Featured Walks

New Ideas spring from Old Buildings: From abbatoirs and stables to tong houses and consulates in the GRANGE

Neighbourhood: The Grange
Meeting Location: Baldwin Village - front of Yung Sing Pastry Shop (22 Baldwin – west of McCaul north of Dundas Street)
Start Time: 3:00pm

Ceta Ramkhalawansingh
Ceta Ramkhalawansingh

Woven throughout the Grange neighbourhood are many histories, urban experiments, recycled buildings, developments (good and bad), buried rivers/creeks. A theme of this walk is the politics of re-use - land, buildings, open space and claims on the skyscape. Sub-themes include the shift from “family compact” rule, immigrant settlement and reception for the “underground railroad.”

From Baldwin Village – soon to become car-free on some Sundays – we will meander north along Henry beside the site that might have been massive hydro transformers, now one of the first urban in-fill housing developments in the City. At Cecil/Beverley we'll come across boarded up sites and will contemplate what can go there. Passing by the reclaimed/restored home of George Brown, we'll imagine the future basketball court in the school yard of Heydon Park, which arose from discussions about Grange Park conservation. The almost-site of #52 Division is at the northeast corner of Dundas and Beverley, across from the Italian Consulate and the ever-transitioning AGO. The rest of the route goes across Dundas, south along McCaul to Queen, to the former Queen Street Market - formerly a chicken slaughter house across from the former hymnbook publishing building now CityTV, and up John Street up to the Grange, a “family compact” home in Grange Park.

Tour leaders will include new and old veterans of community building from the Hydro Block, Beverley Sullivan Co-op, Brownstones of Soho, the Grange Park Preservation Group and the Grange Historical Society.