Background
Introduction to the Neighborhood
The Battle Over the Wychwood Barns
The Creation of the Wychwood Barns & Park
Creating a farmers market at the barns-Cookie Roscoe
Photography as activism –Vid Ingelvics
The barns in the history of Artscape “Placemaking” –Pru Robey
Artists and Artscape Wychwood Barns
still-life in winter light: with barns artist Diana Renelli, an invitation to market visitors to create a photo still life with their produce in the cafe as a tribute to George A. Reid and Mary Hiester Reid’s Arts and Crafts domestic arrangements in Wychwood Park.
mural George A. Reid & Adrian Hayles: local narratives and place identity as seen in the artists’ mural-making in the St. Clair-Dufferin public library and Oakwood and Vaughan pedestrian island.
scrapbook George A. Reid incorporated his ancestors, family members, Wychwood Park and its surrounding neighborhood into his art. He and Mary Hiester Reid were among the local artists portrayed by William James and celebrated in the press with the 1913 opening of the Art Museum of Toronto.
northern exposure Looking back at the first live-work studio building in Canada and celebrating the barns artists’ open house: Jordan Dunlop, Wayne Wightman, Gregory Edwards.
market buzz overheard fragments of conversation were transcribed and displayed on the market’s chain-link gate to complement Hopkins Duffield’s interactive sound installation Hive 2.0 at New Adventures in Sound Art. Interview with the artist collective and transcript of the market buzz.
Our Home & Native Land an interview with Bernadette Peets on her November 2014 exhibition at the barns.
Day of the Dead an interview with Jesus Mora: adapting the Mexican celebration to a local and Canadian context and creating a ritual space in the barns.
Annual Wychwood Barns Community Gallery exhibition artists’ talks
A tour of the barns offering glimpses of the creative activity in the Artscape culture hub and The Stop Green Barn.
Accents, the Afro-Caribbean book hub from Eglinton avenue, takes up residence at the barns.
Streets
boulevard “the St. Clair disaster” and the original St. Clair right of way
women and street safety in 1913 and in the St.Clair west district today
subdivide the marketing genius of W.S. Dinnick and how real estate boomed with the arrival of the streetcar and, a century later, the streetcar right-of-way on St. Clair Avenue West.
landmark glimpses of the neighborhood in the background of City Works Department photo documentation of the barns 1913-14 construction.
slope the construction of the Bathurst & Christie street cement retaining walls one hundred years ago and the challenge to green its slopes today.
Farmers, markets & the local food movement
backyard chicken 100 yrs of debate over farm animals in the city and the neighborhood.
market garden this was the city’s food growing district 100 years ago.
Toronto Housewive’s League & their 1914 lobby for neighborhood “curbside markets”.
pastoral FarmStarts: an urban incubator farm & its local rural heritage northwest of the city.
start-up shack & Jason Hirsch growing food in under-used backyards and building a local economy as an echo of “shack town”.
apple tasting with heirloom apple expert and local urban fruit forager Suzanne Long.
flying over the farm the clash of rural past and the modern age in press coverage of the first Canadian aviation meet on a Weston farm.
market scene: food security and the local fight for neighborhood farmers’ markets a century ago and recently.
Rural Memory
back on the farm ca. 1912 photos and diary entries of a Cornell University Engineering professor who photographically explored his nostalgia for and displacement from his rural past in King Township north west of Toronto.
Brampton Farmer’s Diary 1873 a transcribed and annotated diary with links to online contemporary archival sources on farming, Methodism and Brampton life.
Parks
snow angel sliding & skating on vacant land to create parks
country roads as inspiration in parks design & photography
playground–child welfare & city spaces then & now
runoff a sound and participatory mixed media celebration of Garrison Creek’s underground life with Yael Greenberg and Nicholas Power
framing the park the role of photography in the Toronto Parks Movement and a century later to raise awareness of the barns
a year in the life of the Wychwood Barns Park
Public Health
anti-vaccination in Toronto a century ago and today
black & white & read all over Toronto’s pure milk campaign in the popular press and market milking demonstration
the great white plague (Tuberculosis) Arthur Goss Health Department flash photos of high density living quarters, the Toronto slum-clean-up, the embrace of ventilated classrooms and open-air schools, backyard quarantine and Wychwood Park resident William Gage’s tuberculosis hospitals
Progressive Education: Nature Study, Food Growing & Art
Planting values the MacDonald Movement & The Stop’s food education program
Toronto’s kindergarten roots and the barns children’s arts programs
Neighborhoods
Walmer Hill
Casa Loma, Sir Henry Pellatt’s legacy for Toronto citizens.
