Where Conservatives Have Been Getting Drunk For 130 Years

Sir John A. Macdonald

It all started in 1882. Canada had only been around for 15 years, but Sir John A. Macdonald had already been Prime Minister for ten of them. He'd only lost one election — the one right after the Pacific Scandal. He and his Conservatives had taken a MASSIVE bribe from a railway tycoon in return for promising to give him the contract to build the railroad across Canada. And then they'd spent the money on bribing people to vote for them. Macdonald resigned in disgrace and got crushed in the next election. But a few years and one recession later, he was back in power. And with Toronto proving to be one of the key battlegrounds in federal politics, his supporters decided to start a brand new club in the heart of the city — somewhere where right-wing businessmen and politicians could come together, get drunk and plan their campaigns: The Albany Club.

The super-exclusive gentlemen's club was named after Queen Victoria's eighth son — the epileptic hemophiliac Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. He was pretty famous back then and had recently met Macdonald and other high profile Tories on a trip to Canada. The club immediately became a secretive swank-fest of cigars and smoking chairs and brandy and oak paneling and alcoholism — a place for rich white guys back in the days when rich white guys were pretty much the only people allowed to vote. And it was for Tories only. That was kind of the point, right there in the bylaws: "No person shall become a Member of the Club unless a Conservative.” Those are their italics, not mine.

At first, the Albany Club was in a building on Bay Street, but before the 1800s were over, it had moved to a spot on King just a couple of blocks east of Yonge. There's an old stretch of buildings there — Victoria Row — built all the way back in the 1840s by one of Toronto's earliest architects: John Howard, the same guy who gave High Park to the city. The Albany Club is still there, like it has been since 1898, quietly serving as one of the powerful headquarters of Canadian conservatism.

And I do mean quietly. "We nurture our exclusivity and with that our privacy," the club's website says. There's no big sign outside the building, just a discrete "AC" emblem. "Nobody but an archaeologist accustomed to ferreting out old important things in secret places ever could discover the Albany Club," the Star wrote in 1921. Even the building's historical plaque is mounted inside the entrance, where only members and guests can see it.

There was a time when all the political parties had clubs like this. A few blocks away on Wellington, the Liberals had the Ontario Club. The Canada First Party had the National Club on Bay. But now, even the clubs that have survived have dropped their political affiliation. The Albany Club is the very last old school political club in Canada.

Every single Conservative Prime Minister from Macdonald to Mulroney has been a member of the Albany Club. And every single Conservative Premier of Ontario, too. Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty and Peter McKay and Jason Kenney and Jim Prentice and Maxime Bernier have all given speeches there. So have Tim Hudak and Hazel McCallion and Preston Manning and Christie Blatchford and Rex Murphy and David Frum. John Tory was the President of the Club for a while. Tony Clement is on the Board of Directors. So is Peter Van Loan. And Janet Ecker. And Denzil Minnan-Wong. And a whole bunch of lobbyists. In fact, they all got in a bit of trouble last year when Harper's government invited the Albany Club to host a private reception on Parliament Hill. Conservative politicians and registered lobbyists all got to hang out — and since it was a private party, they didn't have to worry about all those pesky lobbying laws.

For its part, the club is happy to admit the role it plays in the running of our country. "We believe in conservative values," the website says. "We will assist the conservative movement by being the forum for public policy discussions and decisions."

This time, those are my italics.

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There is at least one conservative politician who has publicly distanced himself from the club. In fact, that Rob Ford publicly distanced himself from them as part of his whole man-of-the-people shtick. "It’s not Bay Street or the Albany Club that's behind me," Rob Ford claimed during the last municipal election as part of his man-of-the-people shtick. "It’s Main Street."  Which hints at just how deeply the Albany Club is an entrenched part of Conservative power politics in Canada. 

The Albany Club was part of Doors Open a few years ago. You can see photos from inside here. There's Sir John A. memorabilia all over the place. You can learn more about the club's history on their website here. Their original bylaws are here. Read their historical plaque here.

You can learn more about the Ontario Club here and the National Club here. 


The Albany Club also does stuff like teach children proper table etiquette. 


Harper's Conservatives were investigated and eventually cleared by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner for that private function on Parliament Hill. Because, amazingly, "There is no section in the Conflict of Interest Act that deals specifically with relations between registered lobbyists and Members of Parliament." The Hill Times has the full story here.

An FLQ Poster At St. Clair & Kennedy

Every June, I spend one drunken week covering the North By Northeast music festival. At this year's edition, which happened just a couple of weeks ago, a lot of the bands from Montreal stood out — with the red squares of the Quebec student movement pinned to their chests or guitars. It was kind of an interesting reminder of just how closely tied Toronto and Montreal are. And it was, of course, the first thing I thought of when I came across this poster. It was posted at St. Clair and Kenndy Road by the FLQ during the October Crisis in 1970. (Which you can learn lots more about on Wikipedia here.)

