A History of the Toronto Public Library in Four Buildings

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1. Toronto Central Library, 1920. The reading room was the heart of the library until it was renovated in 1930 to create a circulating library. Courtesy of Toronto Public Library.

Emily Macrae

As public buildings closed their doors in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, public libraries across Canada pivoted to strengthen connections with communities online, offering virtual story times and lending out wi-fi hotspots in addition to adapting ongoing work ranging from providing reading recommendations to supporting Indigenous language revitalization.

Toronto Public Library was no exception. In April, the library partnered with local foodbanks to distribute food from nine branches and, in June, curbside book pickup was introduced across the city. Today, the Toronto Public Library is the busiest urban library system in the world with 100 branches and nearly one million cardholders.

Yet when the Toronto Public Library was established in 1884 it had no home of its own. Two years previous, provincial legislation enabled municipalities to collect a levy in support of free public libraries. Although the Toronto Public Library opened in a former Mechanics’ Institute building downtown and soon expanded to communities including Parkdale, Islington and Highland Creek, for its first two decades the library lacked dedicated space and instead rented facilities.

Toronto’s Central Library

It was not until 1903 that a grant from the Carnegie Foundation enabled the construction of a central library and three branches. The Carnegie Foundation distributed the fortune of industrialist Andrew Carnegie to build libraries and supported the construction of more than 2,500 around the world and 125 in Canada. Of these, 111 Carnegie libraries were built in Ontario with ten in Toronto. There were three conditions for receiving a Carnegie grant: the community had to provide land, cover operating costs once the library was built and offer services for free. Continue reading →

Miss Canadian History: An Archive Story

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Miss Canadian History and Friends. Norman James/Toronto Star, TPL Baldwin Collection, tspa_0055574f.

Donald Wright

Archive stories are stories about, well, archives, the things that we find in them, and the things that we know we will never find. They are also invitations to reflect on how and why archival evidence – from a routinely-generated source to a single photograph – was created and what it can and can’t tell us about the past.

This archive story begins with a text: “Look at what Erin Millions found.” A post-doctoral fellow at the University of Winnipeg, Erin had spent the evening preparing a lecture on Indigenous women’s activism. Searching for images of Kahn-Tineta Horn, an Indigenous rights activist from Kahnawà:ke, Quebec, she discovered what she described as an “amazing” photograph in the Toronto Public Library labeled “Kahn-Tineta Horn and Professors.” A few minutes later, she tweeted it. Texting me a screen shot of Erin’s tweet, Adele Perry added, “So much to say here.”

Indeed, there is, making this photograph a story about race, gender, Indigeneity, and the writing of Canadian history. Continue reading →

The Museum Sector is in Crisis

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by Armando Perla

Soon after the killing of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, museums joined institutions around the world making public statements of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Most of the statements from museums were not backed up by a track record of anti-racist work; many were, in fact, covering up a culture of human rights abuses and discrimination that has plagued these institutions for far too long. Current and former museum employees, artists, and communities called out  institutions for creating an environment where racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and other forms of oppression did harm.

Thiané Diop during an interview with CBC Manitoba in front of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on 11 June 2020. Diop started the social media campaign #CMHRStopLying after some people started to share their experiences of anti-Black racism with the museum anonymously on Instagram. The campaign prompted the CMHR to acknowledge some abuses, to launch an independent investigation and for the CEO to step down. Photo credit Julie White

In Canada, several organizations have been exposed for their abuses and lack of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) representation: the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), the Art Gallery of Mississauga (AGM), the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), Contemporary Calgary (CC), the Royal Alberta Museum (RAM), the Gardiner Museum (GM), and Lakeshore Arts (LSA).

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History Slam Episode 159: Ethical Hacking

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By Sean Graham

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Alana Maurushat about her new book Ethical Hacking. We talk about her background in cyber-security, the grey areas of hacking, and how protesters can protect themselves. We also discuss the ethics of hacking, how outcomes influence perceptions of hacking, and the resources companies put into cyber-security.

