The stories of some of East Toronto’s former golf courses, including the Toronto Golf Club on land near Coxwell Avenue and Gerrard Street East, will be the topic of a presentation next week in the Beach by Joanne Doucette and Scott Burk. Photo: Beach Metro Community News file photo.
Authors and historians Joanne Doucette and Scott Burk will speak about Toronto’s lost golf courses during a presentation hosted by The Beach and East Toronto Historical Society next week.
The presentation is slated for Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 7 to 8:15 p.m. at the Beaches Sandbox, 2181 Queen St. E.
Doucette and Burk are the authors of the book Toronto’s Lost Golf Courses: How the Game of Golf Shaped a Region.
To provide some background on what next Wednesday’s presentation will include, Doucette sent the following information on East Toronto’s golf legacy to Beach Metro Community News earlier this week:
James Lamond Smith from Aberdeen, Scotland, the home of golf, arrived in Toronto from Fergus, Ontario, to work for the Bank of Upper Canada handling its real estate portfolio. When the bank failed, he and Benjamin Morton handled selling what was left of those assets. The close friends bought estates on the Heights in the Benlamond neighbourhood. “Ben” for Benjamin and “Lamond” for Smith’s first name.
The realtors, Morton and Smith, sold Toronto’s elite land for their summer homes, close to sandy beaches for picnics and swimming. The breezes up there not only blew away any stray mosquitoes from Ashbridge’s Bay, but provided natural air conditioning.
Crucially, at a time when tuberculosis was rampant and did not respected class or money, those spacious estates on high ground were believed to protect from disease. The first north-south roads, such as Beech Street, originally Beach Street, were paths to those Beaches.
But those doctors, lawyers and business executives also wanted to golf. What was then known as Scarborough Heights, the long hill up from Lake Ontario, was ideal for golf, offering lots of sand for bunkers and easy course construction, along with deep ravines and water hazards in the form of creeks like Ames and Small’s Creek.
By 1876, Lamond Smith and some of his other friends wanted to form a golf club and founded the Toronto Golf Club, the first Canadian golf club west of Montreal.
Location, Location, Location. They played on leased ground at Small’s Corners (Kingston Road and Queen Street East) behind the now-closed Murphy’s Law and used the Woodbine Tavern across the street where the doughnut shop is for their clubhouse.
Even though the land at that location was tiny and flat and not ideal for golf, 1876 was a great year to begin. The year before the Woodbine racetrack had opened across the street, providing a ready-made source of new golfers as well as more money for Lamond Smith’s ever deepening pockets. He and Morton and a few other investors in 1873 created a horse-drawn tramway to carry aggregates from their gravel pits on the Heights down to the city, providing much-needed building materials for a growing Toronto.
They found that they could make money carrying passengers to and from the Beach. When the Woodbine Racetrack opened, streetcars carried both racegoers and golfers.
Before long, housing developed and pushed out the golfers. They moved out and up to a new course at Fernhill, a property that would eventually stretch from Coxwell Avenue almost to Main Street. There in 1896 they built the Canada ‘s first 18-hole course. They even had their own tiny train depot, Lindenhurst Station, and when the steam engine had climbed the long hill from Toronto, the conductor would call out, “Golf, golf!”
In 1909 the City of Toronto annexed the area south of the Danforth between Greenwood Avenue and the Village of East Toronto, opening the area to more housing. The Toronto Golf Club soon decided to sell and moved to their current location on Etobicoke Creek in Mississauga.
Frederick Robins and Sir Henry Pellat, a genius in marketing, Pellatt named their new subdivision on the golf greens ‘Kelvin Park’, suggesting modernity and electricity.
In 1923 a housing boom started to fill the area with homes. But it was too late for Henry Pellatt. On Aug. 17, 1923, the Home Bank suspended operations. The misstatements on the financial reports and other deceptive practices added up to a disaster for depositors. The Bank over-valued its collateral which was mostly real estate, and, on this shaky basis, loaned money. Home Bank’s liabilities far exceeded its assets.
Sir Henry Pellatt was a broken man. His wife died, he lost his castle — Casa Loma, and he ended his days living with his former chauffeur in a small Etobicoke home. Robins emerged unscathed and went on to be appointed as a diplomat representing Canada abroad.
But the legacy of non-golfer Benjamin Morton and his friend Lamond Smith continues today in the Benlamond neighbourhood, some stately and historic homes, the long streets to the sandy beaches, a new neighbourhood from Coxwell to the old Town of East Toronto, and, of course, a golf club.
Admission to the Dec. 3 presentation is free and everyone is welcome to attend.
For more information about the event, please visit The Beach and East Toronto Historical Society’s website at http://www.tbeths.com/
