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by Gary Miedema Directly south of Fort York, between Lakeshore Boulevard and the lake, lies Coronation Park. A grove of mature trees dominates the site, while a sea wall on its south side slices water from land, trees from marina, quiet green from the noise of Porter aircraft as they launch themselves out over the lake. A provincial plaque marks the park as the approximate site of the second American attack on Fort York in 1813–where American ships may have anchored as the army was rowed ashore. But that was about 125 years before the Park became a park– when it was, in fact, lake. Just over one hundred years after that attack, in 1917, Fort York was still close to the lake. Over the next number of years, however, the land beneath today’s Fleet Street, Lakeshore Boulevard, and Coronation Park rose Creating Coronation Park in the 1930s. (Credit: from the sandy depths.
In a detailed and wellresearched article, “A Living Memorial: The History of Coronation Park” (published in Urban History Review in February 1991), John Bacher has documented the subsequent history of the site. What is now Coronation Park remained sandy, and not much more, into the 1930s. The Great Depression then inspired change. Infrastructure projects offering “relief ” pay for otherwise unemployed men became the equivalent of today’s federal infrastructure funds dedicated to keeping some of us at work. Within shouting distance from the Fort, restored as one relief project, other desperate men worked through the summer of 1935 to complete a sea wall that still
stands along Coronation Park’s southern edge. (The sea wall, it’s worth noting, did not expand the earlier filled area, but actually allowed for the dredging of a deeper basin at land’s edge for a new marina.) While steam shovels did the dredging, men with shovels moved most of the dry land, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. In the midst of a heat wave, and without any shade on the site, at least one man collapsed, and three horses died. But by August 1935, the glittering new concrete sea wall and leveled land were complete at less than its projected cost.
The park itself would come nearly two years later. In the wake of the death of King George V in January of 1936, the coming coronation of a new king sent officials in a then-still-very-British Toronto Port Authority Archives) minded Toronto into planning for celebrations. Thomas Hobbs and Andrew Gillespie, members of the Toronto Ex-Servicemen’s Coronation Committee, joined forces with the Toronto Chapter of Men of the Trees to propose a “Coronation Park” dominated by ceremonial tree plantings. The Men of the Trees, an organization formed by war veteran Richard St. Barbe Barker, rode the rising wave of conservationism in the interwar period to preach reforestation as “the most constructive and peaceable enterprise in which nations could cooperate.” It had appealed particularly well to veterans. And in Toronto, where 90,000 veterans of WWI
had held a three day reunion in 1934, veterans apparently carried weight. City Council approved the proposed concept, and left a Coronation Park Advisory Committee, dominated by veterans, to finalize the design and planting details. In short, they created a park that was part avenue of trees, part war memorial. In the centre of the park still stands a Royal oak, planted in honour of King George VI. Around it are maple trees symbolizing the strength and loyalty of the Empire, and of the Canadians who fought to defend it during WWI. The Royal oak itself is ringed by a wide circle of seven maple trees representing parts of the British Empire. Beyond that circle, other trees were planted to represent the four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, with each tree representing a unit of a division. Trees were also added to represent the veterans of the Fenian raids of 1866, the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, and the Boer War. In all, nearly 150 trees were planted along gently curving pathways during a mass ceremony on 12 May 1937–Coronation Day, and a public holiday in Toronto. But they weren’t done yet. After the 1937 planting, the Coronation Park Advisory Committee organized the placing at each tree of a granite stone with a brass plate naming the unit which it commemorated. Funded by veterans and the Men of the Trees, the plaques were unveiled during another impressive show of veteran solidarity, a 1938 reunion which brought an estimated 100,000 veterans to the city. On August 1, on one signal, veterans at the base of each tree simultaneously unveiled the plaques. Veterans and the Men of the Trees organized a final planting to mark the Royal visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. On 22 May 1939, the car carrying the Royal couple passed slowly down the drive which still exists through the park. Along each side of the drive were arrayed 123 hard maples each representing a public or separate school in the city. A veteran held each tree steady. As the car passed, school children emptied a shovel of dirt onto the roots. In spite of its rich symbolic importance as a living memorial to Canada’s war veterans, Coronation Park nearly didn’t survive. Like the continually beleaguered Old Fort York, the park was threatened by the construction of the Gardiner Expressway–it became a proposed lake edge site for the reconstruction of the Fort, itself in the way of the highway. Later, at some point prior to 1965, all original paths but that around the central ringed grove were sodded over, destroying the visibility and meaning of the original groupings of trees. In the early 1970s, the park was almost razed to make room for the relocation of the CNE midway.
had held a three day reunion in 1934, veterans apparently carried weight. City Council approved the proposed concept, and left a Coronation Park Advisory Committee, dominated by veterans, to finalize the design and planting details.
discouraging comment on our collective ability to care for While most of its trees tower above the grass, one is our past. now only a stump, and a good number of the brass plates have gone missing. Worse, with the loss of the original pathways, the beautiful tree-lined vistas along their former routes are no longer noticed or enjoyed. In short, a moving, carefully planned landscape of memory has simply become another grove of trees in a park, separated from HMCS York on the east by an off-leash dog area. 100th The anniversary of the beginning of WWI is but four years away. The restoration of the lost elements of Coronation Park might be a fitting tribute to those Torontonians who fought in that war and then, decades later, laid out new pathways, planted new trees, and unveiled new plaques on landfill, next to a new seawall. Gary Miedema is Chief Historian and Associate Director of Heritage Toronto. The Garrison Nursery by Richard Ubbens
Coronation Park remained to become the backbone of a nucleus of armed forces sites and commemorations, from HMCS York on the east (located next to the park in 1947) to Battery Park on the west (which from 1965 to the 1990s contained a cluster of aging weapons of war, including a Lancaster bomber), to the creation of a new WWII memorial in the mid-1990s, just a stone’s throw from the Royal oak. The park today is a shadow of what it should be, and a 2 The Fife and Drum
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