The Future of Casa Loma's Stables
Plus hidden squirrels, a war on ice cream trucks, and more.
FOLLY NEWS — Casa Loma was built to be the biggest private residence in Canada, the absurdly decadent home of one of the country’s richest men, a monument to his titanic wealth. It’s so massive it took three hundred construction works to build it, at a cost of millions of dollars over the course of three years. Ninety-eight rooms. Thirty bathrooms. Twenty-five fireplaces. An elevator, a central vacuum system, and space for an indoor swimming pool. An oven so massive you could cook a whole cow in it. A library with thousands of books. Secret passages, a tunnel, a fountain, a shooting gallery, and three bowling alleys.
The whole thing was designed by Toronto’s leading architect: E.J. Lennox, the same guy who did Old City Hall, the King Edward Hotel and the west wing of Queen’s Park. And no expense was spared. Masons were shipped in from Europe; stones for the wall were hand-picked by Lennox himself. Wood was ordered from all over the globe and carved by master craftsmen. The fixtures in the bathrooms were gold. The lighting and telephone systems were state-of-the-art. The gardens and greenhouses were filled with rare and exotic flowers. The Simpson’s department store was hired to source lavish art, furniture, wine, and treasure.
Even the stables were opulent. The horses of Casa Loma lived in more luxury than most people, with mahogany stalls, Spanish tile, and gold name plates.
But it didn’t remain a private residence for long — because it was built for one of the most notoriously crooked business tycoons in the country. And his corrupt empire was about to come crashing down.
Sir Henry Pellatt had been born rich; his dad was one of the county’s most powerful stockbrokers. And he used the wealth and contacts he inherited to build an even bigger fortune, investing in land, the Canadian West and the railroads as well as landing a monopoly on all the electric streetlights in Toronto.
But as I write in The Toronto Book of the Dead, Pellatt’s extravagant wealth was built on very shaky foundations:
Sir Henry lied to his investors, lied to his creditors, lied to the boards of directors of his own companies. He cooked books. Committed fraud. Claimed nonexistent profits. He deployed a wide variety of tricks to artificially inflate the value of his investments. When the federal government launched a royal commission to investigate this kind of unwelcome behaviour in the life insurance industry, Pellatt was specifically singled out for his practices.
He was also deeply in debt, having borrowed millions of dollars based on his lies. And much of that money came from one source: the Home Bank of Canada, which was run by a couple of his friends.
When it turned out Pellatt couldn’t pay them back, the bank collapsed. Tens of thousands of Canadians lost their life savings. One customer even died of a heart attack at a public meeting held at Massey Hall to discuss it. Ten bank officials were arrested, a Royal Commission was launched, the Bank of Canada was created, and rules were tightened.
Sir Henry was ruined. And since he could no longer afford to pay his bills or his taxes on his massive castle, the city eventually took it over.
At first, it wasn’t clear what would happen to Casa Loma. It was at risk of demolition for a while and run as a luxury hotel for a while. But in the end, it was turned into a tourist attraction.
In the decades since, Toronto’s most infamously gaudy monument to private wealth has become a public treasure, one of the city’s most beloved landmarks. It’s long been a destination for school field trips, a magnet for family outings, and is now home to escape rooms and a steakhouse, too.
There’s even been talk of turning some of the buildings on the castle grounds into a Museum of Toronto — including the stables. That might be financially implausible because of the ambitious retrofitting necessary to create the kind of climate control and other upgrades required to preserve precious artifacts in such an old building. But now, there’s another hitch in that dream too.
In recent weeks, there’s been a bit of a battle over the future of Casa Loma’s stables. The local City Councillor Josh Matlow started raising questions back in May, when he discovered construction had begun on a new restaurant in the stables — even though, according to Matlow, that restaurant had never been approved by the city and there was no meaningful public consultation about what should be done with the site.
The construction was carried out on behalf of Liberty Entertainment Group, the same people who run the steakhouse inside the castle itself. That work has now been halted; they say they’ve decided to open a restaurant somewhere else instead.
Matlow followed up by trying to get a motion passed that would have directed city staff to complete a report on the future of the site — a report they were apparently originally asked to write all the way back in 2013, but never did.
His motion failed. And the future of the stables seems to be thoroughly unclear.
The Toronto Star’s Ben Spurr has been reporting on the issue and tweeted out a thread about it during the committee’s debate:
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The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
NUTTY NEWS — While we’re on the subject of Casa Loma’s stables, Katherine Taylor recently spotted a detail in them that I’d never noticed before:
…though the squirrels of Joel Weeks Park in Riverside might give that one a run for its money. They’re a joyful feature of a bittersweet greenspace, named after an 8 year-old boy who drowned in 1982 while playing in a nearby sewage pipe before the park existed to play in instead:
NO ICE CREAM FOR YOU NEWS — “Half a century ago, Toronto’s suburbs engaged in a war against roaming vendors of ice cream and other treats in the name of safety and preserving tranquility.” If there’s something people think is fun, there’s a good chance some other people in our city have tried to ban it at some point. Jamie Bradburn digs into the archives of his old Torontoist pieces to share the story of Toronto’s war on ice cream trucks. Read more.
PINBALL NEWS — Meanwhile, Jessica Dee Humphreys dips a toe into Toronto’s strange history of penny arcades, which were also banned in parts of the city for many years — and have been making a bit of comeback recently. Read more.
“IMMORAL, INDECENT & SCURRILOUS” NEWS — I wrote a little bit about the Torontonian gay activist Gerald Hannon in this newsletter a few weeks ago, following the news of his passing by assisted suicide. Now, the Guelph Mercury has a review of his freshly released memoirs. “I am,” they quote him in the opening of the article, “at least by reputation, a sex radical: gay activist dating back to the Cretaceous period, defender of pedophiles, defender of (and participant in) sex work, sometime porn actor and maker, shameless voyeur … perpetual sourpuss on the subject of gay marriage.” Read more.
YOU FORGOT IT IN PEOPLE NEWS — The Agenda interviewed Michael Barclay about his new book, Hearts On Fire, which explores the Canadian indie rock scene of the early 2000s. Watch it.
CLANG CLANG NEWS — Steve Munro reminds us that their used to be a “Tour Tram” streetcar that ran on a loop through downtown Toronto:
ONE OF THE BIGGEST CO-OPS IN CANADA NEWS — Irena Karshenbaum takes a look at the luxurious roots of the City Park co-op towers and the role they’ve played in Toronto’s LGBTQ+ history. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
WALKING TOUR — ON THE EDGE OF THE CITY: TORONTO IN 1833
July 28 & August 27 — 2pm & 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.
Learn more about July 28 & August 27.
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!
MY UPCOMING EVENTS
THE TORONTO CIRCUS RIOT: A TRUE TALE OF SEX, VIOLENCE, CORRUPTION AND CLOWNS
August 3 — 7:30pm — Online — Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
The strangest riot in our city’s history broke out in the summer of 1855. It was sparked by a brawl at a King Street brothel, when some rowdy clowns picked a fight with a battle-hardened crew of firefighters on the most dangerous night of the year. That bizarre encounter would reverberate through the city. The circus performers had made a terrible mistake; those firefighters were members of the Orange Order, the powerful Protestant society that ruled Toronto for more than a century. And they wanted revenge. The circus grounds would soon become the scene of a bloody clash that shook Toronto to its core and laid bare the fault lines that once violently divided our city.
Free with registration!