storey-and-a-half house. The 3.5 percent interest rate was the only figure that would appear even remotely familiar to present-day residents. Property taxes, which had started out around $40.00 a year in 1946, had soared to $55.00 three years later. To put things in perspective though, it should be realized that this represents a 38 percent increase. Imagine the outcry if that kind of burden were imposed on today’s property owners? It should also be remembered that a salary of $50.00 a week would have landed you squarely in the middle class during the immediate post-war years.
The MacKenzies weren’t the only family in Risebrough to win an award. Their neighbours, the Yules and the Ives, also won in the category of Veterans Individual Small Holdings. The community itself was judged the best in its class, out of all 124 similar communities in Canada. The federal government had high hopes for this type of initiative. Milton Gregg, the federal minister in charge of veterans’ affairs said, when he announced the competition in 1948, that “The small holding way of life has great potential for stabilizing our economy. It will command the interest of town planners in countries other than Canada.”[3] Sadly, this noble little initiative was no match for the overwhelming influx of humanity that would wash over North York for the next three decades.
When the first vegetable gardens were planted in Risebrough, North York had less than forty thousand residents. Twenty-five years later there were more than half-a-million people occupying the same space. The lovely idea of a reasonable number of people sharing the land in such a way that they could grow some of their own food was sacrificed on the altar of unfettered growth. The promise of increased tax revenue, which always sets municipal politicians to salivating, may look good on paper, but it is never enough to cover the costs incurred by a massive population explosion. Where there was once a dream of self-sufficiency, there is now welfare and food banks. Where there was once one unarmed police officer, there now are thousands in bullet-proof vests. Where people once enjoyed a little fresh air and elbow room, today’s citizens are now forced to endure smog alerts, gridlock, and road rage. If Roy had known it would come to this, he might have left the Model T in the barn.
Risebrough Avenue still exists to mark the place where a hopeful little subdivision was swallowed by a ravenous city, the frontages now divided two or three times over to cram in as many houses as possible. Seneca College occupies the Risebroughs’ original farm at Finch and the Don Valley Parkway. The rest of their farms are now covered by houses, apartment buildings, and shopping centres. One Risebrough farmhouse still stands in Scarborough, on the east side of Victoria Park, halfway between Steeles and Finch. It currently houses a mosque, which almost certainly means that it will only stand until enough money is raised to build a proper mosque. All of the family’s other farmhouses are gone, except for one, and what a neat little story that is.
In 1980, the farmhouse that Robert Risebrough II had bought at the corner of Bathurst and Drewry was slated for demolition, since the area was being re-developed. The exact build date of the house remains undocumented, although it is known that it was built on a ten-acre parcel of Lot 23-1W that had been severed from the lot in 1847. That was the year that Drewry Avenue was opened up from Yonge Street to Bathurst Street after William Durie bought the south half of the lot and subdivided it into smaller lots that ranged from five to thirty acres. The Risborough house started out as a simple frame worker’s cottage that was possibly constructed by James Hale, who owned the ten-acre lot from 1851 to 1861, although any positive determination is purely speculative. It does seem clear, however, that “Drewry’” is a mutation of William Durie’s surname.
William Durie was a retired English army officer when he came to Upper Canada in 1836. The thoroughfare that would ultimately bear a modified version of his name was initially known as “Pope’s Lane,” because of the preponderance of Roman Catholics who built houses there. The Risebrough house came into the family by way of the Wood family who had purchased the house in 1872. Six years later the house was owned by William Woods, who was Robert Risebrough II’s father-in-law. Robert and family took the house over in 1891 and were probably the ones who added the second storey. The house would remain in the Risebrough family until the late 1970s, the final residents being Charles Risebrough and his wife, Janet (McCorkell) Risebrough. By the time Charles died, on August 19, 1978, the house was surrounded by new development and stood on the last undeveloped corner in the area.
One day in 1980, while the vacant farmhouse waited for the bulldozers, it caught the eye of Bob Holland, who was then the head of the Industrial Arts Department at nearby R.J. Lang Junior High School. Bob immediately saw a tremendous opportunity to save a part of our history and give his students some real-world experience at the same time. In a scene that is not likely to repeat itself today, Bob convinced the developer to allow his students to carefully dismantle the house so it could be rebuilt and preserved at another location. The developer agreed and the North York Board of Education offered up their outdoor education centre near Bolton as a site for the reconstruction. The R.J. Lang students carefully dismantled the house, numbering each piece of wood to facilitate re-assembly. The pieces were then moved to the outdoor education centre, but before they could be put back together, the North York Board of Education closed R.J. Lang Junior High at the end of the school year in 1982.
The project didn’t find its legs again until 1983, when Bob Holland took over the Industrial Arts Department of Windfields Junior High, built in 1970 on one of the last remnants of E.P. Taylor’s Winfields Farm, where Northern Dancer once frolicked near the corner of York Mills Road and Leslie Street. Twenty lucky Windfields students then took up where their counterparts at R.J. Lang left off and, under the supervision of Bob Holland, reconstructed the Risebrough farmhouse on its new site to serve as a teaching facility for those interested in learning about a vanquished way of life.
Mr. Holland deserves our thanks. Though not a work of literature or musical composition, this project must certainly be considered an opus.
{Chapter Six}
Barberry Place: The Thomas Clark Farm Lot
Thomas Clark built Barberry Place in 1855 to house his growing family, which would eventually include thirteen children. The prolific Mr. Clark had purchased his property in 1841, the two-hundred-acre Lot 15-2E on the south side of Sheppard Avenue, stretching from Bayview Avenue to Leslie Street. The relatively high purchase price of £900 and the late date tell us that the Clarks were not the first owners and that the property had been at least partially cleared by the time they took possession. The early ownership of the lot unfolded as follows:
1802 Crown grant to Joseph Provost
1804 Joseph Provost to Richard Graham
1832 Richard Graham to John Harp
1832 John Harp to Joseph Stiffens
1839 Joseph Stiffens to Robert Padgett
1841 Robert Padgett to Thomas Clark[1]
Thomas built his first log house as soon as he took possession of the land. His first wife died in 1844, after bearing seven children. Later, he would marry the apparently very brave Nancy Miller whose family farmed Lot 16-2E, directly to the north across Sheppard Avenue. Nancy would bear Thomas six more children. (Research showed that this Thomas Clark is also referred to as Thomas Clarke in several documents, although he is not to be confused with the Clarkes of Downsview.)
The family was intensely involved in the community’s religious life. Their first house, despite the seven children underfoot, had been the meeting place for the Wesleyan Methodists of Oriole, the hamlet at the corner of Leslie Street and Sheppard Avenue East. In 1853, the group would organize as “Clark’s Congregation.” They would hold Sunday services in the little log schoolhouse that had been built near today’s Leslie and Sheppard in 1826, and later in the brick schoolhouse that was built nearby on Thomas’s land in 1848. They continued to hold their meetings even when threatened with house- and barn-burnings by local
