Quotes From The Past About Toronto's High Park
Experience Toronto’s High Park through the words of its earliest visitors in this captivating collection of historical excerpts from over the years.
The following timeline of quotations captures High Park’s evolving story over the past two centuries. Experience the park through the voices of its earliest visitors in this compelling collection of historical excerpts that reveal how High Park has been seen, valued, and cherished across generations.
1793-1808: Describing High Park
"About 6 miles to the West of this [the Don River] lies the River Humber — navigable for two miles to the Falls — This River is about 100 yards across — and confined between abrupt and Steep Banks from two to three hundred feet high formed of Sand Hills covered with tall Pines, Hemlock and Cedar, the ridges of which are so narrow in many places as scarcely to admit a foot path — and these Hills, which assume a variety of whimsical Shapes, cover nearly two miles of the Country to the east of this River — The land gradually grows better — and increases in goodness of Soil and Timber until you come to the Town from which it slopes away to fine Meadows ..."
1873: High Park Area Described from Dundas Street West
"On turning westward into Dundas Street proper we were soon in the midst of a magnificent pine forest which remained long undisturbed. The whole width of the allowance for road was here for a number of miles completely cleared. The highway thus well defined was seen border on the right and left with a series of towering columns, the outermost ranges of an innumerable multitude of similar tall shafts set at various distances from each other and circumscribing the view in an irregular manner on both sides, all helping to bear up aloft a matted awning of deep green through which here and there glimpses of azure could be caught, looking bright and cheery. The yellow pine predominated, a tree remarkable for the straightness and tallness of its stems and for the height at which its branches begin. No fence on either hand intervened between the road and the forest; the rider at his pleasure could rein his horse aside at any point and take a canter in amongst the columns, the underwood being very slight. Everywhere at the proper season the ground was sprinkled with wild flowers — with the wild lupin and the wild columbine — and everywhere at all times the air was more or less fragrant with resinous exhalations ... a beaten track branched off westerly which soon led the equestrian into the midst of beautiful oak woods, the trees constituting it of no great magnitude, but as is often the case on sandy plains, of a gnarled, contorted aspect, each presenting a good study for the sketcher. This track also conducted to the Humber, descending to the valley of that stream where its waters, now become shallow but rapid, passed over sheets of shale. Here the surroundings of the bridleroad and foot-path were likewise picturesque, exhibiting rock plentifully amidst and beneath the foliage and herbage."
1880: Grenadier Pond Sold
"Grenadier Pond Sold. — Mr. Ellis has sold Grenadier Pond and the 27 acres of land to the east for the sum of $7,000, the purchasers being Chapman Bros., of this city. For four years the City Council had a standing offer of this desirable property on reasonable terms, and were frequently pressed by Mr. Ellis to buy it, as it would make a valuable adjunct to High Park; but each year they dilly-dallied and played with the matter, until now the opportunity of becoming its owner has gone — never perhaps to return unless at a greatly increased price. The citizens have only to blame their former representatives for the loss of this spot, which would have made High Park doubly attractive to what it is now."
1881: First Nations Trail Still Visible in High Park
"Another interesting relic of the past to be seen in this portion of the property is a broad grass-covered Indian trail, once a portion of the thoroughfare trod by the aborigines in their journeyings between Humber Bay and Lake Simcoe. It would, indeed, make one think that Canada is growing rapidly to look upon this narrow trail, and reflect that it once acted as great a part in the trade and commerce of what is now Ontario as almost any of our railroads do now."
Learn More: Indigenous History of High Park
1881: Describing High Park From Near Colborne Lodge
"On reaching the high ground one of the loveliest of pastoral landscapes meets the eye. Away to the northward lies a great undulating grassy plain, as if a giant mantle of emerald velvet had been carelessly dropped upon a high plateau, and in the distance the narrow paths of bright yellow sand look like threads of gold, while the whole scene is dotted over with shade trees standing singly or in clumps, and clothed in the richest and brightest of summer foliage. Leaving the roadway and riding to the crest of a great grassy ridge the prospect to the south and eastward is even more singularly attractive. Here the visitor sees spread out beneath him a woodland scene in which are deftly blended every shade of green from the pure pale tints of the opening leaves and the silver-tinted tremulous leaves of the poplar, through all the varying shades of the hard woods down to the blackish green of the spruces. To the eastward, away in the background, the vision is bounded where the sungilt spires of the city break the hazy horizon, while to the southward, as if between the tree-tops and the sky, hangs the sheen of the misty, rippless lake, like a broad belt of silver and blue.
