Tuesday Treasures

 Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

Travel Tuesday

Our World Tuesday

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My Corner of the World

Postcards

Timeless Thursdays is hosted by Stevenson Que

Toronto ON

Click here for a history of Toronto lane naming and a list of other lanes. That post is a work in progress, and gets updated frequently.

Last week's excursion provided a lot of fodder for this category!!

Darling Lane - after Darling Terrace at 562-566 Parliament which was built in 1877 by William Darling. 

Just beside the lane is a community garden.

Flos Jewell Williams 1893 - 1970
A Writer with a Passion for Western Canada

Flos Jewell Williams was born in Toronto  and attended Jarvis Collegiate and Toronto Normal School. She began teaching in Bobcaygeon in the Kawartha Lakes District, which established the setting for her first novel. After teaching for many years in Toronto, she married and moved to Calgary. As she was separated from her friends and family, she began to write. She submitted, The Judgement of Solomon, to the Hodder & Stoughton Canadian contest and won a prize of $2,500. This came as a big surprise, as she had not previously written.
While living in Calgary, she raised her twin sons and contributed poetry, short stories and articles to Canadian periodicals, to qualify for membership in the Canadian Women’s Press Club.

In 1949 she won second prize in the Ryerson book contest for Fold Home, set in the Cariboo district of British Columbia.

Her novels dramatized the experiences of immigrants building a new life in the harsh Canadian rural environment.

Flos Jewell Williams was one of the best known women writers of Western Canada.

 Clara Lane – after the daughter of the Venerable Samuel J. Boddy, Ms. Clara Boddy was an original house owner on Aberdeen Avenue. The Boddy Estate lands were subdivided and sold for housing development along Aberdeen Avenue by Ms. Boddy.

Reverend Boddy Lane - after Samuel Johnson Boddy, D.C.L. who was born in 1826 and who later lived at 21 Winchester Street. Boddy was a reverend who immigrated to Canada from England in 1858. Having held the position of Assistant Minister of St. James Cathedral, he set forth to establish a new parish in 1863. 

St. James Cathedral

St. James- The-Less afforded Boddy an interim location near Parliament and Wellesley Streets until the Anglican parish of St. Peter’s was created in 1866. Reverend Boddy opened the facility and was named rector. Reverend Boddy can be credited for sending a representative to Chicago to study the street paving methods of the day and for seeing to it that streets in the area of Cabbagetown were paved for the first time. Upon his death in 1905, Boddy had held the position of Archdeacon of York for nearly 25 years. 

COULD NOT FIND REVEREND BODDY LANE

Ishbel Lane – after Lady Aberdeen, born Ishbel Mari Majoribanks, and wife of John Cambell Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, Governor General of Canada 1893-98. 

Raised in Scotland, in 1877 Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks married Lord Aberdeen, who was Governor General of Canada from 1893 to 1898. A formidable and energetic person, she devoted her life to promoting social causes and served for years as president of the International Council of Women. In Canada she founded the National Council of Women, helped establish the Victorian Order of Nurses and headed the Aberdeen Association, which distributed literature to settlers. Lady Aberdeen later organized the Red Cross Society of Scotland and the Women's National Association of Ireland. She died at Aberdeen, Scotland.

Neutral Lane - after the First Nations tribe of people who shared with other tribes in the ownership of the land. In 1871, approximately 28,484 Native people lived in the area. 

Dr. Rowena Hume, M.D. 1877 - 1966
A Founder of Women’s College Hospital
Rowena Grace Douglas Hume was born in Galt, Ontario, the youngest of 12 children. She was a graduate of Galt Collegiate Institute, and University of Trinity College. She took post-graduate studies in England and the United States before returning to Canada to take a position at the Ontario Medical College for Women.

Her career was exceptional, having lectured in Pathology and Bacteriology, she was Assistant in Anatomy, Ontario Medical College for Women, from 1902 – 1906. In 1911 she became a founder of Women’s College Hospital (she was its first president when it opened in 1911), and its first Chief of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, a position she held for twenty years.

A pioneer of planned parenthood programs, she formed the Birth Control Clinic, the first in Canada, in Hamilton, Ontario. It opened March 3, 1932, and Doctor Rowena Hume was the first doctor in attendance.

We came across the plaque for the birth control clinic in Hamilton a few weeks ago. She is not mentioned on the plaque...

She was also actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, the Salvation Army’s Harbour Light Centre, and the Fred Victor Mission. After retiring, she ran a private practice in Toronto.

On October 2, 1966, Dr. Hume was found dead in her house on Carlton Street. She had been murdered.
Deputy police chief Jim Noble’s (1924-2003) obituary gives us interesting insights in the arrest in Dr. Hume’s case (Noble was the officer who arrested the murderer):

“in one of many infamous cases that he handled, Noble solved the murder of an 89-year-old female doctor, Rowena Hume, who was viciously beaten to death by a Salvation Army derelict whom she had hired to do a few odd jobs. Two days after the murder, having followed a series of clues, Noble nabbed the suspect on a downtown street; the man blurted out a confession almost instantly.”