Swansea, Toronto
Encyclopedia
Swansea is a neighbourhood in the City of Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, bounded on the west by the Humber River, on the north by Bloor Street
Bloor Street
Bloor Street is a major east–west residential and commercial thoroughfare in Toronto, in the Canadian province of Ontario. Bloor Street runs from the Prince Edward Viaduct westward into Mississauga, where it ends at Central Parkway. East of the viaduct, Danforth Avenue continues along the same...

, on the east by High Park
High Park
High Park is a municipal park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It spans , and is a mixed recreational and natural park, with sporting facilities, cultural facilities, educational facilities, gardens, playgrounds and a zoo. One third of the park remains in a natural state, with a rare oak savannah ecology...

  and on the south by Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. In the Wyandot language, ontarío means...

. The neighbourhood was originally a separate municipality, the Village of Swansea, which was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1967.

Character

Swansea is primarily residential in nature, consisting of a mix of various housing types. Swansea's high-end homes are located either at the western edge of High Park
High Park
High Park is a municipal park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It spans , and is a mixed recreational and natural park, with sporting facilities, cultural facilities, educational facilities, gardens, playgrounds and a zoo. One third of the park remains in a natural state, with a rare oak savannah ecology...

 overlooking Grenadier Pond, or on Riverside Drive and the Brule Gardens enclave bordering the Humber river. Swansea also contains a large number of semi-detached
Semi-detached
Semi-detached housing consists of pairs of houses built side by side as units sharing a party wall and usually in such a way that each house's layout is a mirror image of its twin...

 houses and bungalows located mostly in the centre of the neighbourhood. The typical house of the area was built between 1905 and 1935.

The area of the former Swansea Works area is considerably newer, except for some of the original workers' homes. The Queensway was built in the 1950s through the Swansea Works lands. The area to the south was retained for industry and the area to the north was redeveloped with apartment buildings and townhome developments. The area of the actual factory site has been redeveloped since 2000 into townhomes and condominium apartments.

Swansea has several main streets. Along the northern boundary, Bloor Street is a four-lane arterial road with businesses lining both sides. Along the southern boundary, The Queensway is a four-lane arterial road with a streetcar right-of-way. The Queensway has primarily residences on both sides. North-south, Swansea has two major roads, South Kingsway and Windermere Avenue. Along the southern boundary is the Gardiner Expressway
Gardiner Expressway
The Frederick G. Gardiner Expressway, colloquially referred to as "the Gardiner", is a municipal expressway in the Canadian province of Ontario, connecting downtown Toronto with its western suburbs...

 which has an interchange with South Kingsway and the CNR railway lines. Further to the south, Lakeshore Boulevard runs east-west along the lakeshore.

The area is extremely hilly in nature. The waters of Grenadier Pond, Rennie Pond and the Humber River all are at or near the level of Lake Ontario. The majority of the lands of 'upper' Swansea are 30 to 40 feet higher than this, with steep hillsides along Grenadier Pond, Humber River and Rennie Pond.

Culture

The former Swansea Town Hall is now the Swansea Town Hall Community Centre which includes a small gym
Gym
The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, that mean a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men...

nasium, and a selection of meeting rooms available for a variety of functions
Meeting
In a meeting, two or more people come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal setting.- Definitions :An act or process of coming together as an assembly for a common purpose....

. It is also the home of the Swansea Memorial Public Library, the second smallest branch of the Toronto Public Library
Toronto Public Library
Toronto Public Library is a public library system based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest public library system in Canada and in 2008, had averaged a higher...

 system. This branch specializes in material for child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...

ren and seniors
Old age
Old age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle...

 and provides complete inter-library loan
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....

 services.

The annexation of Swansea into metropolitan Toronto was a contentious one, with many local residents opposed to the move. A common refrain before and during the annexation was that the area was (and still is) "not Toronto."