1882: Murder of Andrew Young
"The inhabitants of Parkdale were yesterday morning horrified with the startling intelligence that a policeman had shot a youth dead. It appears that shortly before noon Andrew Young, son of Andrew N. Young, of Roncesvalles Avenue, accompanied by a younger brother, an adopted son of Mr. Shouell, of Parkdale, and a coloured man, named Hutchinson, were out boating on the Grenadier Pond ..."
The High Park community and its now‑aging forest ranger, John Howard, were shaken when his hardworking assistant, park constable, and caretaker, John Albert, was arrested for the fatal shooting of a young trespasser on Grenadier Pond.
The Ellis Property
The story starts with John Ellis Sr., a publisher whose property was on the west side of the Grenadier Pond. John Howard, the former property owner and now forest ranger for High Park, knew the Ellis’ well. Ellis Sr.’s home, Herne Hill, was designed by Howard and his son John Ellis Jr. was also a pupil of Howard’s at Upper Canada College.
The Incident
According to accounts from the day of the incident, upon seeing the boys approach the bank close to his house, Ellis Sr. ran down the slope from his home and shouted at the boys to get off the pond and his property. When the boys refused to leave, Ellis called out to the High Park Constable, John Albert, who lived across the pond in an old tenant farm cottage. Albert was hired by the City of Toronto as a civilian constable and was under strict orders from Howard to keep trespassers off his estate and out of the pond.
Albert ran down the east side of Grenadier Pond and caught up with one of the boys, Andrew Young, at the Ice House located at the southwest corner of the pond. In the heat of the moment, Albert seized the teenager by the scruff of his neck and shot him.
The Aftermath
Howard recorded in his diary that Albert’s wife later asked him to act as bondsman for her husband, but he refused — though he did note sending his housekeeper into town to purchase clothing for one of the Albert daughters. With Albert in custody, Howard advertised for a new caretaker. Thomas Wise soon moved into the farmhouse with his wife and two children, but Mrs. Albert refused to vacate the property.
Howard’s diary further mentions that Albert’s young son died at the “Boys Home (Sunnyside)” and that another family member, John Albert, wrote to request permission for the family to remain in the farmhouse. Mrs. Albert also asked Howard to sign a petition on their behalf, but he declined, stating that he would not place his signature on the same piece of paper where the signature of Ellis Sr. also appeared.
Despite whatever good qualities Albert may have had, his actions were more than the jurors and the public could accept. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to be executed by hanging for the murder of Andrew Young. However, this would later be commuted to a 20-year imprisonment. After the incident and the ordeal that followed, the Alberts lived out an impoverished life.
Source: Colborne Lodge
1883: Real Estate Ad Describing High Park’s Health Benefits
"This expanse of park and trees tempers the winds from off the lake, and protects persons living on this estate from the high winds, dampness and malaria, inseparable from a residence on the low lands directly on the Lake Shore. The soil is a sandy loam, with, in some cases, a clay subsoil, so that after the hardest rain the streets in a very short time are dry or surface water. The incline on the east and west extending to the lake gives a splendid natural drainage. If you wish to give your family the benefit arising from a residence in a high, dry and healthy location, on large lots with park and lake close at hand, and surrounded by first‑class buildings and good neighbours, do not delay securing several of these lots ... The general verdict of all competent visitors is that here is a second Parkdale, with this paramount advantage that the location is higher and dryer, with the park between it and the lake, rendering the situation less bleak and damp, and consequently more healthful."
1885: Indigenous Tombstone
The writer of the letter wrongly assumes Indigenous Peoples had no tools for stone-carving to create inscriptions on rocks and stone. On the contrary, they absolutely did have the capability to create petroglyphs. It is remarkable that such an inscription may have been found in High Park.
1889: Protecting High Park
From the Howards to early naturalists and scientists of the Canadian Institute and the many Torontonians who cherished the park, the protection of High Park’s natural beauty and opposition against its destruction has long been a shared cause for many.
