RCAF Scarborough Bluffs

Scarborough  isn’t known to many as a former industrial or military hotbed, but rather as a suburb onto itself just east of Toronto. Apart from light industry, malls and sub divisions and projects dotting the landscape you would have not otherwise known that the RCAF built a testing facility along the Scarborough Bluffs which was an ideal location because of it’s high cliffs and proximity to the water.  A single brick building was built (details omitted) right on the bluffs themselves where a coastal radar device was developed. The radar was known as a Microwave Early Warning/Anti-Submarine system, and after the radar device was developed the RCAF turned the building into a school, which is actually what it looks like at first glance if you happen to pass by it today.

The No.1 radio direction finding school opened it’s doors in June 1942 and trained both British and American airman and signal corps. It changed it’s name to No.1 radar school in December 1943 and operated for three months when everything was moved to the much larger radar school in Clinton, Ontario. If if isn’t already apparent, it’s amazing to see such grand waste at the hands of military during (and after the war). In 1946 the building was given to the National Research Council’s radio branch where similar work continued on experimental radar development. The site was also home to the department of transport’s radiosonde training unit as well as the National radiation Atmospheric Center. In the early 1950′s the building was also shared with the RCAF No. 5 aircraft control and warning unit ( No.5 AC&WU) until October 1951 when that was moved to RCAF Edgar where the 31 Aircraft control and warning squadron was re-located, near CFB Borden. The RCAF’s No. 271 Air Defense Control was also located here along with the 2400 Aircraft control and warning unit, No.1 Anti-Aircraft operations room, No.2 and the 206 companies of the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

The building is now used by the City of Toronto (Scarborough became amalgamated in 1998) and the only part that remains accessible (if you like walking along the bluffs to access it – I don’t recommend it) is an underground shelter that seems to have been used as a grow-op at some point. It’s hollow, and further levels exist suggested by air vents and the large flat, open space behind the main building. None of the historical documents I found make reference to what the space could have been used for but it is located near the shore, and could have been used as a stop over between Camp X (entry at some later point) and Toronto for POW’s. That’s pure speculation, but no other reasonable hypothesis was found to explain the presence of this bunker room that is far too close to the surface to have been used as an air raid shelter, out in the open.

Photos by Kathy.

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Georgetown South Rail Expansion

This past spring (2011) I happened to drive past construction vehicles one night that were parked on lansdowne setting up for the addition of a bridge. I went back that next day and got to see how everything arrives and is set up before being hoisted into place. The additional track was added to facilitate the expansion of the line out to Georgetown (North of Toronto) and also the airport.

More Info available on Go’s website.

Photos by Kathy

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IBM Country Club

Although the IBM Country Club had plenty of it’s own history for what it actually was, there was also an undercurrent of older 18th century history.  In the early 1800’s the land was used as a very successful farm, once reporting $15,000.00 in sales of butter alone.  On this farm was a slave named Tom.  As was custom he took the last name of the owners, and so his name was Tom Crocker, but everyone called him Bay Tom, or later Old Bay Tom. When the sun set on slavery in New York state he stayed on the Crocker farm for awhile. He escorted their products up and down the formerly active but now abandoned Chenango Canal.  In his middling years he became infamous in Binghamton for using his booming voice to advertise for local auctioneer Tom Lyons.  He would roam up and down the principal streets in Binghamton screaming “Auction Today,” until the city passed a noise abatement ordinance just for him.  In 1853 Tom Crocker wrote a lengthy and angry letter of complaint about this ordinance to one of the Binghamton papers.  He signed it, “Tom Crocker, who some disrespectfully know as Bay Tom.” One hundred and sixty years later his story is still a shadow in the minds of history loving Binghamtonians, and yet he is still always referred to as “Bay Tom.”

When J & K of Ntropy came to visit, the first thing I did was tell them this story before we set out to the site of Tom Crocker’s youth, and later the IBM Country Club. I offered them the chance to write some of the simple words on a card in Tom’s honor, and I was so happy that they seemed to realize this might be something honorable, rather than the suspicion so many others would have greeted me with.  Subsequently we left this card in the old farmstead section of the country club, and moved along with the exploring and photographing…making our way to the ballroom where the contractor, (Clarence W. Rose) who built a drain under my yard in the 1920’s, celebrated his retirement. As we looked out the endless windows into the golf course that used to be a farm, I told them how Tom Crocker was elected Mayor of Binghamton for a brief moment in 1872.  A local banker and coal dealer named Sherman Phelps was cruising to his “turn” as Mayor, when he made the blunder of insisting that ordinary people not walk on the sidewalk he paid for in front of his opulent mansion. Some unknown genius with a sense of humor circulated the idea of standing “Bay Tom” as a write in candidate. According to historian Marjorie Hinman, legend has it that Tom won by a landslide.  The powers that be immediately began a recount, and convinced one voter after another to find a reason to disqualify their own votes for Tom for the good of the town.  But Tom never let anyone forget the first and official count.  He spent the elderly years of his life in an abandoned ditch that used to be Binghamton’s connection with the Erie Canal.  For some reason, unknown to me, the city took away the roof he had built over the edges of his section of the Erie Canal.  For his own good, they forced him to move to the poor house, and with his independence gone, he expired immediately.