Dream 01 "Metropolitan York" (John Graves Simcoe, 1793)

John Graves Simcoe dreamed that his small town had become a sprawling metropolis. He wandered through the city, amazed. The cobblestones of Yonge Street stretched off into the distance – straight as an arrow – as far as he could see. The shops bustled. Carriages rumbled by in an endless, noisy parade. On nearly every corner, a golden church spire reached up into the heavens so high the peak touched cloud. Between them, giant balloons drifted into the city, baskets brimming with fruit and fish and cloth and exotic beasts from the far-flung capitals of the world. And there were so many people. He wanted to meet each one, to shake their hands and learn their names, but they were already growing faint and dim, slipping away. He found himself awake, in a tent on the tree-lined shore of Lake Ontario, listening to the sound of his men as they built Fort York.

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Learn about John Graves Simcoe here. 

Explore more Toronto Dreams Project postcards here.

And You Don't Even Want To Wear Pants In This Heat

You know how in old-timey novels people are always fainting all the time? Well when you see what people used to wear to the beach, it's not exactly surprising. This is Sunnyside in about 1914 or so, back when people were very clearly out of their minds. In the early 1900s, it wasn't just considered improper to show a little bit of skin at the beach in Toronto. It was totally illegal. A law passed in 1904 said that only people "wearing a proper bathing dress, covering the body from the neck to the knees may bathe at any time in the public waters within the city limits." And while people did try to fudge it a bit, if they fudged it too far they would run afoul of the Toronto Police Morality Department. (Yup, that was a thing.)

It wasn't until the 1930s that things loosened up a bit. But only a bit. The law was changed to say a bathing suit was required to "prevent indecent exposure", but no one was quite sure what that meant. The Morality Department and even the Mayor took it to mean that men had to wear tops. Hundreds of "filthy" "ape-men" were arrested for taking off their shirts at the beach, sparking legal and political battles over what exactly people were and were not allowed not to wear. (Kevin Plummer's got the lowdown over at Torontoist here.)

By 1953, a teenaged Brigitte Bardot was wearing a bikini on the beach in Cannes and things were about to get a whoooooooooole lot less stuffy. Fifty years after that, Toronto would get our very first nude beach. Hanlan's Point was officially declared "clothing optional" in 2002.

Bloor & High Park Looked Like Countryside Back in 1914

Jesus. I mean, by now I should be used to seeing photos of places just outside the city core looking like the middle of the freaking countryside in the early 1900s, but it still gets me every time. This one is Bloor Street at High Park. (I think we're looking east? With the park on the right? That's what the internet faintly whispers, anyway.)

Hmm. I don't have much to say other than that. I can tell you that Bloor Street was named after Joseph Bloor, a brewer who founded the village of Yorkville. He was also one scary-looking motherfucker. And I can tell you that by this point, High Park had already been High Park for about 20 years. The land had belonged to a fellow by the name of John Howard. He's hailed as Toronto's first serious architect: he built the old "lunatic asylum" on Queen West, the old bank building at Yonge and Wellington (which is the Irish Embassy pub now), the row of buildings along King East just west of Church (Victoria Row, which includes the Albany Club, a Conservative Party hangout I'm working on a post about) and, of course, Colborne Lodge, which is where he and his family lived in High Park. As I mentioned in a previous post, he gave the land as a gift to the city in 1876 to be used as a public park on the condition that his family would still get to live there, that the city would keep the park's name, and that no one would ever be allowed to drink alcohol on the grounds. (Sorry dude.) He was also an amateur painter. You come across his artwork all the time when you're digging around into the early history of the city.

Alright! That's all I've got!

Cool Stuff I Saw At Doors Open

St. Lawrence Hall

So! As you are probably very much already aware, it was Doors Open in Toronto this weekend. Which means that I spent the last couple of days running around like a crazy person, seeing as many historically awesome buildings as I could. (Not an easy task when you like sleeping in as much as I do and everything closes by five.) I managed to catch some pretty ridiculously cool stuff, from ballet at St. Lawerence Hall to One King West's giantass bank vault. And I took photos and notes the whole time. Which I now share with you, my lovely readers:

Osgoode Hall

Osgoode Hall has been on the corner of Queen & University, nearly as long as there has been a Queen & University. It was originally built in the 1830s, with lots of additions and subtractions since then (including that iconic black wrough-iron fence). The architect was William Warren Baldwin, a doctor and lawyer who was one of the most important pro-democracy figures in Toronto's early history. He's also the same guy who built the original Spadina House, and had Spadina Avenue carved out of the forest.

