The Story Behind Toronto's Most Chilling Portrait
Plus a new museum, saving a soap factory, and more.
BEER DEMON NEWS — It’s an infamous photo, one of the most striking images in the archives. A picture so unsettling it regularly makes the rounds on social media, going viral as people realize what the man who lent his name to Bloor Street actually looked like.
But even if you’ve seen this photo before, you probably don’t know much about the man in it. So today, I thought I’d share the story of Joseph Bloore and the role he played in the history of our city.
He was born in England in the late 1700s, but as a young man he set out to build a new life. He sailed across the ocean, bound for the Canadian colonies. And it was here in Toronto that he settled.
He arrived in 1818, back when our city was still the muddy little town of York. It had been founded by the British just two decades earlier — on land that had already been home to First Nations and their ancestors for thousands of years. It was still very much a frontier town back then. A rough place. And sometimes, a very drunk one.
In its first few decades, York witnessed drunken brawls, street fights, even murders. There were sex scandals and duels and riots. Toronto's first death sentence was handed down to a man who drunkenly forged a shilling to buy some whisky. He was hanged outside the jail on King Street.
Joseph Bloore saw all that boozy chaos as an opportunity. He opened a tavern. The Farmer's Arms stood right in the middle of town — on the market square, near the spot where today's St. Lawrence Market still stands 200 years later. It was a notorious neighbourhood. The area was known as the Devil's Half Acre — a place where farmers coming to market could get trashed while they were in town. It seems to have been, as Jordan St. John put it in his Lost Breweries Of Toronto book, "a centre of vice."
Bloore made money off that vice. Lots of it. And soon, he'd be making even more. He used his profits from the tavern to open his very own brewery. Bloore's Brewery would stand in the Rosedale Valley. (It was well outside town back then, but now that spot is right near Sherbourne subway station.)
Bloore had a big impact on the valley, changing its landscape. He built a dam on Castle Frank Brook to power his machinery, creating a big pond in the process. Bloore's Pond stretched nearly all the way to Yonge St. in the spring, a popular spot for swimming in the summer and skating in the winter.
But brewing was hard work. It was quite dangerous back then — more than one Toronto brewer was killed doing it — and Bloore had to get his heavy kegs up the steep and muddy slopes of the ravine then all the way down into town.
He also, however, had very good timing. York was booming. As the town officially became the City of Toronto, the population was skyrocketing. And lots of the new arrivals wanted to get drunk. New taverns were opening all the time, dozens of them, one for every 125 residents or so. And all those taverns needed beer.
Joseph Bloore got rich supplying them. So rich, in fact, he was soon able to start up a whole new income stream. He entered into a partnership with William Botsford Jarvis — the town's sheriff, who would soon be hailed as a hero for helping crush the Upper Canada Rebellion.
Together, Bloore & Jarvis began buying enough land to create their own village not far from the brewery. It almost became known as Blooreville, but would get the name Yorkville instead. It would eventually get swallowed up by the growing city, a neighbourhood that would one day become famous for its 1960s hippie scene and today's swanky fashion boutiques.
But even without Blooreville, the brewer’s name would live on.
He'd built a house on the big road just up the hill from his brewery. The street had many names over the years: the First Concession Road, Tollgate Road, St. Paul's Road, Sydenham Road… But it was best known as the way to get to the famous brewer's house, so that's the name that stuck.
Two centuries later, we still call it Bloor Street — though we've dropped the "e" — and that's not the only trace of Joseph Bloore you can find in Toronto today. There's plaque and marble tablet erected near the spot where his house once stood. A new brewery has been named after him…
And, of course, there’s the disturbing photographic portrait he left behind.
It must be one of the earliest photographs ever taken in Toronto — since we know the very first photos of the city were snapped just six years before Bloore died. Maybe that's why it turned out so poorly, why his eyes are so unsettling, why his hair is so dishevelled, why he seems to sneer at us from beyond the grave like some undead creature unleashed from the depths of hell itself…
Joseph Bloore is just one of the boozy historical figures we’ll be talking about in the new online course I’m offering: A Boozy History of Toronto. There will be drunken rebels, beer-bashing mayors, notorious bootleggers, and alcoholic politicians. Plus, booze-soaked murders, prohibition-era shootouts, and the kidnapping of one Canada's wealthiest brewers — not to mention the bitter fight over whether drinking should be allowed here at all. To truly understand Toronto, it helps to understand how this city has been shaped by centuries of people getting drunk.
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TORONTO IS GETTING A NEW MUSEUM
REMEMBERING WWII NEWS — Toronto probably isn’t the first place that leaps to mind when you think about Asia and the Second World War, but our city is about to become home to a new museum dedicate to telling the stories of the horrors that took place there — as well as the treatment Japanese-Canadians received at home.
The Asia-Pacific Peace Museum is slated to open later this year near Lawrence & Victoria Park (though the timeline has been delayed before). And this week, Canada’s History magazine talked with one of the founders: Dr. Joseph Yu-Kai Wong.
It sounds as if it will be filled with stories many Canadians don’t know enough about. “The museum will examine the causes of the war, the expansion of the conflict, the aftermath, and its continuing impacts and legacy today. The galleries will explore topics such as the Nanking Massacre; the “comfort women” who were forced to act as sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers; the use of biochemical and germ weapons; the mistreatment of prisoners of war; the Battle of Hong Kong; the use of atomic bombs to end the war; and, on the home front, the internment of Japanese Canadians during the war.”
SAVING A SOAP FACTORY
SUNLIGHT NEWS — A new petition has been launched: an effort to save an important piece of Toronto’s industrial history before it’s completely demolished.
