UK Tour Preview: The Ancient Church Where The Simcoes Got Hitched

This is the Church of St. Mary & St. Giles. It's in the middle of the English countryside. To get there, you have to take the train west from London for about three hours — all the way across the country, out into the rolling hills of Devon. Then you start walking, west some more, along dirt lanes that curve through the green of farmers' fields. An hour later, you'll be in the small village of Buckerell. That's where you'll find this little church, which has been standing on this spot so long that no one is entirely sure when it was built. Probably in the early 1300s. That's back in the days of the Crusades, not long after Robin Hood, so long ago that medieval jousting was still a new fad. At that same time, faaaaaar to the west across the Atlantic, the area around Toronto was home to vast forests and cornfields and to the villages of the First Nations. It would be a few more centuries before the first European made the long trip across the ocean and up the St. Lawrence to the north shore of Lake Ontario. And another two centuries after that before Toronto was founded.

The man who founded it — John Graves Simcoe — used to live in the hills around this church. That was back in the 1700s. In fact, if you visit the church today, you'll find a memorial to Simcoe's godfather inside. His name was Admiral Graves; he was the fellow in charge of the British navy in North America during the earliest stages of the American Revolution. His godson would end up being a hero of that war — as the commander of the Queen's Rangers, John Graves Simcoe brought new, guerrilla-style techniques to the British army, like insisting that his men be allowed to wear forest green coats instead of the usual bright red.

After the Revolution, Simcoe stayed with his godfather for a while — Hembury Fort House was just a couple of kilometers up the road from this church. That's where Simcoe first met the niece of Admiral Graves. Her name was Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim. Her father had been a soldier, too. He fought with General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham and died just a few months before Elizabeth was born: during a war with France sparked by the French Revolution. Her mother died, too, in childbirth, so Elizabeth split her time with relatives while she was growing up. Sometimes, she stayed at her parents' old house near the Welsh border; sometime she stayed with her uncle at Hembury Fort House. So that's where she was when she first met Simcoe, and where they fell in love, taking long walks through the countryside. They were married here, at this very church, in 1782. They bought a nearby estate. And a few years later, when Simcoe was named the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, they boarded a ship to Canada on their way to found Toronto.

The Church of St. Mary & St. Giles is one of the places I'll be visiting on the Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour. I'll leave copies of my dreams for the Simcoes there, along with other nearby Simcoe- and Toronto-related historical sites. I'll also be writing a few posts about the connections between our city and those few green kilometers in the middle of the English countryside. But I need your help to make it happen. You can support my Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign here. And you can read more posts previewing some of the spots I'll visit on the tour here.

Indiegogo Campaign Update! Only Two Weeks Left!

Well, it's been a little more than four weeks since the launch of the Toronto Dreams Project's Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign. Which means there's a little less than two weeks left to go. The whole thing is in support of a UK Tour. I'll be leaving copies of more than a dozen different dreams at Toronto-related historical sites in England — and hopefully in Wales and Scotland as well. For instance: at the spot where Sir John A. Macdonald caught on fire during the negotiations over Confederation; the chapel in the middle of the English countryside which is officially part of the province of Ontario; and the swanky London hotel where Mary Pickford caused a riot during her honeymoon with Douglas Fairbanks. I'll also use the trip as a way of telling stories about how our history is connected to history of the United Kingdom. You'll be able to follow along on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and I'll be writing blogposts, too. In fact, I've already started with some of the posts as a way of previewing the tour and plugging the campaign. You can check them out here.

But to make it all happen, I still need your help. It looks like I'll be falling short of my ambitious total, but that just means every little bit helps all that much more: another dream I can leave, another village I can visit, another story I can tell.

You can contribute to the campaign here — or share it on Facebook or Twitter. As a thank you, for every donation of $20 or more, you'll get one or more of the dreams I leave on the other side of the pond. Thank you SO much to everyone who has already lent their support!

