Saying Goodbye To Three Toronto Giants
A murdered punk rocker, the lawyer who nearly brought down Rob Ford, and the historian who saved the city's oldest ferry.
This week’s edition of the newsletter is arriving in your inbox a bit later than usual, in part because I had to give two big lectures last week, and in part because there’s been a lot of sad news in Toronto history recently. Since the end of July, we’ve lost three giants from our city’s past: a murdered punk rocker, the lawyer who nearly brought down Rob Ford, and the historian who saved our oldest ferry. Each of them deserves to be properly remembered here, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t rush this one.
Here are three stories about three figures who’ve left a lasting mark on our city’s past…
THE HISTORIAN WHO SAVED TORONTO’S OLDEST FERRY
This is Mike Filey. He’s in his early thirties in this photo, standing on board a ferry built long before he was born. It was an aging hulk, sitting abandoned in a lagoon on the islands where it had been left to rot for decades. But at the time this picture was taken in 1973, Filey had just won one of the biggest victories of his career, helping to save this beloved piece of Toronto’s history.
Filey was born in our city during the Second World War, raised “in the shadow of Honest Ed's at Bathurst and Bloor.” In many ways, Toronto grew up at the same time he did — a sleepy British capital booming into a multicultural metropolis throughout his formative years. And it was to his city, and its past, that he would dedicate his life.
Filey’s career began at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, followed by stints at the Canadian National Exhibition and Canada’s Wonderland, but it was as a local historian that he’ll be best remembered.
He authored more than forty books about the history of our city — forty! His wrote a weekly column in The Toronto Sun for nearly half a century. He hosted a radio show. Gave walking tours. Was one of the leading forces behind the founding of Heritage Toronto. And he helped save the Trillium, too.
I wrote about Toronto’s oldest ferry in the very first edition of this newsletter:
The PS Trillium first set sail on Dominion Day in 1910 — what we now call Canada Day — christened with a bottle of champagne smashed across the hull by an 8 year-old girl; the granddaughter of a local politician. And while the boat was originally owned by the private Toronto Ferry Company, it became part of the municipal fleet when the City took over the service. [But] in the 1950s, it looked like the Trillium was doomed. It was taken out of service and left to rot away in a lagoon on the islands for a couple of decades…
Filey was determined to save the ferry. Teaming up with the visionary head of Toronto’s parks department, Tommy Thompson, he spent years fighting to have the boat restored instead of letting it be stripped down and used to haul sewage instead. And in 1973, he finally won the battle. The City agreed to save the Trillium.
It’s in large part thanks to Filey that the historic ship still plies the waters of Toronto harbour today, 112 years after it first embarked. And at the beginning of 2022, it was announced that even as the ferry fleet is replaced with electric vessels over the next 15 years, the Trillium should continue to be preserved for the generations of Torontonians to come.
And so, while Mike Filey sadly passed away two weeks ago at the age of 80, the Trillium will continue to grace our waters, a spectacular reminder of what life was like in Toronto more than a century ago — and a tribute to a historian who spent his life sharing stories from our city’s past.
THE LAWYER WHO NEARLY BROUGHT DOWN ROB FORD
This is Clayton Ruby. You can see him there in the front row of this photograph, the young man in the glasses. It’s the spring of 1967 and he’s twenty-five years old. He’s at Queen’s Park, attending our city’s first hippie “Love-In.” Thousands have gathered to sing, dance, blow bubbles, paint faces, meditate, and manifest peace. That’s Buffy Sainte-Marie playing her guitar. Leonard Cohen performed that day, too. It’s one of the landmark events in Toronto’s Sixties history, held just a few blocks from the neighbourhood at the heart of Canada’s hippie counterculture: Yorkville. And Clayton Ruby is one of its most notable figures.
Ruby was born in Toronto just a few months after Mike Filey, going to high school in Forest Hill. But it was in Yorkville that he would first make his name, a young law student who teamed up with some lawyers to set up a free clinic on the sidewalk, offering legal advice to the people of the neighbourhood, including hippies in trouble with the police or American draft resisters who’d come to Canada to avoid fighting in the Vietnam War. When the Law Society of Upper Canada tried to shut them down, they just moved the clinic indoors and kept going.
It was the beginning of a career that would see Ruby argue some of the most famous legal cases in Canadian history. He represented Guy Paul Morin, who’d been wrongfully convicted of the murder of Christine Jessop. Henry Morgentaler, the doctor on trial for providing women with abortions. Michelle Douglas, who’d been dismissed from the Canadian Forces because of her sexual orientation. And many more.
But in recent years, Ruby was probably best-known for taking on Toronto’s infamous crack-smoking mayor, Rob Ford. And he nearly got him removed from office in the process.
The case came at the end of a string of broken rules — remarkable even by Ford’s standards. Back in his days as a councillor, he’d used his official city letterhead to solicit donations to the Rob Ford Football Foundation from businesses and lobbyists. The integrity commissioner found that he’d broken the code of conduct in three different ways: accepting gifts from lobbyists, using his political influence for personal gain, and using city resources for private purposes.
