#67 113 HEARST CIRCLE, TORONTO

                                                         WARTIME HOMES

Between 1941 and 1947, a Crown agency called the Wartime Housing Corporation (later the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation CHMC) built 46,000 homes across Canada. These homes were built to house people in war-related industries and were rental-only, but then the CHMC began to sell the houses to their residents at initial prices of between $6000 to $7000. Up to a million Victory Houses (as they became known) were built in Canada between 1946 and 1960.

Most of the houses were pre-fabricated, shipped to the building sites and then nailed together (sometimes in just 36 hours.) Lumber was mass-produced to standardized lengths and widths to produce the same type of house on many sites.  The houses were small (usually about 1000 square feet)  and were built from federal-provided floor plans. They were detached bungalows, one-and-a half storey, and two-storey semi-detached structures. They were known as “Victory Houses” (celebrating the Allied victory in World War II) or “Strawberry Boxes” (because they looked like that common fruit container.) Their simplicity reminded many of a “sort of a child’s drawing of a house”.

The facades were clapboard siding painted white (or brick) with an entrance at the front and back. They had steeply-pitched gable roofs, small sash windows and small metal chimney stacks. The main floor usually had a living room, kitchen with dining area, bathroom and one bedroom. Two more bedrooms were upstairs.

The streets around wartime houses were often curved or had cul-de-sacs; often a park was planned for the centre of the neighbourhood. The houses were small so that a large portion of the property could be used for gardening. It was said to be “the first mass-produced idea of the first little house, on a little lot, with a gig garden. It’s a great idea.”

Steve’s family lived in a wartime house at 113 Hearst Circle, North York, near Jane Street and Tretheway Drive. This development of wartime homes was known as “The Wishbone” after an unusually laid-out street of the same name. 

                                                    The Wishbone & Hearst Circle

This area was originally the site of the Trethewey Airfield. (62 Hearst Circle). Prior to 1910, this airfield was a successful 600 acre model farm owned by mining magnate, W.G.Trethewey. On this farm was a canning factory, greenhouses, drive sheds, a vegetable storage warehouse. 

                                                    Trethewey Airfield early 1920s

But it was in 1910, the farm became internationally known as the Trethewey Airfield when it hosted the first flying exhibition over Toronto. The event, sponsored by the Ontario Motor League, necessitated preparing a runway through the fields, the centre of which is present-day Hearst Circle. As well, a grandstand was built for spectators. The July 1910 airshow was the first distance flight over Toronto; the star of the show was Count Jacques de Lesseps. He flew his plane 20 miles in 28 minutes at a height of between 1500 and 2000 feet and at a speed of 70 mph. De Lesseps was already well-known in Europe. He was the son of the French engineer who built the Suez Canal. At age 26, the Count was the second person to fly across the English Channel. (In World War I, he joined the aviation branch of the French army. He returned to Toronto. In 1927, while on an aerial survey for the Canadian government over the St. Lawrence in the Gaspe, de Lesseps was killed when his plane crashed into the river.)

The 1910 airshow turned the Trethewey farm into Toronto’s first airfield (predating Downsview, Malton and the Island Airport). In 1928, this property was purchased by the de Havilland Aircraft Company of England and became the assembly plant and training field for their Moth aircraft. The first few aircraft were assembled in the farm’s vegetable warehouse as it had double doors wide enough for the planes to be wheeled from. This site, close to the CN/CP railways, was a convenient location to receive the crates of unassembled Moths being shipped in crates from England to Toronto. The next year, DeHavilland built a larger hangar on the site but the Trethewey site became too small and DeHavilland sold this property and moved to Downsview. A pilot training school operated on the site until at least 1931.

On July 15, 2017, an historical plaque was dedicated at the site of a nearly-forgotten aerodrome: Trethewey Field, the first aerodrome in Toronto. Plaque reads: In 1910, from July 8 to 16, the Ontario Motor League sponsored the first aviation show in the Toronto area, held in a grass field here on mining entrepreneur W.G.Trethewey's model farm. On July 13, thousands watched French pilot Jacques de Lesseps in his Bleriot XI Le Scarabee become the first to fly an airplane over the city of Toronto. Afterward, this site remained popular with early aviators and became a licensed airfield, often called the de Lesseps Aerodrome. Landing lights were installed for night flying, and mail service to Montreal and Detroit was established. In 1928, the deHavilland Aircraft Company of England opened its first Canadian assembly plant here. In the 1930s, the airfield was the base for the Royal Canadian Air Force No.10 Squadron, later the No.110 (City of Toronto) Squadron, now the 400 Squadron. The airfield was closed in the mid-1940s and homes were built for the Second World War veterans and their families. 