Dream 12 "John Rolph's Beard" (John Rolph, 1867)

John Rolph dreamed that there were people living in his beard. They were tiny pioneers, so small that he didn’t even notice them at first. By the time he did, there was a whole little village of them. He could just make out the church steeple, no bigger than a needle, sticking up from between his grey hairs. When it was quiet, he could hear the soft hum of the market square. And on some evenings, wisps of chimney smoke drifted up toward his nose, whispering aromas of boiled potatoes and venison stew.

He grew fond of his little villagers; proud of them even. So it was bittersweet when one night a tiny mayor climbed down out of the beard, struck out across an expanse of pillow and arrived, safe but exhausted, at John Rolph’s right ear.

“Sir,” the little mayor said as he caught his breath, his voice the faintest murmur, “We demand to be free.”

It took only a moment. John Rolph’s scissors sliced clean through his beard. Then he carried it carefully outside, down to the lake, and set it gently upon the grass. As the bells of St. James Cathedral rang out twelve times, miniature fireworks flashed scarlet, blue and gold, puffs of magic dust sparkling in the midnight air.

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This is one of more than a dozen dreams that I'll be taking on The Toronto Dream Project's UK Tour. I'll leave copies of it in Rolph's hometown of Thornbury and share the story of how he was chosen to become the first President of Canada by William Lyon Mackenzie. You can help make it happen by supporting my Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign, which you can check out here.

Explore more Toronto Dreams Project postcards here.

UK Tour Preview: Sir John A.'s Posh London Gentlemen's Club

This is The Athenaeum Club. It's right in the very heart of London. The park outside Buckingham Palace is just a block away. So is Trafalgar Square. 10 Downing Street is about 500 meters from the front door. It was founded all the way back in the 1820s as one of the most prestigious gentlemen's clubs in the world. Over the years, its members have included some of the most famous and influential writers, artists, politicians and thinkers on the planet: Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Duke of Wellington, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Michael Farraday, Sir Walter Scott... the list goes on and on. It's ridiculous. In 2002, they even got around to not being completely patriarchal dicks about everything, finally allowing women to join the club.

During the winter of 1862-63, John A. Macdonald became an honourary member. He had recently stepped down as the premier of the Province of Canada, spending his winter out of power on a trip to England. The first whiffs of Confederation were already in the air, but they would get stronger after his return to Canada. Over the course of the next few months, he won back power, then lost it again, then won it again, then lost it again. The legislature was at a standstill. Something had to change. Meanwhile, the American Civil War was threatening to turn the United States into an aggressive military power and Britain was becoming less and less interested in protecting their North American empire. So Macdonald helped to lead the struggle for a new, bigger nation of Canada. Within a few years, he'd become our first Prime Minister. And on his trips to London, he'd visit the Athenaeum.

By the end of the century, Toronto would get our very own Athenaeum Club. It was built on Church Street just south of Shuter by the firm of Denison & King (Denison was the same architect behind the bank-that's-now-a-Starbucks on the north-east corner of Queen & Bathurst and the little church on the islands, St. Andrew's-by-the-Lake). But Toronto's Athenaeum Club didn't last long. In the very early 1900s, it was turned into pretty much the exact opposite of an exclusive club for rich guys: it became the Labor Temple. For the next six decades, it was at the centre of organized labour in Toronto. Today, the facade is still there — it stands in front of (surprise!) a condo tower.

Another private gentlemen's club in Toronto would play a much bigger role for Sir John A.: the Albany Club on King Street East. In fact, it was founded with the express purpose of winning Torontonian support for Macdonald. I wrote about it in my post "Where Conservatives Have Been Getting Drunk For 130 Years." It's still there today. It's the only pirvate club officially tied to a political party left in all of Canada.

Soon, I'm hoping to visit The Athenaeum Club myself, in order to leave a dream there for Sir John A. Macdonald as part of The Toronto Dreams Project. You can help make it a reality by contributing to my Indiegogo campaign in support of a UK Tour.

You'll find more posts exploring the connections between the history of Toronto and the history of the United Kingdom here.