Moving forward to current times the former IBM Country Club in Endicott NY has an interesting history. It was started by the acquisition of lands and buildings from the local Masonic Lodge. Whether there was a connection with Watson who was a Mason and the President of IBM hasn’t been determined by an initial search. The Country club was built out over a number of years and eventually comprised the original “Homestead” a 9 hole golf course, gym, bowling lanes, tennis courts, outdoor pool, ball room, meeting facilities, kitchen and many other amenities. During this time the IBM continued to grow to become one of the world’s largest corporations. Legend has it that Thomas J Watson, IBM’s President “trapped” new recruits following banquets or dinners and held long after hour soliloquies in the Homestead, going on into the small hours in front of a large fireplace. As IBM original Endicott Head Office outgrew it’s upstate facilities it began divestiture of these properties downsizing plants and disposing of it’s “Country Club” since it was deemed no longer necessary. The club is a beautiful property in its own right that  backs up against a treed hillside, with level grounds for it’s golf course, tennis, baseball and foot ball fields. The topography is somewhat flat and attractive with the Susquehanna River close by.

The property went through a number of transactions with various owners having plans for repositioning the club to transforming it into a contemporary country club. Despite grand plans it continues to languish and sit vacant and neglected. Floods have hit the building and destroyed the ground level floor finishes most visibly the indoor three court basket ball facility. The roof is subject to some small water damage. Construction crew materials are onsite and tarped waiting to be installed when another owner takes charge. The last group of optimistic owners was a group led by some local entrepreneurs, and speculators hoping that the complex could be somehow brought back to life with an injection of funds. Then the business matters began to get complicated. A report below this follows the events in the last ownership group and still the IBM Country Club waits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R0LHlEiywc

Photos and Text by JTCOLFAX.

Supplimentary Reading : Watson, T.J Jr., “Father, Son & Co. My Life at IBM and Beyond.  Bantem Publishing, 1990.

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Dufferin Jog Elimination

We have been following the progress of the Dufferin Jog for the past two years now and we have been curious about how it was going to turn out. It should open tomorrow, November 17, 2010. We visited a number of times (as we had an ongoing interest in documenting the graffiti) for the book we have been working on, T.Oldskool and the bridge and surrounding area really had a nice collection of decade old pieces by many artists who no longer paint anymore.

Dufferin Street and Queen Street West, 1897. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 376, File 2, Item 10.

The Dufferin jog has is located right on the border where Parkdale starts westward. I’ve always wondered why you had to go around three sides of box on Peel avenue if you happened to go south on Dufferin and was amused to learn it was much older then I first assumed. The rail lines were at grade back in the late 1800′s when the station was built and horses and carriages were the main mode of transport.hen the Queen Street Subway opened in 1898, with a train station located right behind the former toy warehouse. Since the proposed Queen Street subway was proposed (three times starting in 1911, 1944 and 1960 but never realized) the corner at Queen and Gladstone seemed to be a void where no one really stopped to do anything except maybe transfer from streetcar to bus or hang out at the coffee shop on the corner. After the Gladstone was renovated the whole area seemed to change and proliferation of condos over the past two years illustrates much of what is changing in the area. These are some of our images for our visits over the years.

Further reading

Map showing old route

City of Toronto Contract Award – Contract No. 08FS-22S

Wikipedia entry

Junctioneer Article

Photos by Kathy.

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Bata X Aga Khan

The changing face of Don Mills has been quiet over the past 5 or so years, but one notable absence is the former world headquarters of Bata Shoes on an elevated section of land between Wynford Drive and Eglinton Avenue.  It was designed by John B. Parkin whose other notable projects include the Sherton Centre and the old IBM headquarters now known as Celestica,  just a touch West of the former Bata complex . We were both fans of this great modernist building and were disappointed to learn in 2005 that North York community council certainly didn’t feel the same way when they voted to reject a heritage designation for the building. We paid a few visits over the course of 2005-2007 before demolition.

Lisa Rochon of the Globe & Mail didn’t feel to highly about when she wrote “the Bata is an imperfect work. Its north elevation is clumsy, with a porte-cochère intended as the connecting piece between the original building and a second (never built) retail space and warehouse tower. Instead, surface parking spreads out to the north and west of the building, fulfilling the deadening formula of the industrial office complex. The umbrella columns, though exhilarating to look at, are not as original as they might appear: They are a direct quotation from one of the buildings commissioned by Emhart Manufacturing Co. in Connecticut designed by the eminent American modernist firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.” Hume was more tempered in his opinion “Situated on a height of land in Toronto’s north end, the simple, modular edifice exemplifies the ideal of the building in a park. Simple and seemingly weightless, it rests on rows of columns, reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple. Unadorned yet poetic, the architecture pays homage to the past while extolling the virtues of the future.”
The building  wasn’t demolished until almost 2 years later in 2007 for the planned $300 million Aga Khan foundation religious center/museum they wish to build on the former site and the adjacent area for a total of seven acres. The complex should be completed in 2013 and work is already underway.  It was a unique piece of architecture in an otherwise bland and homogenous area. It had an expansive parking lot and it certainly didn’t intrude on the lot which fronted onto the DVP exit ramp nor Eglinton avenue. It would have been better if the building was somehow integrated into the project rather then hasty demolished but it seems  most citizen’s don’t care to retain aspects from our history which is especially interesting considering our city is so young and we don’t have much in terms of unique architecture anyways.

