Doug’s family owned the farm that was located on the south east corner of Jane and Finch. He lived on the farm from 1927 to 1951 at which time his family sold the farm and moved to Harriston, Ontario. As of February, 2011, Doug continues to live in Harriston, Ontario.
How was it that your family ended up living in Jane and Finch?
My dad worked in the creamery in Maple and he was born at Edgeley and I guess they wanted to farm and that was the farm that they picked out to farm on. Edgeley was on the corner of Jane and # 7 Highway. He was raised there and he got married and worked in the creamery in Maple for 3 or 4 years and when they decided, my mother’s dad died, so they had the house in Maple and they sold it and bought the farm on Jane and Finch. Our farm was on the south east corner and right down to the Black Creek. Now it’s all houses, apartments and stores. We had a dairy herd. We had the farm until my father sold it in 1951 to the Toronto General Burying Grounds. They couldn’t get any more land around it so they sold it again…now I don’t know where it went from there - likely sold it to the developers.
What was the community like when you were growing up?
I’d say it was a quiet community, maybe. The farm south of us, the Black Creek ran through the back corner of our farm and the neighbours had a dam in back and on the Black Creek and we used to go swimming in the summer and in the wintertime, we played hockey on it all winter. The river was on the farm south of us. We had a school on the north east corner of Finch and Keele, now a service station, there called Elia School. There was 2 acres there so we had a big ball diamond and we always had a ball team every summer. We had a good ball team. We played a lot of ball. We played with teams from Schomberg and Richmond Hill. There was always a bunch of fellas and girls around. I don’t think that any of them smoked or drank. We played ball and hockey for fun. We had a young people’s group at the church and we would go roller skating a couple times a year at Strathcona Roller Rink and sometimes early in the season, we would go skating at the Icelandia Rink. We made our own fun. We went to Elia United Church, located on Finch (near Dufferin).
When I was a teenager, there were dances around the country. We belonged to the Junior Farmers and it was at Velore (Weston Road and north of Hwy 7) and Junior Farmers were involved with a lot of things to. I left school when I was 13. We had 4 horses and we worked the land with 4 horses. We didn’t get a tractor until 1945. Times were pretty tough in the 30’s. We didn’t have a car. After I stayed home, and finally talked my dad into buying a tractor and then we rented some more land to the east of us, east of the Black Creek and things picked up pretty quick after that. The war was on and things were pretty good, prices were better and we had more to sell so we got the mortgage paid off and in 1947, we finally had enough money to buy a new car. I think all the neighbours had cars, but dad lost his cattle in 1932 with TB so that set him back quite a bit. I guess if he hadn’t had a good fellow that held the mortgage, he would have lost the farm too. He went to him one year and said I have enough money to pay you or the taxes and he told him to pay the taxes. We finally got over that hump.
A lot of the social life centered around the church and school. In the winter the Young People’s group would put on a three-act play. One was “Charlie’s Aunt”. We would practice for a couple of months, and then put on the play for the people in the community to enjoy.
Every community sponsored a 4H Club. There would be Calf Clubs where a child between 12 and 21 would get a calf in April and look after it all summer. He’d train it to lead and show. In the fall, we would have an Achievement Day at Woodbridge Fair where we would show our calf to see who had the best calf and the best trained calf. This was held on Thanksgiving weekend.
We also had Grain Clubs. We would sow an acre of either oats or barley, look after it, and then show a sample of the grain at the fair. At the conclusion of the 4H year, the Kiwanis Club of Toronto would provide lunch at the Royal York Hotel for the 4H members at York County. After lunch we were given a ticket to see a show at Loew’s Theatre.
How did the Depression affect the community?
The same as every community probably, you had to make your own and didn’t have much money. I got a notice to go to the war when I was 17, but the war was just about over and they weren’t calling any more up.
How were your parents involved?
The farmers had a Farmers Club and they used to have meetings once a month and they would buy a car load of coal and sell it off to the members, a car load of grain, things like that. Most of the activities were involved around the church at that time.
What was your school like?
We had a one-classroom school with 8 grades and about 40 kids, most of the time and one teacher. I know my sister, when she went to high school; she had to walk about a mile at six in the morning to get a ride with a fellow that worked in Weston to go to high school. The high school was in Weston.
Finch Avenue was still a dirt road when we left the community. Sheppard and Steeles were also dirt roads at that time.
What issues did farming families face back then?
We always had a ball team and we played ball all summer, we’d go to the ball diamond three or four times a week. Saturday, we would clean off the snow off the river and on Sunday we’d play hockey. The closest store was in Weston.
We had Sunday school picnics, they had a strawberry supper and a fall supper in the fall; it was all part of the church.
The one politician I remember is Sir William Mulock [federal politician] and he used to have a picnic in the summer for his constituents.