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Building a white Canada: gender, sexuality, race, and medicine

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Source: The Way to Her House, George Metcalf Archival Collection , Canadian War Museum, 19760148-058. This booklet, produced by the YMCA, advised soldiers on issues of sex and morality.

By Allison Lynn Bennett

Sexual control is inherent to empire. Colonial authorities and doctors understood sexuality as key to maintaining white superiority. Reproduction and health were the focus of eugenic measures that played on gender, sexual, and racial stereotypes. As a settler colony, Canada imagined itself as “British”, or “white”, and therefore regulated the sexual lives and behaviour of both white and non-white subjects, especially women. Here, I explain how imperial desire for a white Canada centred on gender, sexuality, and race, was largely directed towards women through morality and health policies in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Prostitution and the spread of venereal disease (VD), primarily syphilis and gonorrhoea, were major social problems gripping the British Empire in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The British military—who embodied the cause of empire—especially suffered from high rates of VD as troops were known to access prostitutes in garrison and port towns. Britain responded with the first Contagious Diseases (CD) Act in 1864 and subsequent amendments to include all of Britain. The CD Acts not only legalised prostitution to benefit servicemen and sailors but instituted a double standard by which women were blamed as the vectors of VD. In Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, Philippa Levine states that from the 1850s to 1880s, similar CD legislation was enacted throughout the Empire to limit the spread of VD and its negative impact on military efficiency within the colonies; Canada was not exempt.[1]

In 1865, two years before confederation, the Province of Canada issued the The Contagious Diseases Prevention Act of 1885 to limit the spread of VD within naval and military bases in port and garrison towns such as Montreal, Toronto, and Kingston. Continue reading →

Lay-offs at the Sulpician Archives – An Open Letter

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The following letter was published in Le Devoir on Saturday. Coordinated by the Institute d’Histoire de l’Amérique Française, and signed by nearly 700 historians (698 at last count), the letter responds to the dismissal of the team caring for the Sulpician’s historic collections. It is addressed to Quebec’s Minister of Culture and Communication, Nathalie Roy. The Sulpician archives holds about 1 km of records related to the religious organization’s work in and around Montreal, dating as far back as the 1650s. If you would like to add your name to the letter, you can sign it on our francophone partner site: Histoire Engagée.

A book plate from the Sulpician library collection (Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Minister,

As you know, in the August 19th edition of Le Devoir, Jean-François Nadeau announced that the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice in Montreal had dismissed their staff responsible for the preservation and development of the society’s collections, library and archives.

We are disappointed and concerned by this deplorable news. Moreover, we wonder how the Sulpicians plan to preserve, and make accessible, their archives and collections without qualified personnel to care for them? What do the Sulpicians and their managers intend to do with them? Faced with these worrisome questions, the community of historians, archivists, museum and literary professionals have come together to collectively signify the value of this institution and its collections. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 158: White Appropriations of Black Masculinities in the Civil Rights Era

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By Sean Graham

The years following the Second World War saw major changes to American society, from the rise of suburbs to powerful social movements to shifting international priorities. Within that change, popular culture took on a new significance in American life as television spread across the country and radio stations increasingly shifted to music-only formats. With that expansion, there were opportunities for more Americans to be represented within the culture. At the same time, however, there were also more opportunities for the appropriation or misrepresentation of some Americans.

In her new book He Thinks He’s Down: White Appropriations of Black Masculinities in the Civil Rights Era Katharine Bausch of Carleton University examines how black men were represented within popular culture. Using case studies of the literature of Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac, fashion articles during the early years of Playboy, and Blaxploitation films, Bausch looks at how white male artists used ideas of black masculinity in their efforts to understand what it meant to be an American man.

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Professor Bausch about the book. We talk about Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac’s writing, Playboy‘s fashion pages, and blaxploitation films. We also discuss the historical roots of appropriation, the contemporary responses to these cultural outlets, and the lasting legacy within popular culture.

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The Canadian Mosaic, Archival Silences, and an Indigenous Presence in Banff

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[John Murray Gibbon – Head of C.P.R. publicity], Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Jean A. Hembroff McDonald fonds (V797/I/PA-29).

