Crowds flocked to Sunnyside Beach in 1922 when the new park opened, lured by the modern new bathing pavilion and the miles of parklands, boardwalks and beaches near Humber Bay. The newly formed Toronto Harbour Commission reclaimed land by dredging the bottom of Lake Ontario and placing over 3 million cubic yards of fill along the […]

Once upon a time, about 300 years ago, my British ancestors were farmers, living off the land, battling against nature to support their families through hard manual labour. Bolton-upon-Swale, Yorkshire My seventh great-grandparents Allan and Ann Layfield were farmers in the small village of Bolton-upon-Swale in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire. They married sometime around the […]

Christmas Eves of my childhood were spent down in my Nana’s basement apartment, curled up on the couch, watching ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens on the black and white television. The family would gather around, sipping hot cocoa and being warmed by the fire in the old-fashioned brick fireplace, its mantel festooned with ivy. […]

George Brown was my great-great-grandfather. While I know quite a bit about George and Ann Brown of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England after the marriage of George and Ann, I know nothing of George’s childhood. Since his parentage is a total unknown, I’m stuck, totally unable to grow my family tree beyond this broken branch. It is […]

In the mid-nineteenth century, although officially part of British North America, British Columbia was a wilderness territory, effectively run by the Hudson’s Bay Company who controlled the fur trade throughout the Pacific North-west. The area was largely unsettled and the sparse population was made up primarily of aboriginal people, and a few hundred British settlers […]

On Monday, December 11, 1944, the forecast for Toronto, Ontario was for fresh to strong winds with some snow Monday and Tuesday, probably part sleet, but by noon on Tuesday, December 12, it was clear that forecasters had missed the mark. Twenty-one inches of snow-covered the ground in Toronto by lunchtime on Tuesday and still it […]

While the concept of a library is as old as the written word, early libraries were only accessible to a select few. Throughout the Middle Ages, libraries were established, often in monasteries but access was strictly limited. Manuscripts of this era were created by the labourious process of hand copying, making them very valuable and books […]

At the beginning of the 1800s, Christmas was hardly celebrated in Britain, with many business remaining open that day. Newspapers were published. People went about their normal business. But by the middle of the century, things began to change. Some credit the resurgence of Christmas spirit to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who celebrated the holiday […]

The province of Upper Canada, now Ontario, was created by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1791 as part of the Constitutional Act of 1791. The Act divided the territory of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada, with Lower Canada being the French speaking portion now known as Quebec, and Upper Canada being the area […]