Demographics

Census tract
Census tract
A census tract, census area, or census district is a geographic region defined for the purpose of taking a census. Usually these coincide with the limits of cities, towns or other administrative areas and several tracts commonly exist within a county...

s 0050.01 and 0050.02 of the 2006 Canadian census cover Swansea. According to that census, the neighborhood has 11,133 residents, up 0.5% since the 2001 census. Average income is $58,681, well above the Toronto average. Like much of West Toronto, the largest ethnic minorities are Eastern European. The ten most common languages in the neighbourhood, after English, are:
  1. Polish - 3.0%
  2. Ukrainian - 2.6%
  3. Serbian - 2.3%
  4. Russian - 2.2%
  5. French - 0.9%
  6. Portuguese - 0.9%
  7. Spanish - 0.8%
  8. Bengali - 0.7%
  9. Croatian - 0.7%
  10. Korean - 0.6%

Parks

Rennie Park, located on the east side of Rennie Terrace, south of Morningside Avenue, has four tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

 courts, an artificial ice rink
Ice rink
An ice rink is a frozen body of water and/or hardened chemicals where people can skate or play winter sports. Besides recreational ice skating, some of its uses include ice hockey, figure skating and curling as well as exhibitions, contests and ice shows...

, and a wading pool. Swansea Recreational Centre, a part of Swansea Public School, has a gym and a swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...

. High Park features a full day of recreational activities including fishing
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

, theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 performances, train
Train
A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track to transport cargo or passengers from one place to another place. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway.Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate...

 rides, an animal zoo
Zoo
A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....

, historical exhibit
Exhibit
Exhibit may refer to:*Exhibit , evidence in physical form brought before the court.*Demonstrative evidence is a term used to describe exhibits and other physical forms of evidence used in court to demonstrate, show, depict, inform or teach relevant information to the viewer.*Exhibit , a lightweight...

s, a restaurant
Restaurant
A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...

 and a myriad of fitness
Physical fitness
Physical fitness comprises two related concepts: general fitness , and specific fitness...

 opportunities.

History

Through the 19th century the area later known as Swansea was divided between two farm lots;

The western half of what is now Swansea was originally the home of Toronto's first European inhabitant, M Jean Baptiste Rousseau, who was permitted to occupy the site of a former French Fort at the foot of the Humber River after the fall of the French Regime. M. Rousseau was living at his 'Rousseau House' when John Graves Simcoe
John Graves Simcoe
John Graves Simcoe was a British army officer and the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791–1796. Then frontier, this was modern-day southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior...

 arrived with Toronto's first settlers and the French Fur Trader guided the new Governor's ship into Toronto Bay (now Toronto's Harbour). When Toronto was first surveyed, however, the entire area along the Humber River was designated as a Mill Reserve (forest to be left intact for the use of the King's Sawmill, now called 'Old Mill'). M Rousseau refused an offer to relocate across the river to Etobicoke and left the area. By the 1880s, the mill reserve in Swansea was still unused and the area was subdivded into 'wood lots' (sections of forest to be sold to families living further away for use as timber fuel). The site of 'Rousseau House' is today marked by a plaque.

The western half of Swansea became surveyed as lots 39 and 40. The lots were laid out south of Bloor Street, lot 1 starting to the east, and the numbers increasing in the western direction. Lot 40 was directly south-east of Jane Street extending east to where Windermere Avenue intersects Bloor Street. Lot 39, the next to the east saw the first development, on property owned by John Coe. By 1884, along Bloor Street, several blocks were subdivided as far south as today's Morningside Avenue, then known as Grenadier Road, and as far east as the today's Kennedy Avenue. These are the only streets in Swansea laid out on a grid pattern, possible because this section is relatively flat.

The eastern half of what is now Swansea was a forested lot purchased in 1838 by early Toronto artist, philanthropist and architect John Ellis whose home, 'Herne Hill', stood on Grenadier Heights overlooking Grenadier Pond. The north-south street that connects to Grenadier Heights was named 'Ellis' in honour of Swansea's first family. Despite the building of a railway along the south of his estate in the 1850s, Mr Ellis did not develop his lot. With the death of John Ellis' widow in 1884, the Ellis estate became the property of John Ellis Jr. who sold off the land to the north of Herne Hill. The house itself was demolished in 1925. 71 acres (28.7 ha) of former Ellis lands on the east side of Grenadier Pond were bought by Toronto and merged with High Park in 1930.

