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Housing,
Homelessness, Heat and Hardship
Some
Regional and Contextual Background Information
Please refer also to these pages:
If
you were to add an Expectation to the Ontario Curriculum documents regarding the
importance of the evolution of shelter and housing in society, what would it
be? And then how would you go about your research to achieve that
Expectation?
There has been
a regular colony of gypsies down on the hill since Saturday. They have ten
covered wagons and eight tents. Billy [McCowan] says there are at least thirty
children, the youngest is four days old. When we went to church they were
roasting six turkeys. They had two poles, three on each, and were turning them
over the fire. When we came home they looked almost ready to eat.
Ruth
McCowan Letters, April 21 1914 (In M.
Carr, James McCowan Family from 1833,
pg. 27)
Just a short
letter tonight. Papa is out at a hunting meeting tonight and we cannot lock
the door, so I am going to stay up for a little while to see that strangers do
not enter.
Ruth
McCowan Letters, October 3 1916
I have had a
regular clean out and have given a lot of things away, things that we have not
been using among which were your long boots. The boys thought it was too bad to
send them off, but I thought they had not been used for over a year and it might
be ages before you would need them again... They were sending a bundle to the
fire district and I thought they might as well be doing someone some good.
Ruth
McCowan Letters, October 22 1916
It has been
storming all day and I think all of the roads must be full of snow. It is rather
serious for those who cannot get coal. Harold was up at Drummond’s yesterday.
They had three car loads come in and he said that it was like a fair. The people
were there with hand sleighs and all sort of conveyances to take away coal. We
have had zero weather all week.
Ruth
McCowan Letters, December 16 1917
We have had six
weeks of very severe winter and there is no sign of a letup. With the coal
shortage as well, it is rather serious. Today Harold went for coal and Drummond
told him that all coal dealers had been ordered not to sell to farmers. He got
1500 pounds of furnace coal.
Ruth
McCowan Letters, February 5 1918
I think we are
all right as far as fuel is concerned. Harold got a load apiece for us last
week. Drummond said that if they wouldn’t let him sell to the farmers he would
quit the business.
Ruth
McCowan Letters, February 11 1918
A
“Modern” Farmhouse
Our house was built in 1914 before my Dad and Mom were married. It was a
beautiful large brick house with a kitchen, pantry, dining room, living room and
parlour. The woodwork, doors, stairs and banister were solid oak. Upstairs there
were five bedrooms and a bathroom as well as a linen cupboard with a laundry
“chute”. There were three rooms in the attic. There was hot water heating
with radiators in every room. The basement had two big rooms and a furnace room.
We didn’t use
the parlour very much. Mom’s grandmother’s parlour settee pieces and the
piano made up the furniture. We practised our music lessons there. In the pantry
Mom had a huge metal flour can (bigger than a modern metal garbage can) which
sat in the corner by the dumb waiter. It was handy to perch on while we ate
“short cakes” (tea biscuits) and honey after we got home from school.
Across the
front of the house there was a verandah which, in later years, we closed in to
make a lovely sunroom. I remember when I was about six, we were sitting on the
verandah with company on a Sunday afternoon in the summer when the traffic on
the single lane (each way)
Kingston Road
was fairly busy. One of the guests went “Oh!” and pointed to the road and
there was my little brother, Bill, toddling onto the road. The oncoming car
stopped in time to avoid hitting him.
Helen
McCowan Thomson, 1990
The
Thirties
The depression did not seem to affect us too much. We had our own milk and
butter, grew our own vegetables and had a big apple orchard. My Dad was always
very careful of the “pennies”, so we were quite used to doing without many
things which he considered unnecessary. Hardly a week would go by that we
didn’t have a “tramp”, as they were called then, at the door for food. Mom
always fed them. Sometimes they would sleep in the barn -- after handing over
their matches and smokes. Dad would return them in the morning.
Helen
McCowan Thomson, 1990
The
Forgotten Debt
During the depression, a distant cousin of mine bought some hay from us. He
didn’t have enough money at the time however and couldn’t pay -- which was
actually fine -- we were happy to help out. The years went by. Whenever we saw
this cousin at an auction sale or at some other local
Scarborough
event, he would quickly turn away and pretend that he didn’t see us. We
really couldn’t understand why.
Then one day,
again years and years later, he came to the house with an envelope. He had come
to pay for the hay. We had completely forgotten about it. But now we knew why he
had been avoiding us. Farmers were a proud bunch and there seemed to be a
certain shame about owing money during the depression.
Jenny
McCowan, as told to Bruce McCowan, ca 1975
Riding
the Rails -- Mike O’Brien
The term
"Riding the Rails" is rather synonymous with "The Great
Depression" of the 1930's. A short distance from the tracks that ran
through the McCowan farm in
Scarborough
was a woodlot which, one day, caught the attention of a transient sitting on a
box car...
The Canadian
National Railway running from
Montreal
to Toronto, being double tracks, was a very busy line before transport trucks and super
highways became popular. When we were in the fields we could tell the time by
the whistles of the passenger trains -- one in the morning going to
Montreal
at 9:40. The 12 o'clock whistle at the Ford assembly Plant on Danforth at
Victoria Park told us it was dinner time. There was a 4:20 Flyer to
Montreal
and a 4:55 Flyer from Montreal
as well as a Flyer around 9:30 at night.
