The fix is in at local Repair Café By Josh Sherman
Volume 46 No. 17
November 14, 2017
THE TORONTO Chinese Mennonite Church was transformed into a makeshift workshop earlier this month as volunteers tinkered with tech, home appliances and more at the church’s first repair café. Repair Café Toronto, a local, roving incarnation of an international DIY initiative founded in Amsterdam in 2009, brings together volunteers who offer free repair services every month. Volunteers with the group set up a three-hour workshop at the church at 1038 Woodbine Ave. on Saturday, Nov. 7.
“[For] the people who like fixing things, it’s a lot of personal satisfaction, it’s a lot of fun,” said Fern Mosoff, co-founder of this city’s repair café. “The chase of the fix is fun, the collaboration—the community experience of fixing together—is fun … It really appeals to the fix-it crowd.” That community-centric approach appealed to the church, and it got connected with Repair Café Toronto when Sandy Yuen, one of its volunteers, stumbled upon an event taking place in Riverdale. Continued on Page 3
PHOTO: ANNA KILLEN
Lest we forget Hundreds gathered at the Kew Gardens cenotaph on Remembrance Day, Saturday, Nov. 11, to pay respect to Canada’s war veterans. The parade and wreath-laying ceremony included politicians, children, veterans, first responders, and re-enactors in period uniforms.
Discovering the lost golf course of East Toronto By Josh Sherman
ON A recent Sunday afternoon, Leslieville historian Joanne Doucette was casually wielding a putter on Glenn Morrow Mews. An incongruous accessory to be brandishing around the Beach Hill neighbourhood in 2017, the club would have been right at home on the greens more than 100 years ago. Maybe it is hard to imagine—especially as modern GO Trains rocket by regularly—but an 18-hole golf course once occupied a large swath of the east end until 1912. “This is the fourth, or the east, hole, and right next to it was the tee to the fifth hole,” Doucette pointed out to tour-goers at a scheduled stop near Kildonan Park during the
Your Home on the Greens: the Lost Golf Course of the East End tour led by the local historian on Oct. 19. Even though the Toronto Golf Club would have been surrounded by sloping rural land when it opened formally in 1876, its rolling greens were something of a unique sight. It was the first 18-hole course in Canada, and the second in North America, Scott Burk, who assisted in leading the Beach Hill Neighbourhood Association-sponsored tour, told the about 75 in attendance. “For what it’s worth, we’re trying to recapture the year 1898 in Toronto for you today,” he explained. World Golf Hall of Famer Charles B. Macdonald, who played here,
PHOTO: JOSH SHERMAN
Scott Burk and Joanne Doucette lead a tour about East Toronto’s lost golf course on Oct. 19. opened an 18-hole golf course in 1894, and the very next year the Toronto Golf Club became an 18-hole course as well, Burk said.
“Golfers loved this area because it was sandy soil, because it was undulated, because it had ravines for hazards—this was the perfect
place to play golf,” Burk continued. Doucette suggested farmers with properties nearby were less enthused with the links, which they perceived to be a “very silly” use of land. “They let their cows out onto the golf course whenever they could,” she said. “[The golfers] often ended up digging a golf ball out of a cow’s footprint—or worse.” The site was accessible by transit. A streetcar route ran into the East Toronto township, which was originally a separate municipality, and Kingston Road was a major thoroughfare. The Grand Trunk Railway ran alongside the first three holes. Continued on Page 2
Your non-profit community resource since 1972 www.beachmetro.com /BeachMetroNews
@beachmetronews
beachmetro
The Beach | Upper Beach | Beach Hill | Crescent Town | East Danforth | Birch Cliff | Cliffside | Gerrard India Bazaar