Windermere & Swansea
By the 1880s, the area south of Bloor was known as 'Windermere' after England's 'Lake District' which it is said to have resembled. To the south, industry developed on Coe's land along the railway line, including the Ontario Bolt Works, just east of the Humber, which replaced a factory on the site of today's streetcar yards at Roncesvalles. Built in 1882, its cornerstone laying attended by Sir John A. Macdonald, the factory lands extended north to today's Morningside Avenue. In 1889, the factory was bought by James Worthington and the name changed to Swansea Works, Worthington himself being from the Swansea, Wales area. The factory became the major employer in the area with subsidiary industrial lands to the north of today's The Queensway. A settlement of workers' cottage
Cottage
__toc__In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cozy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location. However there are cottage-style dwellings in cities, and in places such as Canada the term exists with no connotations of size at all...

s built by Worthington dating from the 1880s grew around the plant. Several of the cottages still exist on Windermere Place today. The factory, burnt down in 1906 and rebuilt, became part of Stelco
Stelco
US Steel Canada is a steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.-History:Several existing smaller steelworks combined and were incorporated as the Steel Company of Canada in 1910. Charles S...

 in 1910, and it remained in operation until 1989.

In the centre of Swansea were several elongated ponds running north-south. The largest, Catfish Pond, is the only one that has survived. Some of the ponds were filled in for the railway line and industrial area. One of the ponds on the former Coe property, on the site of today's Swansea Mews public housing project, was turned into a dump and filled in with tailings
Tailings
Tailings, also called mine dumps, slimes, tails, leach residue, or slickens, are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore...

.

By 1890, the area was known as Swansea, with a train stop on the Great Western at Windermere. The post office was in the Works building, and church services were also held there. Worthington promoted the community, giving land for Swansea Public School in 1890 and the mission church. Worthington's ownership of the Bolt Works ended not long afterward, and the Works was eventually absorbed into Stelco
Stelco
US Steel Canada is a steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.-History:Several existing smaller steelworks combined and were incorporated as the Steel Company of Canada in 1910. Charles S...

 in 1910. Swansea, including Windermere, was incorporated as a village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 in 1926. The largely forested village saw the building of many upper middle class homes on the former Ellis estate as a quiet 'leafy' neighbourhood developed.

Urbanisation

In 1954, the Village of Swansea left York County and joined the new region of Metropolitan Toronto. With the extension of Toronto's Queen Street and Queen streetcar line as 'The Queensway' along the southern limits of the village, Swansea quickly urbanised with many apartment buildings being built in the western half of the area. In 1967, Swansea became on of the two last independent villages (along with Forest Hill) to be annexed by the City of Toronto. Amalgamation resumed towards the end of the 20th Century as the other municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto formed the new 'Mega' City of Toronto in 1998. With the deindustrialisation of Swansea, the small stip of land between The Queensway transportation corridor and Lakeshore Road (and the railway) is under development as a high density residential mix of towers and townhouses.

Village Seal
The Swansea Village corporate seal reveals a great deal about the colourful history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 of this neighbourhood. Included on the Swansea seal is explorer Étienne Brûlé
Étienne Brûlé
Étienne Brûlé , was the first of European French explorers to journey along the St. Lawrence River with the Native Americans and to view Georgian Bay and Lake Huron Canada in the 17th century. A rugged outdoorsman, he took to the lifestyle of the First Nations and had a unique contribution to the...

, who in 1615 became the first Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an to set foot on what is now Swansea and also shown is a First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...

 member. This is symbolic in that it recognizes that First Nations members were the first people to inhabit Swansea, thousands of years ago. The hills in the Swansea Village seal represent Swansea's rolling countryside. The water in the Swansea seal refers to Swansea's natural boundaries, which include Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. In the Wyandot language, ontarío means...

, the Humber River and Grenadier Pond.

Prominent residents

  • Lucy Maud Montgomery
    Lucy Maud Montgomery
    Lucy Maud Montgomery OBE , called "Maud" by family and friends and publicly known as L.M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success...

     - writer of the Anne of Green Gables
    Anne of Green Gables
    Anne of Green Gables is a bestselling novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908. Set in 1878, it was written as fiction for readers of all ages, but in recent decades has been considered a children's book...

     series of books, lived in a home at 210 Riverside Drive from 1935 to 1942. A small park named after Montgomery is located at the corner of Riverside Crescent and Riverside Drive.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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