There’s been a soap factory on the banks of the Don River for more than 100 years. In fact, I’ve written about one of them before, since the Lever Brothers’ Sunlight Soap Works Factory lent its name to our city’s first baseball stadium. Originally known as the Toronto Baseball Grounds, the ballpark opened in the 1880s and later got a new nickname inspired by the neighbouring facility: Sunlight Park. It’s where Toronto’s early baseball legends like Cannonball Crane played.
The Sunlight detergent brand is still around today, and so is the legacy of the Lever Brothers’ Don River complex. They built a second factory on the site in the 1950s, and while the original factory has since been demolished, that second one is still standing there today.
Now, though, it’s under imminent threat.
The site is now going to be home to a massive new development known as East Harbour. It’ll feature 17 towers and a new transit station. Early plans promised to save and incorporate the old factory — which would be more environmentally friendly than demolishing it, while also helping give the new neighbourhood more character with a sense of place, variety, and history.
As urban geographer Daniel Rostzain puts it, "We have the opportunity to create a vibrant, interesting, human-scale neighbourhood rather than a placeless megadevelopment that could be anywhere." And writing about the site for Spacing, Peter MacCallum suggest it’s “comparable to the Distillery District as a candidate for the adaptive re-use and preservation of our industrial heritage.”
But now, the plans have changed. A new developer has taken over and they want to raze the factory in its entirely and build everything from scratch.
READ SPACING’S TWO-PART SERIES ABOUT THE FACTORYS’S HISTORY & CHECK OUT THE PETITION
A NEW SEASON OF CANADIANA IS JUST TWO DAYS AWAY
SWASHBUCKLING NEWS — Last week, I shared the trailer for the new season of my Canadian history documentary series, Canadiana. The premiere is now just two days away. The swashbuckling first episode will debut on YouTube at 7:30pm Tuesday night. And as always, it’s 100% free to watch.
We’ve even got a new little teaser to get you excited:
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
PRIDE NEWS — I hope everyone’s been having a lovely Pride weekend. And to mark the occasion, I thought I’d share an old NOW article about “44 moments that shaped Toronto Pride history.” Read more.
DESTROYING BLOOR COLLEGIATE NEWS — This week, the Globe’s architecture critic, Alex Bozikovic, checked in on what he calls “Toronto’s biggest preservation failure” of the last two decades. And he wrote a whole thread reminding us of what’s being lost:
BANNING APARTMENT BUILDINGS NEWS — Irene Galea looks back 100 years to the days when Toronto banned the construction of apartment buildings in most parts of the city — and how that decision is still contributing to the housing crisis today. (I think you need a subscription to the Globe to read this one.) Read more.
TORONTO SPECIAL NEWS — Some apartments did get built though. A couple of week’s ago, I shared Eric Sehr’s Twitter thread about the development of the “Toronto Special” style of walk-up apartments. Now, he’s done an even deeper dive on the story for Spacing. Read more.
WANT TO LIVE IN A CASTLE NEWS — Meanwhile, Katherine Taylor paid a visit to another one of the coolest apartment buildings that did manage to get built despite the general ban:
FREE MUSEUM NEWS — The ROM is going to be offering free admission on Canada Day. But you will need a ticket cuz they’re doing it with timed entry. Get one.
PRIDE FLOAT NEWS — Jessica Dee Humphries takes a quick look at the first time one of Toronto’s most famous gay bars, Woody’s, built a float for the Pride Parade. Read more.
BLACK HISTORY NEWS — A sponsored article/ad in Toronto Life spotlights Cheryl Thompson at Toronto Metropolitan University, “whose ground-breaking work spans cataloguing Ontario’s Black archival collection and intersecting the disciplines of communications and performance in academia within the context of Canadian Black history.” She’s also currently working on a book and a film about the history of blackface in Canada. Read more.
FACADE NEWS — Urban Toronto heads inside the old Bloor Street United to get a peek at the construction turning the Victorian church into a facade as part of the development of a condo tower and the new head office of the United Church of Canada — including the cleaning and rebuilding of the stained glass windows. Read more.
SPECIAL EXECUTIVE FOR COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, TERRORISM, REVENGE AND EXTORTION NEWS — Jamie Bradburn kicks off a new James Bond-focused series of blogposts by taking a look at how Toronto reacted to the release of the first official 007 film, Dr. No, in 1962. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
JUDGE GRIZZLE: CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST
JUNE 27 — 7:30pm — Online — Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
“Stanley George Sinclair Grizzle was a Canadian citizenship judge, a soldier, a political candidate and an activist. Born in Toronto to Jamaican immigrant parents at the end of WWI Stanley G. Grizzle became a railway porter at 22, founded the Railway Porter’s Trade Union Council and was active in the labour movement throughout his life, becoming the first African-Canadian member of a trade union. Mr. Grizzle was an associate editor and columnist for Contrast, a black community newspaper and penned the book My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada. In 1959 Mr. Grizzle and Jack White became the first African-Canadians to run in an Ontario election. Mr. Grizzle has also received the Order of Ontario, Order of Canada and the Order of Distinction from Jamaica for his valuable contributions to Canadian society.”
Free with registration!
SUMMER HISTORY SERIES: THE KINGSWAY
July 21 — 7:30pm — Online — Etobicoke Historical Society
“One of Canada’s premier neighbourhoods, The Kingsway was the vision of one man, Robert Home Smith. A lawyer by training but a natural-born town planner, Home Smith took 3,100 acres of ordinary Etobicoke farmland and turned it into an elegant series of subdivisions that were deemed ‘A bit of England far from England’. Centered around the Old Mill, they offered not only a new vision of town planning but of upper middle class life in Toronto. So ‘jump on the bus’ with EHS Historian Richard Jordan for an enjoyable virtual journey through this picturesque and historic neighbourhood.”
Free for members; an annual membership is $25.
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!