Artist: Phillip Woolf, October 1992
Location: 2340 and 2348 Kingston Road Scarborough
The unique “double” mural, painted on facing walls by Phillip Woolf, depicts two eras in the life of Spooner’s Garage. Built in 1926 and rebuilt in 1947, the garage was located on the south side of Kingston Road in Cliffside Village. Owner Art Spooner kept the business alive during the Depression of the 1930s by offering a variety of services such as driving lessons, a restaurant and a 24-hour towing service. For a few years a tame bear kept on the property was a popular local attraction.
Artists: Phil, Jennifer & Jamie Richards, July 1996 Location: 2835 Kingston Road at Eastville Avenue, Scarborough
This commemorative mural depicts passengers boarding a radial car at Stop 17 on the Toronto and York Radial Line, at the junction of St. Clair Avenue and Kingston Road. In the background is Scarborough High School, now R.H. King Academy, which was built in 1922 to accommodate a growing population. A horse-drawn wagon travels leisurely along St. Clair Avenue, while on Kingston Road, a gas-powered truck is temporarily halted by a symbol of Scarborough’s rural heritage.
Doors Open is an annual weekend event to allows free entry to buildings in the Toronto area.
Some of these buildings can be visited anytime with paid entry so we tend to avoid those as they get crowded with cranky kids families taking advantage of the no fee.
We tend to go for the ones that don't normally open to the public.
Sunday we headed out to Fool's Paradise, in Scarborough, an area that we don't often frequent.
I knew nothing about this Canadian artist, Doris McCarthy until Doors Open, but the name of her home attracted my interest.
Doris McCarthy's Fool's Paradise sits atop the Scarborough Bluffs.
McCarthy first visited the property during a sketching trip in November 1939. She was immediately inspired by the landscape views and picturesque setting and purchased the property for $1,250. In 1940, she had a small cottage constructed on the site by local builder Forest Telfer.
Its name is owed to McCarthy's mother, who considered the estate purchase an unnecessary extravagance and always referred to it as her "fool's paradise".
McCarthy's rendition of Fool's Paradise
I became more intrigued by her after this and have found an autobiography at the library and placed it on my wait list.
I found this article in Maclean's. The constant is landscape, which the Calgary-born artist began depicting as a girl growing up in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood and cottaging in Muskoka. A scholarship student at the Ontario College of Art, McCarthy studied with Group of Seven painters, among them J.E.H. MacDonald and Arthur Lismer, who offered her a teaching job at the Toronto Art Gallery and, after she graduated in 1930, a position at Grip, the advertising agency where many of the group worked. As a woman, she was expected to work for nothing. Having none of that, McCarthy took a position teaching art at Central Technical High School, where her students included Harold Klunder, Murray McLauchlan and Joyce Wieland, who said McCarthy inspired her to become an artist.
The school, like many of the era, prohibited women from teaching after they married. “Doris said she would have happily stopped, but it didn’t happen,” says Lynne Wynick of Wynick/Tuck.
I picked out a few of my favourites that I found online. I know she was inspired by The Group of Seven, but I find her paintings to be much more cheerful.
A prolific painter, McCarthy up to the ’70s showed often at galleries attached to department stores, universities and art societies such as the Ontario Society of Artists, of which she became the first female president in 1964. She chose to ignore the discrimination facing women artists, says Wacko: “She thought the best approach was to do the best job you can and don’t waste time whining about it.” McCarthy is not one to mope. When she realized raising a family wasn’t in her future, she forged ahead—teaching, painting and expanding Fool’s Paradise, which she purchased in 1939 and has bequeathed to the Ontario Heritage Foundation for use as an artists’ retreat after her death.
I loved this painting and found an article in which she was quoted as saying that she hoped her nineties would be as exciting as her eighties. It was accompanied by a photo of her, a wizened gingerbread type figure with gnarled arthritic hands standing before a huge canvas.