Toronto's Greatest Second Baseman Ever (Isn't Who You Think It Is)

When you ask Google who the greatest second baseman of all-time was, a few names pop up. Rogers Hornsby is a popular pick, a star for the St. Louis Cardinals back in the 1920s and '30s. Some people say it was the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson or the Reds' Joe Morgan or the great Eddie Collins who played for the A's and White Sox. Roberto Alomar's name comes up, too — the Blue Jays Hall of Famer is easily one of the best ever. But he's not the greatest second baseman to ever wear a Toronto uniform. That honour goes to the man who played second base for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1917.

His name was Napoleon Lajoie and he was very, VERY good. No one in the history of the American League has ever had a higher batting average than he did in 1901 — he hit .426 for Philadelphia that season. He led the league in home runs and RBIs, too; one of the few players to ever win the batting "Triple Crown". That year, he stuck out only nine times, which is just plain silly. And it wasn't a fluke. By the end of his career, he'd become one of the first players in baseball history to collect 3,000 hits.

Modern stats love him, too. By Wins Above Replacement (which tries to judge a player's total value), Lajoie is ranked as the third most valuable second baseman in the history of the game — the 19th greatest player of all-time. Better than Joe DiMaggio or Pete Rose or Mark McGwire. He was one of the first players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"Lajoie was one of the most rugged players I ever faced," Cy Young once said. "He'd take your leg off with a line drive, turn the third baseman around like a swinging door and powder the hand of the left fielder." Sports writers said he was so effortlessly graceful that he made even chewing tobacco look good. He was so dedicated to the craft of hitting that he never went to the movies or read a newspaper on a train for fear of hurting his eyes. As a player-manager in Cleveland, Lajoie was so popular they literally named the team after him: they became the Cleveland Napoleons. Naps for short.

Even as a grizzled veteran at the age of 38, Lajoie was still great: he was worth 5 Wins Above Replacement that year (better than anyone on the 2013 Blue Jays). But after that, his skills began to seriously decline. For a while, he kept playing anyway, chasing the dream of his first championship — one had slipped away when he was cut by an opposing player's spikes, got blood poisoning and nearly lost his foot; another in a heartbreaking loss on the final day of the season. But at the age of 42, after 21 years in the Major Leagues, age had finally caught up with him. Lajoie called it quits having never won a pennant.

Hanlan's Point Stadium, 1918ish

That's when he came to Toronto. He might not have been good enough to play second base in the Majors anymore, but he had a lot of knowledge to pass down to younger players. And so, he signed on as the manager for one of the most storied franchises in the history of the Minor Leagues: The Toronto Maple Leafs.

By then, our city already had a long history of success on the baseball field. Toronto's first championship came all the way back in the 1880s, at beautiful Sunlight Park overlooking the eastern slope of the Don Valley (just south of Queen). The Maple Leafs were founded soon after that, in the 1890s; before long, they'd moved to a new spot on the Islands. When an early, wooden version of the stadium burned down, they got a gorgeous new ballpark. Hanlan's Point Stadium was hailed as the biggest in the Minor Leagues when it first opened in 1910: it boasted more than 17,000 seats. Over the next few years, it witnessed two more championships and the very first professional home run by a young pitcher named Babe Ruth. His blast soared over the fence into the lake. 

Now, Hanlan's Point would be home to Lajoie. And it wasn't his first connection to Canada: his parents were both Québecois; his older siblings had been born there, growing up on a farm outside Montreal. Lajoie signed on as the Leafs manager, responsible for signing and trading players, as well as decisions on the field. He also said he'd play "a little" second base. But that's not the way things turned out.

