Town of Leaside

Leaside became an incorporated municipality by Act of the Provincial Legislature on May 7, 1913. It was the now defunct Canadian Northern Railway Company (CNorR) that bought up close to 1000 acres, much of it from William Lea, eldest son of pioneer settler John Lea. The land was east of Bayview Avenue and south of Eglinton Avenue; it was to be a railway town much like the others the company built in Vancouver and Montreal.

The CNorR hired Frederick Gage Todd, a visionary landscape architect, to lay out the new town. He designed Leaside to reflect the ideas of the garden city movement, a U.K. concept that brought residences, industry, parks and agriculture harmoniously together.