The Runaway Horses That Once Terrified Toronto
Plus our rampaging cow tour is coming up this weekend, two strange military tales, and more...
On the radio last week, I promised that I’ve been working on a big piece for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. But since it’s such a huge story, I’ll have to share it in a future newsletter. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a less ambitious tale that I stumbled across this week as our walking tour about a rampaging Edwardian cow approaches on Saturday. (You’ll find more details about that below.)
It was lunchtime on a Tuesday, a mild day in the early spring, the kind of March afternoon when it feels like winter might finally be loosening its icy grip. All across the city, school children were cheerfully heading home for their midday meal. But one boy was about to be caught up in an unexpected drama. As the student cycled along St. Clair West, a horse suddenly came thundering down the road, out of control, a wagon wildly bouncing along behind it, no driver to be seen.
Horses had once been an incredibly common sight on the streets of Toronto. In the late 1800s and very early 1900s, there were thousands of them living and working here. They pulled carriages and wagons and sleighs, streetcars and fire engines and milk trucks. And they often got spooked. Toronto’s newspapers used to be filled with countless reports of runaway horses. The animals bolted over and over again, flying down our streets as crowds of people scattered out the way.
But now it was 1934. Things had changed. The first automobile had appeared on our streets at the end of the 1800s and the new invention had quickly taken off from there. By the time the First World War began, there were more cars in our city than horses. And by the time that boy spotted the runaway on St. Clair, another twenty years had passed. There were still horses working in Toronto; in archival photos you’ll find an occasional equine mixed in with the traffic, pulling a farmer’s wagon or a garbage cart. But they were certainly much less common than they had been just a few decades earlier. In fact, that afternoon’s events were so notable that they made the front page of The Toronto Daily Star the next morning.
According to the newspaper, the schoolboy kept his cool. As the horse galloped down the street, the kid sprang into action. He raced after the runaway, peddling his bicycle as fast as he could go. It can’t have been easy to catch up with a horse in full sprint, but that’s exactly what the boy did. And that was just the beginning.
Runaway horses were incredibly dangerous. When the animals spooked, the carriages and sleighs and carts they were pulling often overturned, throwing drivers and riders into the road. You’ll find stories of them colliding with streetcars and ploughing into dairy wagons. In 1888, one runaway horse smashed through the window of a tailor shop on Yonge Street. Two decades later, a second horse smashed through the window of a second tailor shop on Yonge — and then smashed its way back out again. The first horse had nearly killed two people when it leapt into the driver’s seat of a passing sleigh, knocking one man unconscious and leaving the other scrambling to grab the poor beast’s bridle before things could get even worse. The Globe reported that it was the fourth or fifth runaway horse spotted on Yonge Street in just a few short days.
One of the most dramatic tales came from 1908. That winter, a horse pulling a sleigh filled with bananas got spooked turning onto Baldwin Street from McCaul — right near the AGO. When one of the runners got caught in a streetcar track, the whole thing pitched over onto its side, throwing the driver into the snow and spilling bananas everywhere. The terrified horse took off at full speed with the sleigh still behind it. It sprinted up Spadina as shopkeepers rushed out onto the sidewalk to watch it pass, then took a hard left onto College — narrowly avoiding a crowd of commuters as the sled bounced off a telephone pole — and nearly careened into a streetcar. At Bathurst, the panicked animal bowled over a pedestrian but kept flying west into what’s now Little Italy. That’s where disaster struck. A whole crowd of people were trying to board a streetcar at College & Grace, but the vehicle was full and the sidewalks were lined with snowbanks — so there was nowhere for the people to go as the horse and sleigh bore down on them. “The maddened animal came straight at them,” The Globe reported. “A couple of young men yelled to look out, but it was too late… Half a dozen went down before its charge.” One woman was pretty seriously injured, taken into a nearby pharmacy for stitches. And yet the horse barely slowed down. It was last seen blowing past Dovercourt, still at a full gallop.
Heroes could be made in moments like those — and lives saved. Newspapers wrote glowing accounts of bystanders who grabbed a bridle as a horse raced by, or the mother in Parkdale who stood her ground and simply raised her hand to bring a horse to a crashing halt before it could trample her two-year-old, or the cowboy who lassoed a runaway racehorse at the CNE.
That schoolboy must have known the stakes were high. He needed to get that horse to slow down. The best way to do it was to grab hold of the reins. But he wouldn’t be able to reach them from his bicycle. He would need to get onto the wagon somehow.
The article in The Star doesn’t give us much detail. So we’ll never exactly how the kid pulled it off, how he managed to transfer himself from his bike onto the wagon as it careened down the street. I like to think he leapt through the air in one clean motion, launching himself from one vehicle to the other, soaring above St. Clair before landing with a thud in the cart. But I imagine it’s more likely he abandoned his bicycle on the go, keeping up a sprint next to the wagon for a few strides before climbing aboard as he ran. However he did it, it must have been an incredible feat. All the newspaper tells us is that the boy “vaulted to the driver’s seat and began his struggle with the reins.”