City Council ordered Ford to repay the money. But Ford refused. And when he became mayor, council voted again — reversing the decision to make him pay.
The problem was that Ford voted on the issue himself, and spoke during the debate — breaking the rules yet again. Members of council are supposed to declare conflicts of interest and abstain. (Current mayor John Tory is now being investigated for the same kind of thing.)
Ruby argued the case in court — and won. The judge ruled that Ford should be removed from office. And for a while, it looked like that might actually happen… before Ford won on appeal and got to stick around.
But win or lose, Ruby kept fighting for what he believed was right. He did it all the way through his career — from those early days in Yorkville to some of the country’s highest profile cases. And that, more than anything, is what he was remembered for when he passed away last Tuesday at the age of 80.
“Everything he did always came back to the strong core values of love, compassion, empathy, and justice,” one of his legal partners, Stephanie DuGiuseppe, told The Law Times. “[He] always approached his work first, from the perspective of what’s the right answer for humankind.”
THE PUNK ROCKER WHO WAS MURDERED THIS WEEK
This is Teenage Head. It was the summer of 1980 when this photo appeared in The Toronto Star. And this punk rock group from Hamilton had just become the most notorious band in Toronto.
Our city’s punk scene was one of the most raw and exciting punk scenes on the planet. Sparked by a sparsely-attended-but-revolutionary Ramones gig on Yonge Street, the scene burst to life in 1977 with bands like The Viletones, The Diodes and The Curse. But one of the most popular groups in that new scene wasn’t even from Toronto.
Teenage Head was based in Hamilton, regularly making the trip down the QEW to play venues like the infamous Crash ‘N’ Burn (in the basement of an office building off Queen West). A bit more experienced than the local groups (having formed a year before that seminal Ramones show) and with a sound that proudly reflected their working-class roots in the Hammer, they quickly became one of the pillars of the Toronto punk scene.
But that scene was attracting plenty of controversy. Our city was still a very quiet and conservative place. Many people were deeply uncomfortable with the punks’ loud music, crudely political lyrics, and bloody theatrics — and those uncomfortable people included the owner of the Horseshoe Tavern.
When the ’Shoe announced it would no longer welcome punk bands on its stage, a farewell show was organized. Billed as “the last punk rock concert in Toronto,” it would become known as The Last Pogo (and be immortalized in Colin Brunton’s documentary of the same name). Teenage Head were the headliners. And when the cops arrived to break up the show during the middle of their set, a riot broke out. The gig would be remembered as one of the most notorious in Toronto history. And for Teenage Head it was only the beginning. There was an even bigger riot to come.
The band was one of the few to survive those tumultuous years — the Toronto punk scene burned bright but brief. And as a new decade dawned, they found themselves reaching new heights of popularity. Their second album, Frantic City, was released in early 1980 and it launched them into stardom. With singles racing up the charts and playing on radiowaves across the country, Teenage Head suddenly found themselves playing for much bigger crowds.
It was the beginning of June when they played the Forum at Ontario Place. The show was free, but when 15,000 fans showed up it was clear not everyone could actually fit into the venue. Some tried to swim in through the waters of Lake Ontario. Others took out their frustration by throwing rocks and bottles. In the four-hour-long battle with police that followed, cruisers were overturned, six officers injured, and dozens of arrests made. As the anger worked its way up through the crowd toward the stage, Teenage Head ran for their lives.
The night went down in history as The Toronto Punk Rock Riot. Infamous as it was, it made Teenage Head more popular than ever before. And the timing was perfect: the band was just about to head down to New York City in search of an American label. They looked poised for very big things.
But that’s when their luck ran out.
Gord Lewis was the band’s guitarist, and one of its central driving forces — he wrote the music, while frontman Frankie Venom penned the lyrics. And when their van ran off a country road outside the town of Elora, Lewis was seriously injured. He was rushed off to intensive care with a broken back and ribs. He would need months to recover. The band’s momentum was lost. Teenage Head would never reach the heights of international stardom for which they briefly seemed bound.
By then, though, the band had already secured its place in the history of Canadian music. Their fans were famously loyal — some of those at the Ontario Place riot declared they listened to nothing else — and they stuck with them to the very end. Teenage Head was still attracting audiences decades later, going on tour just months before Frankie Venom died of cancer in 2008.
Now, they’ve lost the other half of their songwriting team, too. Gord Lewis was found dead inside his Hamilton apartment on Sunday. His son has been charged with second-degree murder. It’s a tragic, heartbreaking end for a musical giant — and for the band from Hamilton who blazed a trail of rock and roll and chaos through Toronto four decades ago.
Just a quick reminder that it takes a lot of work to put together The Toronto History Weekly and I’ll only be able to keep doing it if many more of you switch to a paid subscription, which you can do by clicking right here:
ANNOUNCING: A GRISLY TOUR OF ST. JAMES!