There’s an old log barn on the North West corner of Jane and Steeles by Pioneer Village. I used to help thrash in that barn. We used to put the grain in the barn at that time and then they would bring the thrash machine around and they’d have a gang in10 to 12 men and the neighbours go together to have a thrashing bee.
The Stong Farm was on Jane and Steeles, south east corner, right where Pioneer Village is. There were a lot of Stongs around the area. Other names were Kaisers (before my time), Sniders, Jacksons, and Whitakers in our area. Thompsons, Burdikins, Peelers. The hospital is on the Peeler’s farm.
Where did people originate from?
Most people were of European descent here for generations. Most people were here long before we were. My grandfather farmed on a farm just south of Edgeley off Jane, about a mile south of #7 Hwy. My mother was raised on the corner of the 3rd concession and Maple Side Rd. where they buried all the garbage up there in Maple. They call it Major MacKenzie Drive and Dufferin on the North West corner of that where my mother was raised. They took all kinds of gravel and sand out of there and they filled it up with garbage. My great grandfather came over from England and couldn’t read or write so they lost all track of them. They were always dairy farmers, pure-bred Holsteins. Most families originated from England and Scotland.
What are some of your fondest memories?
I guess the time we had championship ball teams. After we got out of school, we got into more competitive ball, playing against Richmond Hill, Schomburg, Maple, and Bolton. We had cars to get to the games. Elia [Jane-Finch] won a lot of games. My brother-in-law was a good pitcher and he used to pitch in Toronto at one time. He was raised at Dufferin, just north of Finch, and there were 7 boys in that family. They were all good ball players. On the corner where the school was, there was the Jackson family and they had 7 boys in that one, I guess.
We called the area Elia, not Jane Finch at that time. There was a store on the corner of # 7 and Jane and a gas station and that’s what they called Edgeley that was the centre of Edgeley at that time. There were all farms on the four corners of Jane and Finch….four different farms. There was ours, Peeler’s, Burdikin’s and Thompson’s was across from ours. Our farm was 80 acres the others were all 100 acres. They were small to today’s comparison. When my dad sold the farm, we moved to Harriston; we all went together. I wasn’t married then. My sister was up there and there were some farms that appealed to us, I guess. I had two brothers too, and we were looking to expand. That way, we would each have some land to farm. I married my hockey coach’s daughter. She was raised in Port Credit and her dad moved to this area. I was in my 20’s when I moved to Harriston. I must have been happy to move because Dad talked about selling the farm, so one day I made a sign and put it out and this fellow came along and bought it. My dad wanted to sell the farm because there was three boys and we had 80 acres and it wasn’t enough land really. My youngest brother was still going to public school when we left. We bought 200 acres up here. We got enough from the 80 acres to buy 200 in Harriston. We ended up, after I got married and we started up on our own, we ended up with 245 acres at one time, ourselves. I became a farmer in Harriston.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Pioneer Village used to be a farm like the others and then they moved buildings on to the land, I think. I think that the old store from Edgeley is on Pioneer Village. It was Stongs farm.
I still call the area Elia. I’d like to get back down there to see the old creek but I think that the bridge got wiped out with Hurricane Hazel. It’s about a quarter of a mile off Finch or so. We used to have our school picnics down there and our church picnics down there too.
Our neighbours, the Sniders had maple sugar bushes. As kids we used to tap a few trees and boil it on the stove and one year we had too much steam and took the wall paper off the house! Mother wasn’t very happy. We didn’t get hydro until 1945. The first thing I built was an out-house and my father said it would never stand up but it was still there when we left. I also put all the cupboards in the house for my mother and when we moved, I built all the cupboards in our house. We built 2 new houses on the farm. I still do a bit of carpentry work, that’s my hobby. We have 20 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren.
I can remember in 1947, there was a big snowstorm in March and the roads were all blocked and we had to get a bulldozer in to clear the snow. The road guy was riding on the back of the bulldozer on the corner of Finch and Keele and he fell off and the fellow never noticed and he backed right over top of him. We shipped milk to Toronto and sometimes in the wintertime, we’d have to put it on sleigh and take it out to Dufferin Street to get it to the truck. That’s when they shipped milk in cans. Dufferin was the only paved road and it was always open. When trucks couldn’t get through the snow, you put it on the sleigh with a team of horses and a way we’d go to Dufferin Street. We’d be lucky and dad would hook up the team of horses and come and pick us up from school if it was a bad, cold day.
After I was out of school two or three years, we talked them into letting us put the seats on skids. The seats were always bolted to the floor. We could put them on skids and we could slide them over against the wall and have a dance in the school. We had a record player and put on some music, some square dances…like I said, we made our own fun.