My Visit to the City of Toronto Archives

 

I recently headed to the City of Toronto Archives photo exhibit entitled Picturing Immigrants in the Ward: How Photography Shaped Ideas about Central and Eastern European Immigrants in Early 20^th-century Toronto. The exhibit is on until May 2013, and is free. Also, there is free parking at the archives!

 

I’ve wanted to visit the exhibit since the summer when it first opened, but only recently had the time. I was drawn to the exhibit by the poster’s title and picture. One of my grandfathers was born and raised in the Ward, and I have heard stories about it all my life. Further, the poster picture is of a Jew carrying chickens, which was my great-grandfathers business back then. I could not believe the coincidence; I had to see the photos.

 

 

The exhibit was in the entry gallery of the archives building. The exhibit aimed at showing the often conflicting images of Toronto’s 20^th-century Eastern European immigrants of “the Ward”. The Ward’s boundaries were College Street to the north, Queen Street to the south, Yonge Street to the east, and University Avenue to the west.

Map of the Ward

The Ward in the early 20^th-century was known by the upper and middle class residence of Toronto for its unsanitary conditions, which came to represent foreign-born people settling in the city. The beginning text of the exhibit deals with the efforts to clean the Ward. I enjoyed this part of the exhibit because the effects of urbanization and mass migration of immigrants to a city is not usually a theme in Canadian history classes from my experience, it is more a topic I have studied in British history classes. I enjoyed learning about the process of urban and social reform for my home city. According to the exhibit the first major effort for change came in July 1911, after Dr. Charles Hastings, Medical Health Officer, produced a report on the slum conditions in the City of Toronto. The report revealed that Toronto had many of the same conditions associated with the slums of the so-called “great cities” of Europe and America. These conditions included overcrowding, filthy yards and outdoor toilets. Dr. Hastings launched a campaign for public health reform.

 

One of the ethnicities the exhibit highlighted as being shown in various lights due to photo images were the Jews. The exhibit included images from the Ontario Jewish Archives that helped created a counterview to the negative images of the residence of the Ward living in squalor. This included images of respectably dressed young brides and grooms. Also, a newspaper article from the Yiddish newspaper Yidisher Zshurnal (The Hebrew Journal) that showed Leo, John, and Michael Tchernovsky on the day they played at Massey Hall.

 

 

The Tchernovsky Brother
Ontario Jewish Archives

Though the exhibit was small, I thought it did an excellent job showing how the medium of photography was influential in shaping Torontonian’s perspectives of immigrants. Further, it demonstrated that images and government reports only contain one component of a community’s history; such as representing common struggles and obstacles. However, these sources often can leave out individual moments of triumph, and the shared moments of celebration that are found in all cultures such as birth and marriage. I enjoyed the exhibit’s efforts to illuminate on the social history of Toronto.

 

 

 

 

Postcard at the archives from 1915