At our farm the
Scarborough Bluffs were over 300 feet high -- the highest point on
Lake
Ontario. Union Station in
Toronto
and Port Union near the
Rouge
River
mouth were both at lake level. In either direction, it was too big a climb to
our farm for one steam engine pulling between 80 and 100 freight cars, so an
extra engine stayed at Port Union to help pull the train up the hill to Brimley
Road (just past our place) where there was a siding. There the extra engine was
often taken off, and the train was let run down the hill to Union Station. There
was, of course, an extra engine at Union Station to pull freights up to Brimley
from
Toronto
.
The freights
going up past
Scarborough Golf Club Rd
and
Scarborough
Village
were not going too fast, and some of the boys would jump on and off the cars.
One boy, Len Orr, slipped and had his leg cut off. He was quite young at the
time -- I always remember him at S.S. #9, Scarboro
Village
School, using a cane and having a wooden leg. Later he mastered walking and didn't
need the cane. He played and skated with everyone else.
Scarboro
Village
had subdivision Plans and some
houses were built. There was to be a Train Station right there, but due to the
hill, the trains had too much trouble starting. So the station was never built
in
Scarboro
Village
.
During the
Depression many unemployed men rode the rails going from place to place looking
for work. The siding at
Brimley Road
was a good place to embark and disembark. Our farm was the first outside the
city, so we had many overnight guests in the barn. There were also many
Kingston Road
travellers sleeping in the barn too. We gave out many free lunches. We never
turned anyone away who wanted food.
In 1933, plus
or minus a year or two, one such rail traveller was Mike O'Brien, an Irish,
one-eyed sailor who was laid off the lakeboats in the fall. One day my brother,
Bob, and cousin, Walter, went to the bush to cut catapult crotch. They found
Mike in the bush where he had spent the night under some shelter. He asked them
if he could stay the winter. Then Uncle Ashley and Dad apparently said that he
could.
In about 1927
or 28, the CNR had bought the land south of the tracks down to the bush, just
about where the roadway went into the cemetery. They also bought some land on
the west side of
McCowan Road
, the Baird farm. They dug into the side of the hill to level the ground for a
marshalling yard where they could make up freight trains. We were told that what
they dug out of our place and Bairds was used as fill in the
Toronto
waterfront near Union Station. As a civil engineer for the CNR, Uncle Jack
Heron, was involved with the marshalling yard. However, the project stopped when
the depression came along. The marshalling yard was never put in, but some
sidings were. Old wooden box cars were stored there -- for anybody who wanted
the wood, it seemed. Mike built a shelter using wood from the box cars and, by
digging down, he survived the winter.
The next spring
he couldn't get work, so he asked if he could stay longer. He was given
permission to build a log cabin. My brothers, cousins and I helped carry the
logs. The cabin was on the south side of the bush so he got shelter from the
wind as well as heat from the sun.
Mike also used
a bit of land north of the bush for a garden. He made breadboards, wooden fans
(some of them double -- top and bottom), built a ship inside a bottle and a
crystal set radio. He had chickens for a while but had trouble with wild animals
from the bush. The next year he built a root cellar on the side of the cabin for
his vegetables.
We used to play
hockey in some low spots in "The Pit" (as we called the marshalling
yard area) and if we got cold we would go to Mike's to warm up. We always paid
him a visit going to and coming from skating anyway. One day when we were
haying, the hay fork rope kinked and got caught in the pulley. The horses broke
the rope. Mike, being a good sailor was called upon to splice the rope. There
was a Jewish cemetery behind the bush, and Mike had a few graves to dig for
them. We would visit Mike quite often to listen to his stories. We would quite
often take him a Sunday dinner and apples or vegetables.
There were a
lot of choke cherry trees in the bush. Mike started making wine and got to like
it too much, becoming a bit of a hazard. He also found it easier to collect
relief than to work. However in 1939 he just up and left -- a good thing because
he had been there almost seven years which could have become a problem very soon
with Squatters’ Rights. With the War starting and then the post-war
re-establishment, and starting new families of our own, Mike's stay was just a
small blip of life soon forgotten. However, I have from time to time wondered
where he went and how he made out in life. I often wished he'd come back for a
visit.
Bob told a
story about Mike ordering something to be delivered. To identify where he lived
he said “McCowans”, and put up a wooden sign at the corner of
Kingston Road
and our sideroad. This was the very first “McCowan Road” road sign.
Bill
McCowan, 1998
Exercises
Individual Exercises
1) During World
War One, what was in short supply? Explain why you think this was the case.
2) Why do you
suppose coal dealers were ordered to not sell to farmers?
3) In 200
words, write a fictitious story of
an itinerant traveller on
Kingston Road
during the depression as though you were the traveller. Include two sentences
about where you had come from originally (and why you left) and two sentences
about where you went and what you did after the depression.
Guest Speaker, Class
Discussion and Editorial Team
1) Prepare ten questions about the Great Depression of the 1930s. Invite a
senior citizen to your school to tell you about his or her personal experiences
during the Depression. Be sure to ask your ten questions as well as other
questions that arise. Then, in class, discuss your guest’s personal
experiences in the more general context of the 1930s. Appoint an editorial team
of three students to write a 500 word paper based on the guest’s personal
experiences, your other resources and your class discussion. Include concluding
remarks and your list of contextual resources.
The
Scarboro Heights Record V14 #5
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