Osgoode Hall is also where an escaped slave, Thornton Blackburn, got a job working as a waiter. He used the money he earned there to launch the city's first horse-drawn cab company, which in turn gave him enough money to help other former slaves get on their feet after coming to Toronto through the Underground Railroad. I wrote more about him here.

Today, it's still home to the Law Society of Upper Canada and some of Ontario's highest courts.

Osgoode Hall

Osgoode Hall's atrium was one of the additions, added in the 1870s

The ceiling in the atrium

The floor of the atrium

The overwhelming diversity of the Law Society of Upper Canada, 1932

The Great Library

WWI memorial

One of the very few places that remembers the contribution of the fathers of Canadian democracy: Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine

Robert Baldwin, William Warren's son, was born and raised in Toronto

Baldwin teamed with this guy, Lafontaine, to bring democracy to Canada. More here.

I know John Beverley Robinson and an anti-democratic Family Compact jerk of a judge, but Osgoode Hall's pretty big on him

A Toronto history handbook from the late 1800s

 

Old City Hall

Old City Hall has been towering over the intersection of Queen & Bay since the very end of the 1900s. It was built by another of Toronto's most important architects, E.J. Lennox, the same guy who did Casa Loma, the King Edward Hotel, and the west wing of Queen's Park. It's Old City Hall that he gets the most attention for, though. In large part because of his battles with city council. He went waaaaaaaaaaaay overbudget, spending six times as much as he was supposed to. They retaliated by saying he wasn't allowed to carve his name into the building, like he usually did, but he did anyway. And...

Lennox had the councillors carved into the facade of the building, looking like fools...

...while he added himself looking normal. (The guy with the moustache.)

The huge, spectacular "Union of Commerce & Industry" stained glass window

Fancypants courtroom

The mosaic floor is one of the reasons things went over budget

Angels span the spandrels

 

St. James Cathedral

St. James was the very first church in Toronto, first built in the late 1700s on the same spot (at King & Church) where the cathedral now stands. It was at the centre of city life all the way through the 1800s, and played a huge role in the battle to bring real democracy to Canada. I wrote all about that for Torontoist here.

The first St. James built all the way back in the 17freaking00s

Our first bishop, John Strachan, hero of the War of 1812, hater of democracy

I believe Strachan is buried somewhere beneath this choir

St James has great stained glass, including this WWI memorial

In the doorway to the cathedral, they have John Ridout's headstone. He was killed in a famous duel with Samuel Jarvis, which I wrote about here.

St. Lawrence Hall

Just across the street from St. James Cathedral is St. Lawrence Hall, another building that played a central role in the political and social life of Toronto. It was built in the wake of the Great Fire of 1849, which wiped out the whole neighbourhood. It's where Sir John A. Macdonald and George Brown rallied their political troops in the drive toward Confederation. And former slave/abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass gave a big speech here once at an three-day-long anti-slavery convention which officially declared Canada to be the best destination for refugee slaves.

St. Lawrence Hall at King & Jarvis

Ballet in the Great Hall

Jump!

St. Lawrence Hall just a few years after it opened

The Great Hall ballroom back in the day

The ceiling of the Great Hall is totally awesome

One King West

Now, you probably recognize One King West as the building with the huge fin-shaped condo tower built on top of it on the southwest corner of King & Yonge. But when it originally opened in 1914, it was home to the Dominion Bank (back in its pre-TD days).

One King West

Dowwwwn into the vaults

This was one of the biggest bank vaults in the world

It took 19 horses to pull the 40 ton door

The One King West website calls it "one of the largest and heaviest doors ever built"

The 45 foot ceilings of the Great Banking Hall

The Great Banking Hall has the provincial emblems embedded in the ceiling (except for you, Newfoundland, you took to long to join Confederation)

The Great Banking Hall had a 100 foot teller counter, now the longest bar in Canada

The Church of the Redeemer

The Church of the Redeemer is that one on of the northeast corner of Bloor and Avenue/University. It has been there since 1879, when it opened to serve some of the Anglican residents of the village of Yorkville.

The Church of the Redeemer

The church in the 1890s, when Bloor and University were still dirt roads

The church has amaaaaaaaazing stained glass windows

Lots of the church's peeps died fighting WWI and they've got lots of memorial windows

The church's choir hanging out in 1907

"I Know That My Redeemer Liveth"

City Hall

By the end of the 1950s, Old City Hall wasn't big enough for Toronto anymore. And so a new, modern design was chosen. A slum was level and the current iconic City Hall went up and the new Nathan Phillips Square was created. It all opened in 1965.

There's a cool diorama of the city in City Hall. All the pink buildings are heritage properties.

Our mayor's office. Note the football statue and the photo of Ford's dad hanging with Mike Harris

The very next day, Mayor Ford quit his own challenge three weeks early

Toronto's Park & Rec Department!