1894: Stop The Vandalism
"Visitors to High Park are tearing up the ferns and wild flowers and carrying them away in great bunches to such an extent that, it is safe to say, a cartload is removed every Saturday. This is vandalism of a most reprehensible nature. The flowers and ferns will not live a day after being plucked, and more than that, they belong to a city park. People who go to look upon them have as much right to enjoy them as those who take nature’s beauties away. The authorities should stop the practice, if the people themselves have not shame enough to see the wrong they are doing."
1896: Saved High Park
"Some small boys with fire-crackers set fire to the grass near Howard Lake yesterday afternoon, and the strong wind which was blowing at the time caused the flames to spread rapidly. It was feared that the woods in the vicinity would be destroyed, but hard work on the part of those living in the vicinity prevented any serious damage."
1897: Army of Crows in High Park
"The crows are congregating by thousands in High Park for the winter. For the past week they have been assembling, large flocks arriving from every direction, until there are now said to be in the neighborhood of 5,000 of these coal black, noisy birds, using the park as a review ground and sleeping quarters. Every morning at daybreak the mighty army breaks up into four or five sections and goes upon a foraging expedition and just as regularly at four o’clock in the evening the army reunites. Then for an hour a deafening, screeching, public meeting is held, at which each and every member of the brigade endeavors to address the chair at once. Then away to roost."
1896: To Tramp Sandhills
By the late 1890s, the privately run Toronto Railway Company operated an electric streetcar line along Bloor Street, but it reached only as far west as Lansdowne Avenue. Beyond that point the landscape was marked by rolling sandhills at the edge of the city core. In 1915, the City‑owned Toronto Civic Railways opened its own west‑end Bloor line, running from Dundas Street West to Quebec Avenue. It wasn’t until the 1920s, after two new railway underpasses were constructed on Bloor Street, that the newly formed Toronto Transportation Commission connected the remaining gap between Lansdowne and Dundas West. The creation and expansion of the Bloor–Danforth subway line in the 1960s finally made the Bloor streetcar line obsolete.
1900: High Park From Indian Road
"... The picturesque old Indian Road winds by. A ravine, glorified now with shaded green foliage and masses of crimson, lies beyond. The scrubby, partly cleared land, with clumps of red-leaved huckleberry, scarlet sumach, glints of golden rod and the blue of stray harebells, stretches to the west. Over all is the sky — so much of it and such a sky, all unstained with the city’s smoke and dust. The wind blows fresh and clear. It is clean wind out there, unsoiled by the many human beings which consume the oxygen here. To the north is a scattered house or two and more woods and ravines …"
In 1923, before he became a novelist of great acclaim, Ernest Hemingway toiled among the ink-stained wretches of the old cliché at the Toronto Daily Star. On one assignment in the fall of that year, writing under the pseudonym Peter Jackson (a ruse, it’s said, to earn some extra cash), he wrote of the malady then attacking the fabled oaks of High Park, blaming not only fungus but the oil-laden air of the traffic-choked city – thus proving that in Toronto, the story never really changes. Only the name in the byline.
Read the Full Story: Hemingway feared for High Park’s great trees, Toronto Star (2008)
1934: Describing the Lakeshore End of High Park Near Sunnyside
"Surely you have not forgotten the toll-gate at Sunnyside that stood just west of Roncesvalles, on the south side just by the big oak tree? Every horse-drawn vehicle of the early days, the days of my boyhood in the 80’s and 90’s, coming into town from the Lake Shore Road or leaving town from the west via that old thoroughfare, was required to pay toll, and the gate was there to stop traffic till he did, though I cannot remember that this gate was ever actually closed. The toll-keeper’s cottage was close beside the gate. Cottage, oak tree, field, road, railway track, the very ground of the site, are gone now, being replaced by the Sunnyside Bridge over the railway track and the new railway grade, now one of the busiest highway intersections in Canada. A catch gate was also maintained further out on the Lake Shore, opposite the second entrance gate to High Park, the Howard Park stop for street cars to-day. This gate and a shelter hut for the gate-keeper stood under the shade of the gnarled old Balm of Gilead trees, the trees that, doubtless, Etienne Brule saw when he, first of white men, paddled down the Humber and out into Humber Bay, and which the City of Toronto, in its incorporated wisdom, permitted to be cut down when the boulevard was planned. They are replaced now with a spindley row of Lombardy poplars."
Special thanks to Joanne Doucette, local historian and naturalist, for sharing this fascinating collection of quotations about High Park’s early years.
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