The old second baseman had slowed down considerably, but he still had something left in the tank. Against the younger, less experienced, less talented minor leaguers, Lajoie thrived. He hit clean up for the Leafs that year, and did a hell of job of it. He led the league with a .380 average, racked up a league-leading 221 hits and 39 doubles. At one point, he put together a 21-game hitting streak. And he did it all in the face of adversity: his fear of water made the ferry to the Islands an ordeal; the freezing temperatures of an usually cold Canadian spring meant games were being cancelled as late as Victoria Day that year; and with the First World War raging overseas, some players were being drafted halfway through the season. Others rebelled against Lajoie's leadership; one pitcher just up and left the team. Lajoie got suspended twice for arguing with umpires. But he was still so popular that everywhere the Maple Leafs went, opposing teams held "Lajoie Days" and showered him with gifts. He was playing so well in Toronto that Major League teams started showing an interest again. That summer, both the Washington Senators and the Chicago Cubs offered him a chance to come back to the Majors, but he turned them both down. He wanted to finish what he'd started in Toronto.

The 1917 Toronto Maple Leafs (enlarge)

After a slow start to the season, the Maple Leafs were right in the thick of the pennant race by the end of August — battling it out with Baltimore, Providence and Newark over the last two weeks of the season. Lajoie led the way as the manager and as the team's star player. He went 6 for 8 in one double-header against Buffalo, belted two home runs in an extra innings win against Montreal, and then went 6 for 8 again in another double-header on the last weekend of the season. "Lajoie was himself worth four ordinary players," the Globe gushed. With two games left to play on the very final day, the Toronto Maple Leafs were in the driver's seat: if they won both games, they'd finish in first place.

In the opening game, it was their ace — Harry Thompson — who carried the team. He shut out the Rochester Hustlers over the course of nine innings, only giving up three hits on the way to his 25th victory of the season. The Maple Leafs won 1-0.

The second game started off as a tense, scoreless battle over the first five innings. Then Lajoie — who was playing first base that day — doubled two men home. It proved to be all they needed. Toronto went on to win 5-1. It was all over. And at first base, Lajoie was the last to touch the ball.

"A broad grin overspread Lajoie's features as he took the throw from Murray to record the 27th out," the Globe reported. And that grin came with good reason. After more than 20 years in baseball, he'd finally done it. Napoleon Lajoie had won a pennant.

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Top photo: Napoleon Lajoie in 1908 (via Wikipedia). Photo of the 1917 Maple Leafs via David L. Freitz.

David L. Freitz tells the story of the 1917 Toronto Maple Leafs in his book, Napoleon Lajoie: King of Ballplayers, which you read excerpts from on Google Books here. Henry Grayson raved about him in 1943 here. And he gets a few paragraphs in the book I first learned about this story from, Baseball's back in town: From the Don to the Blue Jays A history of baseaball in Toronto by Louis Cauz. You can check out Napoleon Lajoie's stats on Baseball Reference here. Or the stats for the 1917 Toronto Maple Leafs here. Check out Hanlan's Point Stadium on Wikipedia here. Spacing's got a post about it here, along with a photo old the old wooden ballpark. Napoleon Lajoie's page is here.

I used the FanGraph's version of WAR for this piece — there's another version created by Baseball Reference, which still ranks Lajoie as the third-best second baseman ever, but drops him a couple of slots lower on the all-time player list. Bill James, the father of modern baseball statistics, talks about some of the problems in assessing Lajoie's value by WAR here. Mostly, there are problems accurately determining the value of his defensive contribution, though that's a relatively small portion of his overall contribution — and one which may have already been accounted for since James wrote about it.

You can read my post about Babe Ruth's famous Toronto home run here. And my post about Toronto's first championship baseball team, in 1887, here. I wrote about the bizarre tradition of Donkey Baseball here. And there's a photo of folks playing baseball in Riverdale Park in 1914 here. Watch Joe Carter win the World Series here. Or learn about the next stadium the Maple Leafs called home here.

The Long-Lost Chestnut Trees of University Avenue

It's hard to believe, but this is a photo of University Avenue. Today, this stretch of road is "Hospital Row," lined with concrete and glass. But this is what it looked like in 1896. That's Queen Park off in the distance. The Legislative Building had only recently been opened, but the land — previously part of the University of Toronto — had been leased by the Province all the way back in the 1850s.