Daniel R. Meister

Given that Canada is a settler colonial society, it is unsurprising that the lasting metaphor used to describe sociological diversity in the country – that of a mosaic – was popularized by a settler and child of empire: John Murray Gibbon (1875-1952). Gibbon was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to parents of Scottish descent. Prior to moving to Canada, he was educated in Scotland and England, lived in London, and spent some time in Algeria recovering from scrofula. Working as a Publicist for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Gibbon traveled extensively throughout North America. From his first visits to the region, Gibbon felt that something unique was happening on the Canadian prairies, which he described as “Europe transplanted.” In the late 1930s he began using the term “mosaic” to describe the pattern that he saw there. The title first appeared in a radio series he created for the CBC (“Canadian Mosaic: Songs of Many Races”), which he then expanded into a book entitled Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation (1938).

Gibbon’s famous mosaic was shaped by his colonial gaze: it not only excluded all Canadians of non-European descent but also excluded Indigenous Peoples. In his words, “The Canadian race of the future is being superimposed on the original native Indian races and is being made up of over thirty European racial groups…” But he had long been guided on his trail rides by local Nakoda guides, and had even been made an honorary chief in 1944, with the title “Man-of-Many-Sides.” So what was the nature of Gibbon’s relationship with Nakoda peoples? Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 157: Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle

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By Sean Graham

An image of a grain elevator from Kyler Zeleny’s Crown Ditch & the Prairie Castle.

Full disclosure: I love the Prairies. I used to live in Regina and always found the Prairies an extremely powerful space. As Saskatchewan license plates say, it is the “Land of the Living Skies” and, for as much as people love the vistas offered by mountains, I’ll take a day on the Prairies watching the sky. The communities that once dotted the landscape, however, are shrinking. Rural depopulation has been a trend across the region as young people increasing head to urban centres. This has been coupled with increases in corporate agriculture reducing the number of family-owned and operated farms, a change that influences not only the Prairie economy, but also local culture, national food chains, and international trade.

The result is that small Prairie communities are facing great uncertainty, which is the focus of Kyler Zeleny‘s new book Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle: Bedlam in the West. Over the course of four years, Zeleny traveled across the Prairies and documented the region through photography. The images included in the book powerfully represent a region and a population that is out of sight for a majority of Canadians. In a place where the landscape shapes the industry which shapes the people, the book offers a unique look into an understudied region in the midst of significant social, economic, and environmental changes.

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Kyler Zeleny about the book. We talk about the changing face of the Prairies, the economic challenges facing small-scale farmers, and the role of agritourism. We also talk about the urban/rural political divide, the majesty of the sky, and Reconciliation in the Prairies.

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Pity and Destiny: An Indigenous Student at the Manitoba School for the Deaf, 1904-1916

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Manitoba School for the Deaf Building (1891 – 1914), Winnipeg Public Library.

Sandy Barron

Historians of deaf communities and disability can no longer take for granted that our field cuts across those of race, class, and gender in consistent ways. Although in recent years scholarship and activism have begun to redraw and trouble these distinctions, deaf and disability histories in Canada have only begun to wrestle with the nation’s colonial past and present, and how disabled experiences and politics can be refracted and intensified by white supremacy. In reflecting upon this necessary “colonial turn,” I offer the story and commemorative reconstruction of an Indigenous student at the Manitoba School for the Deaf in the early twentieth-century.

Judy Wilson[1] spent her first six years in a Woods Cree community, living with her parents and brother on the land near what is now Carcross, Yukon Territory. In 1903, Judy and her brother were found by a prospector with her deceased parents. Sent to Whitehorse, the children were adopted by an Anglican priest who then relocated with his family to Vancouver in 1904. That year, Judy became the first of four identifiably Indigenous children to attend the Manitoba School for the Deaf (MSD) between 1889 and 1940. Like the others, she had been adopted and was on the path to “citizenship” and had lost status under the 1876 Indian Act as a member of a white settler family. Accompanied by a B.C. Department of Education official, she arrived in Winnipeg in late 1904.

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