ALONG THE SHORE: Rediscovering Toronto’s Waterfront Heritage
By M. Jane Fairburn
ECW Press 429 pp., $32.95 soft cover
My friend Jane Fairburn opens her new book, Along the Shore: Rediscovering Toronto’s Waterfront Heritage, with a double page reproduction of the Carte au plan nouveau du lac Ontario, 1757 by René-Hippolyte Laforce overwritten in part with a poem by Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen. It is just this kind of magical juxtaposition which makes this book so charming. Jane seamlessly weaves together stories about the history, landscape, geography and people of the Toronto waterfront communities of Scarborough Bluffs, the Beach, Toronto Island and the Lakeshore. In each section she documents the stages of evolution: pre settlement; humble beginnings as farming and then resort destinations; the establishment of villages; the destruction and loss of those communities and current renewal efforts.
As you might expect from the inquiring mind of a lawyer and former Crown Attorney, Jane has mined the archival institutions of Toronto and Ontario to great effect reproducing many rare photographs, illustrations and maps. Her list of works cited runs to 16 pages. The stories of such well known Toronto waterfront personalities as Marilyn Bell and Ned Hanlon are of course included, but also the stories of many lesser known but equally interesting characters and events. I was particularly struck by the realization that two of the biggest Toronto stories of the twentieth century: Marilyn Bell’s triumphant 1954 swim across Lake Ontario and the deadly landing of Hurricane Hazel occurred just one month apart.
New residents of Toronto, and that surely includes the majority, will be amazed to learn of the way in which the lakefront has been transformed from its early Lake Iroquois shoreline to the present, first by nature and more recently by man. Along the Shore is focused on the four communities noted above but also touches, in less detail, on the inner harbour and the town of York. The book is available at most GTA bookstores and Internet book sellers as well as through www.janefairburn.com.
Graham