Thanks to Covid, it’s been a few years since I last led a historical walking tour — but thanks to the Friends of St. James Park, I’ll be heading back out later this month. And it’s going to be absolutely free! You should come!
Join me on a morbid exploration of the St. James neighbourhood on King Street East, uncovering grisly and gruesome tales from the city’s formative years. From the elegant stained glass windows of the city’s grandest cathedral to stories of brutal riots, duels and plagues, you’ll travel back in time to the early 1800s to learn about decades of violence that rocked the city to its core. A walk through the historic neighbourhood that was once at the heart of bloody battles over the future of Canadian democracy.
August 24 — 7pm — Meet at the gazebo in St. James Park — It’s free!
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
BIG MYSTERIOUS WALL NEWS — This week, Eric Sehr solved the mystery of a strange photo in the City of Toronto Archives:
(Click it to read the full thread.)
BOOKIE NEWS — A new plaque was erected outside the Horseshoe Tavern in memory of radio and concert host Dave Bookman, whose Nu Music nights at the ’Shoe launched countless musical careers in our city. Read more.
GAMBLING DEN NEWS — The Days Inn has stood on Queen East at the edge of the Beaches since the 1930s, back when it was known as the Orchard Park Hotel and stood across the street from the racetrack (which helped earn it a reputation as a notorious gambling den). Now it’s being demolished. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
SUMMER HISTORY SERIES: ETOBICOKE’S HISTORIC LAKESHORE
August 18 — 7:30pm — Online — Etobicoke Historical Society
“Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch share many things, including the streetcars of Lakeshore Boulevard West and the beautiful shores of Lake Ontario, but they have very different histories. Mimico is an older town, once the home of palatial estates. New Toronto had its start as a gritty industrial suburb. And Long Branch began as a gated, upper class cottage community and resort in Victorian times. Join EHS Historian Richard Jordan as he travels back in time on this virtual historic tour of Etobicoke’s three lakeshore communities.”
Free!
WALKING TOUR — 1813: TERROR IN THE TOWN OF YORK
August 18 — 7pm — Meet at Toronto’s First Post Office — Town of York Historical Society
“Explore the Town of York on foot with one of our expert historians! In this walking tour, join us as we explore the Battle of York while we walk the original 10 blocks of the early city. Tours start and end at Toronto’s First Post Office. Tours run rain or shine, and may cover rough ground, so please dress accordingly. All ages are welcome. Dogs and bicycles are welcome as we walk, though portions of some tours may include indoor areas where they are restricted.”
$16.93 for non-members; $11.62 for members.
RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY IN THE CANADIAN FIRST WORLD WAR EFFORT
August 18 — 7pm — Online — Toronto Railway Museum
“Explore the complexities of transportation and logistics in the forward areas of the Western Front during the First World War. Join us and presenter Andrew Iarocci on Thursday, August 18 at 7:00 PM (EST) for a free online lecture. Learn about how railway technologies and expertise were gradually integrated into the British (and Canadian) transportation system, in an effort to streamline and rationalize the movement of ammunition, supplies, and personnel.”
Free with registration!
NEIGHBOURHOOD TOUR: HUNGRY FOR COMFORT
August 20 & 21 — Various times — Mackenzie House
“Mackenzie House’s Hungry for Comfort Neighbourhood Tour explores the influence of the Black community on food culture in Toronto from the 1830s- 1860s. From grocers, to caterers, to purveyors of fine dining, each of the individuals included represents a different aspect of foodways. The walking tour begins at the Northeast corner of King & Church Streets and ends at Mackenzie House with a tasting of Trinidadian snacks by Pelau Catering.”
Free with registration!
WALKING TOUR — ON THE EDGE OF THE CITY: TORONTO IN 1833
August 27 — 10:30am respectively — Meet at Toronto’s First Post Office — Town of York Historical Society
“Imagine a Toronto where the tallest building is only three stories high, where Lake Ontario reaches Front Street, where the wagon wheels grind through the muddy roads, the air smells of smoke and animal, and the surrounding lands is farms, fields, and forests. This was what the neighbourhood looked like in the early 1800s. In this walking tour, explore the surviving built environment of the original 10 blocks of Toronto and discover how the Town of York, which started as a colonial outpost with a couple hundred residents, became the City of Toronto in 1834, with a population of just under 10,000.”
$16.93 for non-members; $11.62 for members.
COMING SOON!
My Toronto baseball history course is back! It was a big hit when I first offered it last year, and a few of you have been asking when it would return, so I’ve resurrected it for another go!
Baseball was being played in Toronto more than a century before the Blue Jays were born. So over the course of four lectures, we'll explore the game's evolution in our city — from the days when it was a working class sport played by "undesirables" to Joe Carter jumping for joy in front of 50,000 screaming fans. Along the way, we'll meet everyone from con artists and kidnappers and polygamists to feminist icons — the people who've made Toronto baseball what it is… and helped transform our city in the process.
The course will be held online over Zoom — and even if you can’t make all the dates, don’t worry! All the lectures will be recorded and posted to a private YouTube page so you can watch them whenever you like.