It wouldn’t be easy. It was a schoolboy against the strength of a terrified horse. But now that he’d managed to get aboard the wagon, the kid wasn’t about to give up. He wrestled with the rampaging equine, straining against the reins to slow it down. And in the end, it was the boy who won the struggle. As they approached Nairn Avenue — near Lansdowne, just to the east of Prospect Cemetery and Earlscourt Park — the horse and wagon finally came to a stop.
It was over. The kid had done it. The driver was able to catch up and the boy relinquished the reins. Onlookers were left amazed. But the boy wasn’t looking for thanks. His job done, the horse secured, he continued on his way home for lunch.
No one even got his name.
This Weekend! Follow in the Hoofsteps of a Rampaging Cow!
One June morning in 1913, a cow escaped from her owner in downtown Toronto and went on a rampage through the heart of the city. She raced up Spadina Avenue, startled crowds of church-goes, and left chaos in her wake wherever she went.
Jamie Bradburn wrote a wonderful article about that cow’s adventure for Torontoist years ago — and I’ve been a huge fan of the story ever since. So last year, we teamed up to create a walking tour that follows in the cow’s hoofprints as we explore the history of Edwardian Toronto. And this weekend, for the 111th anniversary of this bizarre bovine escapade, we’re bringing the tour back!
When: Saturday, June 15 at 3pm.
Where: Meet in Victoria Memorial Square — at Wellington & Portland. The tour will last about 2 to 2.5 hours and end in the Annex.
Price: Pay what you can.
A Scorching Hot History of Summer in Toronto
I’m very excited to announce my first new online course in a year!
Canada might be famous for its winters, but Toronto comes alive when the weather gets warm. Our city was once billed as "the most delightful summer city" on the continent. And those few hot months between Victoria Day and the CNE have had a profound impact on this place: from heated legal battles over skinny dipping to the legacy of killer summer storms to the joyful festivals that have reflected the changing face of the city over the last two hundred years. And so, in this online course we'll spend four nights exploring some of the most fascinating, most revealing and weirdest stories from the history of summers in Toronto.
The course will kick off on the night of Thursday, June 27. And if you’re interested but concerned you might have to miss some classes, don’t worry — all the lectures will be recorded and posted to a private YouTube playlist so you can watch them whenever you like. Oh, and paid subscribers to the newsletter get 10% off!
The Toronto History Weekly needs your help! The number of paid subscriptions has been slipping over the couple of months. And since this newsletter involves a ton of work every week, it’s only by growing the number of paid subscriptions that I’ll be able to continue doing it. Thank you so, so much to everyone who already has — and if you’d to make the switch yourself, you can do it by clicking right here:
Two Strange Military Tales
Not only was this past week the 80th anniversary of D-Day, but it was also the anniversary of two much stranger military events with Toronto connections. So, I shared both of them on this week’s edition of my Weird Toronto History radio segment. The first is the story of the little boy who gave us the name of our Castle Frank subway station before growing up to become a soldier who died in the bloody wars against Napoleon. The second is the story of the Irish-American armies that invaded the Canadian colonies back in the late 1860s and ’70s.
Weird Toronto History airs every Tuesday afternoon at 3:20pm on Newstalk 1010.
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
HEARTBREAKING CHURCH NEWS — We lost one of city’s most remarkable historic sites this weekend. On Sunday, a fire broke out at St. Anne’s Anglican Church, which was home to decorative artwork by the Group of Seven and reliefs by Loring and Wyle. Much of the building was consumed by the flames. Alex Bozikovic mourned the loss in The Globe & Mail. He quoted Carleton University architectural historian Peter Coffman in saying that “It’s a catastrophe for Canadian architecture, Canadian art and Canadian heritage” while Sarah Milroy, director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, says it was “one of the most important cultural sites in Toronto.” Read more.
The CBC’s Chris Hampton also shared a few virtual tours of what’s been lost. Read more.
BLACK HISTORY HUB — Toronto history also got some wonderful news recently The Blackhurst Cultural Centre — formerly A Different Booklist and a hub for Black history in Toronto — is getting funding to get new space in a historic building surrounded by the new Mirvish development at Bloor & Bathurst. CTV was at the announcement. Watch it.
OLYMPIAN & HOCKEY STAR VS. HERITAGE PROTECTIONS NEWS — Olympic gold medalist Tessa Virtue and her husband, Maple Leaf defenseman Morgan Rielly, have run afoul of the city’s heritage protections. They live in the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District, so when they recently began painting their 113-year-old red brick home white, they were told to stop. According to a report from CTV’s Chris Fox “staff with the city’s heritage department say that one of the home’s ‘most important attributes’ is its ‘red brick masonry’ and that painting it would ‘neither maintain or enhance its architectural style or character’ and wouldn’t ‘comply with good conservation practice.’” The decision will now be up to city council and the couple have secured Rob Ford’s former chief of staff, Amir Remtulla, to lobby on their behalf. Read more.