Never did she define herself as elderly. When looking for a gallery to represent her in the late ’70s, she chose Wynick/Tuck, which had a roster of young artists. “She didn’t want to be with the old guys,” says Wynick. In 1989, at age 79, she received a B.A. in English from the University of Toronto and published the first of three well-received memoirs, which contributed to what friends refer to as the “cult of Doris.” When her publisher wanted to use “old woman” in the title of the third, McCarthy prevailed. “I’m damned if I’m going to be old,” she told the Globe and Mail. The book’s final title: Ninety Years Wise. Fool’s Paradise evolved and grew over McCarthy’s time there, guided by her personal preferences. The one-storey wood frame structure comprises attached wings off the central small studio, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The interior of Fool’s Paradise follows an irregular layout, as wings have been added to the original cottage over the years. The living/dining room has high vaulted ceilings with exposed pine beams.
A large studio has a wood-burning Franklin stove. There are large built-in cabinets for storage of paintings and art supplies. A clever pulley device is in place at either end of the studio that McCarthy constructed to lift her large paintings so she could stand back and view them.
“Fool’s Paradise will continue to be… a place for healing, for laughter, for shared tears, for growing.” – Doris McCarthy (from Doris McCarthy – My Life)
In keeping with McCarthy’s wishes when she donated the property to the Ontario Heritage Trust, the Trust has converted Fool’s Paradise into an Artist-in-Residence Centre. Professional visual artists, musicians, and writers can apply to live and work at this serene and picturesque site. The Centre embraces the multi-disciplinary nature of the arts, strives to demonstrate the positive and restorative influence of landscape and the environment, and fosters excellence among contemporary Canadian artists, musicians, and writers.
We saw this church during Doors Open last weekend. The archivist I spoke to seemed to think the name Norway was because there were a lot of Norwegian people living in the area at the time. But when I looked at the names of the first rectors they didn't strike me as Norwegian nor did most of the names on the graves in the cemetery.
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As we entered.
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Wikipedia provided this information which seemed to make more sense.
St. John the Baptist Norway Anglican Church was founded in 1853. Despite the use of the name "Norway", neither the church nor the cemetery has any connection to the country of Norway or to Norwegian immigrants to Canada; both were established to serve the small community of Norway, Ontario, then a considerable distance from the city of Toronto. The town itself was named after the Norway pine trees native to the area and was amalgamated into Toronto in 1908.
Meetings first began in 1850 and, with the establishment of the parish in 1853, a small wooden schoolhouse was moved here and used as a church. The bell was installed and the church and cemetery consecrated by Bishop Strachan in 1855. Many United Empire Loyalists and other early settlers are buried here. St. John’s founded a number of parishes in East Toronto.
Distinctive features include some of Toronto’s finest McCausland stained glass windows.
Robert McCausland Limited is the oldest stained glass company in the Western Hemisphere. RML is also the longest, continuously owned family company in Canada. Founded in 1856 by Joseph McCausland, an Irish immigrant, the firm has survived five generations.
The Steinway grand piano, retired from Hamilton Place, is on long-term loan from Donald Horsburgh.
The Coat of Arms was found near the location of an old toll gate near Lee Avenue.
The Casavant organ with its three keyboard console was built in the late 1920s and is used to lead the music for worship.
Casavant Frères is a prominent organ building Canadian company in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, which has been building pipe organs since 1879.
I was told by of the guides that this window is based on The Sistine Madonna, one of Raphael's most famous works. The painting takes its name from the church of San Sisto in Piacenza and Raphael painted it as the altarpiece for that church in 1513-1514. The piece was purchased in 1754 by King Augustus III of Saxony for his collection in Dresden. In Germany the painting was very influential, sparking debate on the questions of art and religion.
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Down in the basement there was more memorabilia.
Considering the many times we have driven by this church and cemetery we had no idea of the sheer size!
The land for the cemetery was donated by landowner Charles Coxwell Small. Originally three acres, the cemetery now covers about 35. Over the decades there have been almost 80,000 interments, and over 50,000 gravestones now stand in the cemetery. While attached to an Anglican church, the cemetery is non- denominational.
The cemetery is perched on a large sandy hill which was once one of the large dunes formed by Glacial Lake Iroquois. The sand from this hill was used extensively by the Toronto brickworks, and is thus found in many of the city's older buildings.
