Saving An Adorable Gas Station
Plus Shoppers Drug Mart being a jerk, a Sunnyside landmark, and more.
They began popping up on roads across Toronto during the 1930s. Adorable little gas stations, at least sixteen of them, miniature castles sprouting up everywhere from Bloor West Village to the Danforth, from Roncesvalles to Parliament, from Yonge Street to Scarborough. The Joy Oil company had arrived. And they ruffled plenty of feathers when they did.
The company was born in Detroit in the 1920s. That’s when a real estate magnate by the name of Herbert Austin decided to get into the gasoline game. This was still in the early days of the automobile, when it was an exciting new invention, a fresh icon of the modern age — long before people started worrying about climate change and highways carving through wetlands.
Detroit was ground zero: the mecca of the automobile, where the titans of the industry battled over booming profits. And it was there that Austin took aim at the big oil interests. His Sunny Service Oil Company offered gas at a deep discount, undercutting the major players — and attracting budget-conscious customers in the process.
It was a business model that would prove to be successful for decades to come. But Herbert Austin wouldn’t live to see much of that success. He soon passed away. And his widow, Margaret, decided to take the company in a new direction: east.
She set her sights on Toronto.
Renaming the business as the Joy Oil Company, she used the same approach here as they had in Detroit. They offered low prices and pitched themselves as a small family enterprise protecting Torontonians against the evils of the big oil companies.
Joy Oil ads often featured a little portrait of Margaret Austin, along with her signature to give them a personal touch. And they didn’t pull their punches when they went after the giants of the industry. They portrayed the “Big Oil Trust” as literal cartoon villains. In one ad, Big Oil is depicted as the wicked witch from Snow White; in another, it’s the Big Bad Wolf from the story of the three little pigs.
Joy was willing to make enemies in government, too. They claimed local politicians were in the pocket of Big Oil. They sued the City when council refused to let them build storage tanks on the waterfront, arguing that bigger companies had already been allowed to do just that. And Joy repeatedly opened their gas stations on Sunday, despite the laws forbidding business on the day Ontario officially reserved for church. It would be more than 50 years before Sunday shopping was allowed in Toronto.
But even as Joy proudly boasted that their fuel was “imported” — a word that had much more cachet back then, even when it was applied to gasoline from Texas — they were also quick to associate themselves with local symbols and events. Take, for instance, the royal tour of Canada. King George (the Colin Firth one from The King’s Speech) and his wife Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mum) paid a visit to Canada just a couple of years after the first Joy stations opened, rallying the empire as the Second World War loomed. Joy seized the opportunity to hand out 10,000 free opera glasses, so their customers could gaze at the royals during the parade.
Even the adorable architectural design of the stations is said to have been uniquely Canadian. The “Châteauesque” style was inspired by castles in France, but became a Canadian hallmark, famously used in railroad hotels like the Chateau Laurier, the Chateau Frontenac and the Banff Springs Hotel.
And it worked. The Joy Oil company found success in Toronto throughout the middle of the century, a local staple for nearly thirty years. It was the 1960s before the stations began to disappear. In the decades to come, the wee castles fell to the wrecking ball one by one — until there was only a single survivor left.
It stood on Lake Shore Boulevard, at the foot of Windemere — a relic of a bygone age when Lake Shore was a major route into the city, lined with motels and gas stations. The City stepped in to protect the building. It was moved across the street, just off the Sunnyside boardwalk in Sir Casimir Gzowski Park. They spent $400,000 refurbishing it. And then they handed it over to the Grenadier Group to be turned into a snack bar — the private company has an exclusive deal to sell concessions along the beachfront until the early 2030s.
And then… nothing.
Nearly a decade later, the last of the Joy stations still stands empty behind a chainlink fence. A set of portable toilets has been set up next to it. According to the CBC, “Passers-by say lately it's become more of an eyesore than anything.”
But now, perhaps, movement. The CBC reports that the City is expecting more construction to start soon. Redevelopment “could begin this fall for an information centre, snack bar and a community programming space.” Although, when the CBC reached out to the Grenadier Group for comment, they didn’t get an answer back.
So, for now, Toronto’s most adorable little gas station continues to sit on the waterfront, a lonely survivor from the Golden Age of the Automobile.
THE SUNNYSIDE POOL TURNS 100
BUILDING BIRTHDAY NEWS — Meanwhile, just a little further along the boardwalk, another one of our historic lakefront icons celebrated a major milestone this month. The Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion turned 100 years old.
It opened in 1922, built by the same architectural firm who designed many of the Jazz Age icons of our waterfront. Chapman & Oxley were also responsible for the Princes’ Gates at the CNE, the Palais Royale, and our elegant (but demolished) ballpark, Maple Leaf Stadium.
The Bathing Pavilion was the centrepiece of the effort to turn the shores of Humber Bay into a destination. A sandy beach was built, a boardwalk rolled out next to the water, and an entire amusement park erected. The pool inside the pavilion was the biggest in the world when it opened — and it’s still the biggest in the city. It was such an exciting new attraction that the City offered free streetcar cars for kids who were looking to reach it from other parts of the city. A century later, it’s still so beautiful that it’s used as a wedding venue. And the Grenadier Group operate a lakeside café in the pavilion too.