Earlscourt-Oakwood-Wychwood:
Earlscourt: English-pluck and Imperial loyalty in the suburbs
Earlscourt gardens: beautification and property pride, 100 years ago and today
market garden urban sprawl and food production at the north-west city margins
the Ward:
Rag picker: to complement Repairathon, an exploration of attitudes towards recycling, a tribute to that archetype of urban life, the “rag and bone man”, and an examination to how the concentration of junk peddlers there affected attitudes towards the Ward
The Jews of the Ward on High Holy Days features a 1912 Toronto Daily Star description of Rosh Hashanah in the Ward including documentation of lakefront use for tashlikh, illustrated with set 39 of the William James’ lantern slide collection. Linked to Flikr and displayed in the market to invite identifications of and associations with the depicted rituals, buildings and places.
demonstrate: how the 1912 Eaton’s strike drew attention to Ward families
Picturing Immigrants in the Ward with Sarah Bassnett: an overview of this popular 2013 City of Toronto Archives exhibition on photography’s role in constructing the identity of Jews in the Ward
Society & Street
head garnish a millinery table with fresh salad greens from The Stop’s Green Barn set out for market shoppers to embellish 1914 hat styles. Using hat styles in conjunction with contemporary press reports to date photographs in the City of Toronto digitized database of James photos of the 1914 Ontario Jockey Club spring meet.
familiar characters on Toronto streets a gallery of well-known street peddlers from 100 years ago as described in the Toronto Daily Star with photos by William James, in conjunction with an interview with Patrick Cummins on his City of Toronto Archives exhibition on the history of street photography.
Tattoos at the market. Charlie White Toronto’s first tattoo artist, interpreted with tattoo historian and henna artist Noam Sienna who offered free and customized henna hand design to market visitors.
Go, dog. Go! Celebrating the social networks created by our dogs through a portrait gallery of those denizens of the outdoor market.
Market buzz to complement Hopkins Duffield’s interactive sound installation Hive 2.0 at New Adventures in Sound Art, overheard fragments of conversation were transcribed and displayed on the market’s chain-link gate.
City Danger
The Daily Disaster: 86 poignant, occasionally funny accident reports from the Toronto Daily Star
the mystery of the girl in the corn stook: local murder mystery on the edge of town exposing fears of modern city streets for women
working girl – street danger: Toronto streets ca. 1913 through the lens of the “white slavery” fear
Memorializing History Close to Home
Cabin Fever: creating monuments to settlement, the Toll keepers Cottage and the York Pioneers’ Cabin
Havana Drift: Accents’ Abu Fofana and Teresa Casas present a map of Havana as a site of their intersecting family histories
William James lantern slide collection– In the 1920’s James used his vast photo collection that chronicled the development of Toronto as the basis of lantern slide lectures. No scripts survive and few images are identified in the over one hundred 50-slide sets. Identification of the images through contemporary articles suggests some of the lost narratives.
Arrival Set 83 documents the British Welcome League’s settlement houses and advocacy on behalf of English immigrants.
Color For public lectures James used hand-coloured lantern slides to heighten the drama of particular city and landscape views. Personal portraits and views of his family life were also enhanced with color. Several sets seem to be visual essays on how the life of the James family merged with that of the city and the times. To complement this theme Cookie Roscoe discussed the legacy of hand-colored photography in her family and demonstrated some techniques at the market.
reading bones: references to phrenology in William James photographs and the influence of Toronto phrenologists, Professor Cavanagh and Dr. O’Brien.
projected view: The popularizing of Ethnology and Human Evolution in 1920’s Toronto through the lantern slide lectures of Sir Bertram Windle at University of Toronto. William James’ jumbled slide sets, Canada’s racist immigration policy and the photographers’ role in preserving the hegemony of British and Northern European immigration through his 1922-23 illustrated lecture tour to Britain and Germany.
Visual Communication and Place
postcard pretty documentation of The Stop’s market tweets suggesting that this visual messaging parallels how postcards were used a hundred years ago
Neighborhood Mapping with Joan James using Google Maps
John Clapp and the Wychwood Open Door
Preparing Recruits for War
fairground camp, is a photo essay of the training camp at the Canadian National Exhibition as it appeared in November 1914
Cedarvale war games traces the training maneuvers of the CNE stationed recruits in the Cedarvale Ravine.
Back to the Park 