later. His sons, George, Matthew, and Edward took over. Though the brothers would continue to farm, they would also become increasingly adept at finding new ways to build on their inheritance. In 1928, they opened an airfield behind the barn on Yonge Street. They also moved another barn next door to the Yonge Street barn and converted it into a home where George and Matthew lived. In 1936, they turned this structure into the Algonquin Tavern, which they operated for sixteen years before selling it in 1952.
George Elliot was also active in local politics. He was elected deputy-reeve of North York from 1929–30 and as reeve from 1931–33. He struggled through the early years of the Depression, trying to help the needy, though his hands were largely tied by the extensive international scope of the circumstances.
George had previously served in the First World War. Several years after his return he bought two of the downtown hotels that had once belonged to his father and continued to operate them until the 1940s. He was also a well-known horse breeder and rider who won many trophies in addition to judging horse shows in Canada and the United States between 1922 and 1962, the year he established a two-hundred-acre farm in Markham.
In 1929, the brothers opened the Willowdale Golf Course, which extended east from Yonge Street to the Newtonbrook Creek ravine. An old farmhouse was turned into a luxurious clubhouse with the addition of two new wings. The clubhouse featured separate mens’ and ladies’ lounges, as well as a grand dining room and elaborate landscaping. Still, the brothers weren’t satisfied, so they hired Stanley Thompson, Canada’s pre-eminent golf-course architect, to turn their course into something special. When it opened in 1931 as the rechristened Willowdale Golf Club, the 165-acre layout was recognized as the first course in the province to conform to the regulations of the newly-formed Ontario Golf Association. George and Matthew would continue to operate the Willowdale Golf Club for the next twenty-five years. George died at his farm in Markham in 1971.
Meanwhile, the brothers continued to find new ways to improve the cash crop from their father’s farm. In 1932, they sold thirty-two acres to Ontario Hydro for the power lines, which can still be seen marching across the property today. In 1934, they sold twenty-five acres on the north side of the farm to the Sisters of St. John for a convalescent hospital that opened in 1937 and continues to serve the community as a state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility to this day.
The hospital can trace its roots all the way back to 1884 and the founding of the Anglican Sisterhood of St. John the Divine — the first all-Canadian order in the country. The very next year, the sisters opened a hospital in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to tend to the victims of the bloody Riel Rebellion. After the rebellion was put down later that year, they returned to Toronto and opened a women’s hospital on Major Street, near College and Spadina. This hospital operated until the 1930s, when the sisters were convinced by Vincent Massey, soon to be Canada’s first native-born governor-general, and the highly regarded hospital consultant, Dr. Harvey Agnew, to open a convalescent hospital. They were assisted in their efforts by numerous fundraising events and a generous legacy.
The sisterhood vacated their downtown hospital, which would then operate as Doctors’ Hospital until the end of the century, and moved to the new St. John’s Convalescent Hospital on the twenty-five acres on Cummer Avenue that they had purchased from the Elliots for $18,000. There was still work to be done however, and more years and fundraisers would pass before the new hospital was fully furnished and equipped. It stands there to this day, still serving the community with a slightly updated name.
The Elliots were good neighbours and would often take their horses and sleighs over to the hospital to take the patients of St. John’s out for sleigh rides in the wintertime. The remaining Elliot land was leased to the Limberlost Riding Academy and later to the operators of the Simpson Auction Barn.
The Willowdale Golf Club was sold to developers in 1958 to become the Newtonbrook subdivision. The Algonquin Tavern would continue to quench thirsts until it too was demolished in 1986, taking with it the last trace of John Elliot’s farm. People can still walk the open portion of the hydro right-of-way, however, from Willowdale Avenue all the way over to Bayview, and, in so doing, gain a new appreciation for the farmers who once worked this beautiful land.
{Chapter Ten}
Mazo de la Roche, Brébeuf, and the Zoroastrians
Research into the history of this farm revealed an amazing depth of layer upon layer of history. From Crown lands granted before the War of 1812 to Mayor Mel Lastman in the swingin’ seventies, the stories unravelled with such unpretentious ease that it was almost like watching a television program. This lot, Lot 25-1E, must have been breathtaking when it was granted to Richard Lawrence in 1808. It’s a long way from the southeast corner of Yonge and Steeles, east to Willowdale Avenue and all the way down the big hill to the valley of the East Don River at Bayview Avenue. Still an impressive sight today, this piece of land would have been even more impressive when Richard first gazed upon it in its original state.
Land records indicate just what a daunting task it was to clear and farm this land, as they tell us that seven years after being granted the property, Richard sold the east half to Alexander Gray, who had previously owned part of the Montgomery/Elliot farm four lots to the south. In 1819, Richard sold the west half of Lot 25-1E to a John D. Baldwin. The lot would never be reunited under one owner again, although a couple of families would demonstrate their loyalty to the place by farming their separate halves for generations.
James Robinson set the longest stretch of family involvement when he bought Alexander Gray’s farm in 1823. The Robinsons were still farming there over 130 years later. George Crookshank, whose story is told more completely in the chapter on Lot 24-1E, bought John Baldwin’s farm on the west half of the lot in 1837. Although records indicate that this farm was owned by Julia Lambert in 1860, after George Crookshank’s death (and sold to Stephen Heward in 1868 and farmed by Stephen’s son in 1892), maps from 1910 show the farm in possession of the “Cruikshank” Estate. (George Crookshank married Sarah Lambert in 1821. Their only daughter, Catherine, married into the Heward family).
Other records from Thornhill and North York confirm the name change from Crookshank to Cruikshank. The same 1910 maps show a P.W. Burton farming on the east half of Lot 25-1E on the Bayview-end of the property.
In the early 1930s, a portion of the Burton farm on the southwest corner of Bayview and Steeles was sold to a Mrs. Lands from Hamilton who, in 1933, built a house there, which she used as a summer retreat. Consider that for a minute — a woman from Hamilton coming to North York for her summer vacation! That says something about just how bucolic North York really was, not all that long ago. Mrs. Land’s country idyll didn’t last long, however, and, in 1939, she sold the property to Mazo de la Roche, one of the most successful authors in Canadian history, and also a woman of considerable mystery. Even her name was a fabrication.
Mazo Roche was born in Newmarket on January 15, 1879. Her father owned a general store in town, but, despite his best efforts, the store failed when little Mazo was only six. The family then moved to Toronto where Mr. Roche never seemed to find any employment that lasted for more than a year or two. In 1910, the family moved to Bronte, near Oakville, where Mazo, now a spinster past her thirtieth birthday, would find the inspiration she needed to forge a new life for herself. She had already realized some moderate success as a writer of short stories and now, inspired by a nearby house called Benares, she began to formulate her image of a fictitious family she called the Whiteoaks of Jalna.
When Mazo Roche began to seriously consider a career as a writer, she changed her name to Mazo de la Roche. She now claimed to be descended from French aristocracy, with a mysterious drop of Irish blood. By 1927, she had written several reasonably successful novels and moved to a flat at 86 Yorkville Avenue in Toronto, which she shared with her cousin Caroline Clement.
Caroline had been taken in by Mazo’s
