processed collection, Fonds 602, First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, now available for research at the City of Toronto Archives. This collection is of particular interest to genealogists as it includes vital statistics registers of marriages, child dedications and memorial services.”
Free, I believe!