I’ve been reading about the roots of Sunnyside in Dale Barbour’s new book, Undressed Toronto: From the Swimming Hole to Sunnyside, How a City Learned to Love the Beach, 1850-1935. It’s great so far, providing some valuable insights for a new thing I’ve been working on for the fall, which I should get to announce soon.
In the meantime, you can watch Barbour chat with Source Story on YouTube, or read David Silverberg’s piece about the Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion’s birthday in the Star:
SHOPPERS DRUG MART IS BEING MEAN TO HERITAGE LOVERS
HERITAGE PHARMACY OUTRAGE NEWS — I generally try to avoid getting sucked in by blogTO’s outrage-baiting headlines, but this week Jack Landau has a piece about something that actually has gotten under my skin…
The architectural work of Chapman & Oxley wasn’t limited to the waterfront. The firm that designed the Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion also built local landmarks in neighbourhoods across much of the city, like the Bay’s Queen Street location, Havergal College, or Holy Blossom Temple. And one of those landmarks is filled with my own personal memories and history: the old Runnymede Theatre.
It opened in 1927, and its been a landmark of Bloor West Village ever since. Originally home to vaudeville acts, it was billed as “Canada’s Theatre Beautiful” with bucolic interior design meant to make it feel like enjoying a show outdoors: a sky blue ceiling, lantern-like light fixtures, and seating surrounded by something like a garden wall. As the Swansea Historical Society explains on their site, “A sign backstage told staff, ‘Turn out the stars before you leave!’”
It was converted into a cinema after just a few years. And so generations have grown up watching movies at the Runnymede, a neighbourhood staple for one decade after decade another. Those theatre-goers included my own mom, who grew up there in Swansea. And then, years later, me.
Growing up in the west end, I spent countless hours of my formative years inside the Runnymede. It was there in that dark room that I watched many of the movies that inspired me to go to film school (including Titanic four times; please don’t tell anyone). That cinema was one the landmarks of my childhood.
But in 1999, the Runnymede closed. It was turned into a bookstore for a while, and now it’s a Shoppers Drug Mart. Inside the pharmacy you’ll find that some of the old cinema survives, making it what must surely be the most elegant drug store in our city.
But it seems that Shoppers would like to keep that a secret. Landau reports that the store has been kicking customers out when they dare to take a photo of the beloved, century-old landmark.
A quick reminder that The Toronto History Weekly is a ton of work, so its survival depends on many more of you switching to a paid subscription. You can do that by clicking right here:
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
CNE FANATIC NEWS — Katie Daubs goes to the Ex with Ron Rodwell, who’s been attending the CNE every year since 1932, when he was five years old and the Great Depression was in full swing. Amazing. Read more.
BEFORE PRESTO NEWS — Last week, the TTC gave tours of some of its vintage vehicles and Jeremy Hopkin seized the opportunity to hop aboard one of the gorgeous old Peter Witt streetcars that began running in the 1920s:
(Click to read the full thread.)
FIRST CHINATOWN NEWS — On Twitter, Gi Tony Gi shared a thread about the history of Toronto’s first Chinatown, and the historic racism directed at Chinese-Canadians:
(Click to read the full thread.)
DEGRASSI NEWS — Back in January, I wrote a little bit about the new Degrassi reboot that’s on the way from HBO (along with the real story of the original De Grassi kids and the role they played in the Rebellion of 1837). This week, Murtz Jaffer interviewed fourteen former Degrassi stars “to ask how they feel about the return of the series and why it continues to mean so much to Canadians.” Read more.
FAMOUS SLOGAN NEWS — Jamie Bradburn dug up an old issue of Time that features a neat ad from the days when Tommy Thompson was parks commissioner. Which you can tell because it features one of his famous signs:
(Click to view the full ad)
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
TORONTO’S EARLY HISTORY TREASURES
September 15 — 7:30pm — Online — Etobicoke Historical Society
“As a Toronto Star Reporter from 2000 to 2013, John Goddard developed an interest in Toronto’s early history. Not owning a car, he used public transit to visit each of Toronto’s 10 History Museums and was fascinated by their heritage artifacts and the interesting stories behind them. Realizing there was no guide book to these treasures of Toronto’s heritage led John to write his book Inside the Museums: Toronto’s Heritage Sites and Their Most Prized Objects (2014, Dundurn Press). It explains why Eliza Gibson risked her life to save a clock, reveals the appalling instructions that Robert Baldwin left in his will, and examines how the career of postmaster James Scott Howard shattered on the most baseless of innuendos at one of the most highly charged moments in the city’s history.”
Free for members; an annual membership is $25.
FREDERICK BANTING: THE MAN YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW
September 28 — 7:30pm — Online — North Toronto Historical Society
“‘Insulin was but a means to an end.’ wrote Frederick Banting. Grant Maltman, curator of Banting House in London, Ontario, will highlight insulin's centenary, and also show that there was far more than this Nobel Prize-winning discovery in Banting's life and career: his service in both World Wars, his use of art as an escape and his role as a catalyst for Canada's military and medical research.”
Free with registration, I believe