 

Steve, his parents and brother and sister, Wayne and Joan, moved into their home at 113 Hearst Circle in 1952. This is Steve’s memory (with Joan’s input) of growing up in their wartime home.

 

I lived at 113 Hearst Circle from about 1952 to 1975.

 I believed that everyone lived in a similar house, with a kitchen joining the living room , and the kitchen and dining room only 150 or fewer square feet. When I went to friends' houses, they were all the same, so I just assumed it was the norm. The lots were about 35 feet wide, which by standards of the Beaches or other downtown areas, was quite wide. The house was about 900 square feet, with an unfinished basement, part of which was the coal storage area. The huge furnace seemed to take up half of the rest of the basement...it didn't, since we could shoot pucks against the street side wall in the basement. The basement was dark, but then no one I knew had a finished basement. We had a family of 5 living comfortably in the house, with a main floor bedroom and 2 small bedrooms upstairs, with the steeply sloped ceilings. It was great standing on the floor vents on a winter morning. We got gas heating when I was about 10 or so. We also had daily milk delivery, which had to be taken in before it froze.

 Some houses must have had oil heating, since I remember grabbing the back of oil trucks in winter and sliding behind them for a while.

 We had the bathroom down the hall, whereas the houses on the Wishbone, which were likely smaller, had the bathroom next to the kitchen and dining...not the best placement in retrospect. When my parents were looking at houses in Toronto, some still had outhouses.

 We had a bathroom, with a very nice claw foot tub, something many people would envy today. I still dislike baths since I found showers so much easier, but there wasn't such a thing in the neighbourhood. I only knew one person with a 2^nd bathroom , in the basement. Such waste, I thought. 

 I never realized how open the area was until I went back and saw it full of the trees that were planted in the early 1960s. You could stand looking at the Wishbone and see almost to Lawrence Avenue...now there is a dense little forest between Hearst Circle and where our school was located. The small park at the end of the Wishbone was a skating rink in winter, which, by the way, seemed to last forever. It was a lot of fun skating, playing hockey, and later baseball.

                                   Hearst Circle park today... not really suitable for baseball                 

We moved there because my Mom's twin sister lived about 6 blocks away, on Speers Avenue at Jane and Lawrence.

 There wasn't a library, but the Bookmobile, a library on wheels, came to Brookhaven School every Tuesday at about 4:00 pm.

 I wasn't very cosmopolitan, since I always told people I lived near the stores on Tretheway Drive...it seemed such a big shopping area. a real landmark for Toronto. It had 5 or so stores, so not exactly the Eaton Centre. The Eaton Estate was south of the area so of course we played around there, and occasionally, it seems, ran when we saw gardeners.

 My earliest memories...riding our new bikes on Christmas, photos on ponies (a common business...they came around a few times)., and my first view of TV, my next-door neighbour had one so we saw a Disney special on seals.

                                                Joan, Steve & Wayne...the popular pony picture

 I also recall when we started to buy milk and bread in a store, one which had curtains over all the food except the milk and bread on Sundays.  There was a pad on the shop owner's desk which you had to fill out if buying any other food...it was only possible if the food was for a child under 12 or a pregnant woman. Apparently, we will be buying wine and beer in the same stores come September.

 

As family needs changed over the years, wartime homes proved adaptable while retaining their character. “They virtually invited the owner to start to make little additions…most incremental. An owner might add a small porch, then a few years later, enclose it to create an airlock against Toronto’s harsh winters. Or add a bedroom to a basement, or a bay window, or even a small extension at the back.” In 2019, (during the pandemic) the house at 113 Hearst Circle underwent a major transformation with full garage, an extension on the back, a finished basement, and a powder room and three full bathrooms. It’s great to know 113 is still a beloved family home.

                                                            113 Hearst Circle today