They turned it into a public park. It was opened by the Prince of Wales, the guy would who later become King Edward VII (the same King Eddie our hotel is named after, and who now sits astride his horse as a statue in the park). About 30 years before that, 500 horse chestnut trees were planted along University Avenue and a grassy promenade was built down the centre of the street. It became one of Toronto's grandest avenues. Even Charles Dickens was impressed when he came to town.

So by the time this photo was taken, the chestnut trees of University Avenue had already been there for something like 70 years. But soon, the street would change. Toronto General Hospital moved to this strip in 1913. And over the next six decades, it was joined by many more, including Princess Margaret, Mount Sinai and Sick Kids. The trees have been replaced with concrete, pavement and glass. Only a thin sliver of green survives along the island that still cuts the avenue in two.

As Shawn Micallef points out in Stroll, University's grand avenue-ish-ness echoes the royal promenades on the other side of the Atlantic, like the Long Walk outside Windsor Castle. That's one of the places I'm planning on leaving dreams as part of the Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour. One of the most interesting figures from our city's past — Colonel FitzGibbon — spent the final forgotten years of his life at Windsor Castle, having fought the Americans in the War of 1812 (he's the guy Laura Secord warned) and William Lyon Mackenzie in the Rebellion of 1837 (he took the threat seriously when no one else would, organizing the city's defenses despite the Lieutenant Governor's orders to do nothing). FitzGibbon is still there, in fact, buried on the castle grounds at St. George's Chapel along with many of the most famous kings and queens from England's past.

I've got a new dream for him all ready to go. You can help me leave copies of it at Windsor Castle, St. George's Chapel and along the Long Walk by contributing to my Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign — and you can get your own copy too.

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That statue of King Edward VII used to stand in another park on the other side of the world. I told the story of how it came to Toronto from India here. You can learn more about FitzGibbon and the Rebellion of 1837 in my post here. Mary Pickford grew up in a house on the east side of University Avenue just a few years before this photo was taken. I told her story here. I also posted another old photo of the tree-lined street from 1907 here.

blogTO has a bunch more old University Avenue photos in a post by Derek Flack here. That's where I first found a copy of this photo. Canadian Tree Tours has a bit more info about the horse chestnut trees here. And you can find the relevant excerpt from Shawn Micallef's Stroll on Google Books here. There's a short history of University Avenue and Queen's Park here.

UK Tour Preview: The Birthplace of Doctor Who

This is the BBC Television Centre. It first opened on Wood Lane in London all the way back in 1960. It was one of the very first buildings in the world built specifically to make television. And while the BBC stopped using it last year, it's been designated as a protected heritage site by the British government. The architecture is iconic, with a circular "doughnut" and a round courtyard — they say the frustrated architect went to a pub, drew a question mark on an envelope, and then realized the question mark was the perfect shape. What happened inside, however, is even more remarkable than the building itself. Many of the greatest shows in the history of television were shot right here: Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Top of the Pops, Monty Python's Flying Circus...

But for Torontonians, this building is particularly remarkable because it's where our own Sydney Newman first came up with the idea for Doctor Who. He spent most of the 1960s working right here as the Head of Drama for the BBC — famous for the radical new Canadian ideas he brought with him from his time at the NFB and the CBC. When the network was looking for a new show to fill a troublesome timeslot on Saturday afternoon, Newman suggested a science-fiction show about a time-travelling old man. Then, he put together a groundbreaking young team — including the BBC's first female producer and first Indian-born director — to make the show a reality. Within weeks of the airing of the first episode, the show was a hit. Fifty years later, it's still quite literally the most-loved drama on British television.

I told the full story of Newman's career and the birth of Doctor Who in a recent post; he'll soon be getting his own dream as part of the Toronto Dreams Project. I'm planning on leaving it at the BBC Television Centre as well as other Doctor Who-related sites in London and Wales (including the former location of Lime Grove, the studio where the first episode was shot). You can help me get there by contributing to the Indiegogo campaign in support of the Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour (or by sharing it on Facebook or Twitter).

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Photo via the BBC.