FROM JUNO BEACH TO KEW BEACH NEWS — For TVO, Jamie Bradburn shares a fascinating look at how the news of D-Day was received across Ontario. And it includes a strange detail from our own city:
At Kew Beach Park in Toronto, reserve members of the Queen’s Own Rifles staged a mock invasion on June 7 as a prelude to a fireworks display. The troops, according to the Globe and Mail, ‘took up their positions around the park armed with everything from Bren guns to smoke bombs.’ The event apparently delighted the 30,000 children who attended.
ABATTOIR & DESTRUCTOR NEWS — Jack Landau writes about the update plans for “The Yards,” a new development just across the railway tracks from Fort York. The site includes a pair of historic buildings: an abattoir and the garbage incinerator known as Wellington Destructor. In addition to that city-owned building, the proposal includes the preservation of the old smokestack, “reimagined facades of the slaughterhouse building,” “repurposed relics salvaged from the former abattoir building,” and “a feature known as the Creek Bank that will reference the buried Garrison Creek.” Read more.
HAUNTED MANSION NEWS — Landau also recently wondered about the future of the Keg Mansion. The building has heritage protection, but it looks like the site is listed for sale, raising questions about whether a new development might be coming… and if that might impact the house that once belonged to the famous Massey family. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
THE BEACHES: CREATION OF A TORONTO NEIGHBOURHOOD
June 12 — 7:30pm — Beaches Sandbox — The Beach and East Toronto Historical Society
“Author and historian Richard White on his just-published history of the neighbourhood.”
Free!
THE HUMBER: TIME TRAVEL THROUGH PICTURES
June 13 — 7:30pm — Lambton House — Heritage York
Explore the pictorial history of the Humber River with David Wallace in this talk at historic Lambton House presented by Heritage York.
Free, I believe!
ON THE EDGE OF A CITY WALKING TOUR
June 15 — 10:30am — Meet at St. James Cathedral — 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 with a population of a couple hundred residents, became the City of Toronto in 1834, with a population of just under 10,000.”
$22.63 for non-members; $17.31 for members.
ANNE POWERS: ON THE PATH TO JONI MITCHELL
June 17 — 7pm — Toronto Reference Library
“Joni Mitchell has spellbound listeners for decades as one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the Folk music scene of the 1960s, and her musical legacy left a loud imprint on musicians, fans and storytellers of all walks of life. In Traveling, Ann Powers brings her honed skills as a music biographer to trace the story of Joni from rural Canada to her ultimate International stardom and her recent triumphant comeback after the aneurysm that nearly took her life. And along the way, Powers delivers a new type of music biography that contradicts the traditional idea that a fan can ever truly and deeply know their musical icons.”
Free!
TERROR IN THE TOWN OF YORK WALKING TOUR
June 28 — 10:30am — Meet at St. James Cathedral — 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, join us as we explore the beginnings of the area that would become the Town of York, the events leading up to the War of 1812, the Battle of York, and its aftermath while we walk the original 10 blocks of the early city.”
$22.63 for non-members; $17.31 for members.
TRIBUTE TO NATION BUILDERS CEREMONY
July 1 — 10:30am — Chinese Railroad Workers Memorial — The Foundation to Commemorate the Chinese Railroad Workers
“Join us, in their honour, and listen to the history from the descendants of the Chinese Railway Workers and be a part of this historic milestone.”
Free!
TORONTO GONE WILD
Until August 3 — Wednesday to Sunday from 12pm to 4pm — Museum of Toronto
“Toronto Gone Wild explores the city as a multi-layered habitat — starring the animals, plants, and insects that call Toronto home. Venture through different Torontonian terrains from city streets to burrows, hives, and nests, all seamlessly woven together in our downtown exhibition space. You’ll emerge with a renewed appreciation for the interconnectedness of life in the city.”
Free!
THE TORONTO HISTORY LECTURE: REBUILDING THE BODY IN WWI TORONTO
August 6 — 7:30pm — Online — Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
“At the end of the First World War, wounded soldiers were coming home in huge numbers, and the country was scrambling for space to treat them all. By 1919, the Christie Street Hospital opened in a renovated cash register factory. Kristen den Hartog’s 2024 Toronto History Lecture gives us a glimpse of this fascinating place, of its diverse group of patients and staff, and the role it played in Toronto’s rich history.”
Free with registration!
HERITAGE TORONTO WALKING TOURS
Until October
“Through our events, including tours, community discussions, the Heritage Toronto Awards, and more, Heritage Toronto engages the public to reflect on the city’s heritage.”
Usually $9.85