Photos by Kathy and Jan.

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Trains

This entry actually has two entries in one. Both museums are in southern Ontario, and one is generally open during the summer for visitors. Since neither of us are train buffs, we have just made an entry for both museums we visited in 2006 and 2009 that collects and restore old trains (freight and passenger carriages and engines) with a photo essay. We also included a train workshop we got access to which is only open for the volunteers who work there restoring old engines.

Photos by Kathy.

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Lakeshore Gentrification

Seems that a fair-bit has changed down the old Lakeshore strip in Etobicoke over the past 3-4 years. Many of the great 1960′s motels that used to welcome people to Toronto for the night have been torn down to make way for condos. Shame really as they remained in business for almost 50 + years. As of August 2011, only one motel remains and even the giant office park and industrial buildings a bit further up have been demolished to make way for a deluge of condos. Only two large sites remain (one industrial and the other infrastructure related) however they are still operating in the center of this massive development.

Photos by Kathy and Jan.

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Downsview Airport YZD

CFB Downsview, Downsview airport (YZD) or Downsview Park as it is now known has had its days numbered for a while. It has gone through several reincarnations before becoming a private complex that has TTC service, skate parks, basketball courts, rock climbing centres and elite athlete schools. It was originally a military base, with an airport that still functions today and which will for the foreseeable future operate privately under the management of Bombardier.

Downsview airport has been around since 1939 when the de Havilland Company operated it. It wasn’t until almost a decade later that the Department of Defense (DnD) purchased the property, and the area around it, which was all farmland to create Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) station Downsview to provide a local space for the RCAF. It became known as Canadian Forces base Toronto (Downsview) in 1968, when they dropped the RCAF designation to more accurately depict that the Army (now known as Land forces) was also on the base as well. I first heard about Downsview closing around 1995 and space became available for cadet groups to utilize the larger hangers on site for weekly meetings. Space was always an issue, and cadet groups were always being bumped from local community centres and schools because any of the spaces that were used had been decommissioned earlier, like  1140 Avenue road (now high end town homes and a catholic school) and Denison armories. Land Force Central Area is still on the base, however they built a new facility closer to Sheppard and Dufferin Streets.

In 1998 a crown corporation (known as Downsview Park) took control of the former base and has slowly leased it out as sports/recreation space, with future housing and retail developments. Bombardier Aerospace still manufactures on the southern end of the property and tests their aircraft at the airport. The TTC Wilson subway yard is also on Downsview Park property. There are several historically significant buildings on the property, one being the de Havilland Canada facility from 1929, and the CFB Downsview hangers which are in the process of being torn down. The downsview hangers currently have a 60-day reprieve from demolition, however no one really knows what will happen with them afterwards. This building was probably easier to single out for ‘redevelopment/demolition’ because it sits tucked into the back of the park, between the runway and the DRDC research facility, totally isolated from any other building, such as the group of hangers on the opposite side of the runway which all have found adaptive reuse.

The Downsview hangers actually played a larger role in the wartime production of aircraft as the original de Havilland facility was quite small. In 1992 the building was recognized as a heritage building by the federal government and the control tower actually operated until 3 years ago when the facility moved into the Bombardier plant. All the suggestions that people have made that the building is too old, unstable is unfounded. Apart from the control tower seeing use until a few years ago, the building was actually used by the military for urban warfare training. The other hangers were refurbished across the runway and they were from the same period. Anyhow, as of 3-4 weeks ago, the consoles and related equipment have been removed from the control room, the large doors have been ripped off and nothing remains inside the buildings themselves. Sneak a peek before they get knocked down for more generic condos that we cannot seem to get enough of in this city.

Jan 4, 2010: The Department of Defense has pulled a cheap trick out of the standard playbook of getting around  their promise to consider adaptive reuse of the hangers. On Christmas eve they sent a letter to the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario demanding $20,000 a week to hold off demolition with payments required before the holidays. This was all the while they said the would consider reuse of the buildings as they have been designated a historic Federal Heritage Building Review Office,  Downsview Park was willing to discuss a land swap to take them over, and the Canadian Air and Space museum was interested in occupying the space. They even had a prominent Toronto Developer,  Paul Oberman of Woodcliffe Corporation willing to invest in the project, to say nothing of the public who I must say impressed me in actually attempting to stop this from happening.
March 8, 2010. The demotion of the hangers has started.

April 2010. Hangers are demolished.

Photos by Kathy.

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