N*TROPY

Christ Church, St. James

Although the allure of this location to local explorers was great a few years ago, I had not really been interested in seeing the site until I read a little about its very interesting history that ended in murder and arson. Probably as popular with locals as the Don Valley Brickworks, the burnt out ruin of church has a very interesting history dating back to the 1830’s when American ministers came to Canada to preach to black settlers who came here via the “underground railroad” to escape slavery.

St, James Choir

It was one of the few black congregations in Toronto at the time and in 1856 this group severed their ties with the US (for unknown reasons) and established the British Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1955 the church moved to 460 Shaw Street after amalgamation with the who used to volunteer his accounting services for the church had gone missing, along with his own records. Bob Ivens, a colleague o his at the University of Toronto was found murdered in a cadaver slate in the medical sciences department where he worked. The professor apparently was on the verge of a “big” discovery (of unknown origin) before this strange mixed of events unfolded. The fire caused $1.5 Million in damages and two other churches in the area were torched.

When it came time to demolish the church, the church’s funds were found to be phony, leaving more questions then answers. Did the treasurer misappropriate the funds from the church? Did someone exact revenge on him for doing this? Did they wish to cover up something else with the fire? Did the professor do all this? Who murdered him?

Rarely do locations leave so many unanswered questions, worthy of a great mystery story. The police never ended up solving the murder or the arson, as they concluded these weird coincidences to be just that, coincidences. Stephen Toussaint’s body was near the Scarborough bluffs near Brimley street, which is close to a large seminary and a bizarre street enterprise consisting of crack whores and trannies after dark.

It has now been almost a decade since this happened, and there are no answers to these questions. The area and part of the ruin has been boarded off with what looks like a housing development, however like the American Canning Company, nothing became of the project, and it stands vacant providing the neighborhood kids a place to play, and new explorers a place to wet their feet with an easy location.

Posted in: Institutional

Tags: arson, Christ Church, fire, murder, st.james church, toronto

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Institutional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.