Everson in 1803. Elihu built a small tannery on his new farm and, as if farming and tanning weren’t enough to keep him busy, he became interested in politics. He was elected pathmaster for the county of York in 1836, clerk of York Township in 1837, and would later be appointed inspector of schools. In 1844, the year that the new brick St. John’s Anglican Church was opened, Elihu bought the old log church and moved it to his farm where he re-assembled it to serve as a shed.
The front half of Elihu Pease’s house is shown at its current location on Harrison Garden Boulevard. It was moved there in 2002.
Photo by Scott Kennedy
Elihu’s son Edward was apprenticed to his father as a tanner, eventually opening his own tannery in today’s King Township on land donated by his father. Elihu’s daughter Elizabeth married another tanner, Andrew Davis. Andrew’s father James ran a large inn on the southwest corner of Yonge and Finch, and had also opened a small tannery there in 1834. When Andrew was learning the trade he made frequent visits to the Pease tannery, inspired no doubt by the opportunity to spend some time with Elizabeth. For love to bloom in a tannery, it must have been true.
Elihu Pease died in 1854 and all of his property was auctioned off, right down to his tools, boots, and shoes. The effects of Andrew Davis’s tannery were disposed of in the same auction, but since the Davis family leather business continued well into the twentieth century, it would appear that this auction was part of a greater plan. The next two generations of the Davis family would both count an “Elihu” Davis among their numbers. And what of Elihu Pease’s farmhouse, built in 1834 when he and Katherine first moved to Yonge and Sheppard? It’s a complicated tale, but one worth telling.
The Pease family stayed on the farm until 1871. The 1861 census shows Elihu’s son, Edward, and his wife, Sarah, as well as six dependents (possibly including nieces, nephews and/or servants’ children) living on the farm. The census also lists the crops on the farm, including wheat, barley, peas, oats, potatoes, turnips, and carrots. In addition, the family was selling wool, cider, butter, beef, and pork. When the family moved to King Township in 1871, the farm was sold to the pioneer Harrison family of York Mills. In 1896, the Harrisons sold the farm, 110 acres, to Joseph Christie Bales, whose family had been farming in the area since 1819. One of the first things Joseph Bales did was to remodel the original Pease farmhouse. In 1921, the house was cut in half, with the front half being moved to 34 Avondale Avenue and the back half to 17 Bales Avenue. Joseph Christie Bales’s farmhouse (see 1955 photo in the next chapter), was built on the former Pease property. Descendant Clarence Bales was the last family member to live in this house.
The rear half of Elihu’s house that was moved to Bales Avenue was demolished some time ago. The front half that was relocated to Avondale Avenue in 1921 is fortunately still with us. In 2002, after a long struggle that involved the City of Toronto, the Ontario Municipal Board, the Avondale Ratepayers Association, the North York Historical Society, the developer, and the Badone family, who owned the house, it was decided to move the house around the corner to its current location on Harrison Garden Boulevard, a street named after another pioneer family.
Donalda and Louis Badone had been living in the Pease house for over forty years, and, though they had hoped to see it remain on Avondale Avenue, they were painfully aware that they were not going to get their wish. When the developer made it clear that demolition or relocation were the only options, a deal was struck whereby the developer was awarded an incentive density[2] that allowed him to generate the funds required to move the house around the corner and restore it to a semblance of the way it was in the late 1800s.
And there it sits on its little patch of grass, with a row of pine trees to keep it company, surrounded by high-rise condominiums. The outside has been restored as promised, with the original clapboard now painted the same shade of cream that was discovered under the brick facing, which had been added when the house was divided and moved in 1921. The inside of the house didn’t fare so well. Last year it was turned into sales offices for the condominiums.
{Chapter Four}
The Bales Family Farms
Of all the pioneer families in North York, none was more politically active than the Bales family. By the fourth generation, family members had held the offices of school trustee, councillor, deputy reeve, and reeve; as well as Ontario MPP and provincial cabinet minister. It all began when John Bales of Cumberland and his wife, Elizabeth Scott, originally from Yorkshire, decided to leave England for the New World in 1819.
Shortly after their arrival in what became the Township of North York, John and Elizabeth purchased the western sixty acres of Lot 15-1W. Their farm occupied the southeast corner of present-day Bathurst and Sheppard. The eastern border of the farm was the massive valley of the West Don River. Their neighbours on the lot were John Sheppard, who owned the northeastern section, which reached all the way over to Yonge Street, and Andrew McGlashan, who owned the southeast corner of the lot, between Yonge Street and the river.
The house that the Bales’ built on their farm in 1822 still stands today, and a good thing too, for the house is apparently one of only a few of its kind to ever be built in pioneer Ontario. The one-and-a-half-storey house is built of logs and covered in rough-cast concrete — a combination of mortar and small pebbles. The symmetrical plan and elevation of the house echo the style of the rural English cottages of the Bales’s youth, and although this style and construction method are rare in Ontario, similar houses are quite common in New York State. A kitchen wing was added to the house sometime before 1850 to accommodate a growing family that would eventually include ten children. It goes without saying that the house was well built since it has already survived for nearly 190 years. The house still sits on its original site, which is now part of the north end of Earl Bales Park, not too far south of Sheppard Avenue. In 1833, John expanded the farm to 160 acres when he purchased one hundred acres of Lot 14-1W, directly to the south, the lot that had originally been granted to potter Thomas Humberstone in 1812.
In 1881, the farm was sold to the Grand Trunk Transportation Company, although no rail lines were ever laid anywhere near the farm. In fact, this part of Bathurst Street was long considered to be ill-suited to any type of travel owing to the extreme width and depth of the river valley.
John Bales’s house, the first farmhouse that the family built in Upper Canada. Ironically, the only one of their homes still standing, is shown here in Earl Bales Park on February 19, 2010.
Photo by Scott Kennedy
Maps from 1892 to 1910 show a stable period of ownership for the farms on the two lots, with George McCormack farming the northeast ninety acres of Lot 15-1W, which was formerly owned by John Sheppard, and the Shedden Company owning the Bales’s 160 acres at Bathurst and Sheppard. The Shedden Company, also spelled “Sheddon” on some documents, was formed in 1887 to operate flour mills in the area. As well as milling on the former Bales farm, the company also operated another mill a mile or so downriver in Hogg’s Hollow until 1897.
The farms would exist until the 1950s when the acreage to the east of the river valley was subdivided for houses, and the Bales farm, to the west of the valley, became the York Downs Golf Club. The club continued as a part of the community, preserving a tremendous amount of green space until 1968, when the land was sold to the City of Toronto and the club moved to a new facility near the corner of Kennedy Road and Sixteenth Avenue in Markham. The former golf course was then transformed into the current Earl Bales Park and Earl Bales Ski and Snowboard Centre — the steep hills are still in use and were just upgraded with a million-dollar-plus ski lift, paid for by the City of Toronto. Remnants of the golf course’s landscaping are still
