Chapter 17 You could look it up
1495 Words
Where do you go to find letters and doodles by Peter Rabbit creator Beatrix Potter? The book General Wolfe was reading the night before he died on the Plains of Abraham? Prints by William Blake? In this city, you just have to visit your local library. Our public library system is the busiest in North America, and 1.3 million Torontonians hold library cards. The most val able book in the system, housed at Toronto Reference Library, is The Birds of America by James Audubon, valued at $2.2 million. Here's where to look for other gems.
Archives of Ontario
Founded in 1803, the Archives of Ontario hold provincial records including Census documents, vital statistics, land records, maps, photos, and memorabilia relating to Ontario people and businesses. They boast that their printed material alone would fill 45 miles of one-foot boxes. Highlights of the collection include original letters from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Florence Nightingale, George Washington, and Friedrich Nietszche.
77 Grenville St., 416-327-1600, archives.gov.on.ca
Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, Toronto Reference Library
Toronto boasts the only special library collection devoted to author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the world's second largest collection of memorabilia relating to his most famous creation: Sherlock Holmes. (In fact, the material is displayed in a room that strangely resembles The Master's Baker Street digs.) And nobody could be more pleased about the collection than The Bootmakers of Toronto (c/o 5 Brownlea Avenue, M9P 2R5), Toronto's avid Sherlockian society. Named for the maker of Sir Henry Baskerville's boots in the famous tale of The Hound of the Baskervilles, the society meets every second month - usually at the library to discuss matters of interest to students of the great detective. A year's
membership costs $25.
789 Yonge St., 416-395-5577, tpl.toronto.on.ca
DOGGIE TALE
Like Black Beauty and Lassie Come Home, the 1893 novel Beautiful Joe, about an abused dog who finds loving treatment, has wrung rivers of tears from young readers. Written as a call for kindness to animals, it was the first Canadian book to sell more than a million copies. Author Margaret Marshall Saunders (who wrote under her middle name in an age that still didn't quite countenance women authors) lived and wrote at 62 Glenowan Road in north Toronto. (By the way, her book has nothing whatsoever to do with the 2000 Sharon Stone film of the same name.)
Canadiana Branch, North York Central Library
This is the jackpot for people who are interested in researching their family history in Ontario. Besides general Canadian historical holdings, the library houses the collections of the Ontario Genealogical Society, the Toronto Division of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Canada, the Canadian Society of Mayflower Descendants, and la Société franco-ontarienne d'histoire et de généalogie de Toronto.
5120 Yonge St., 6th floor, 416-395-5623
City of Toronto Archives
If you've ever seen the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know what the viewing platform at the Toronto Archives looks like. In case you haven't, it's a window in the wall that gives you a sobering view of a cavernous two-storey room crammed with identical brown cardboard boxes, the repository of all things related to running the city. Yes, there's plenty of dull stuff here like council minutes going back to the year dot - but there's also a sensational photo collection, including 40,000 shots taken by Globe and Mail photographers. The research room is always humming with folks checking out TTC records, diaries, and other documents in the collection, whose earliest item is likely the 1792 plan of Toronto Harbour. 255 Spadina Rd., 416-397-5000, city.toronto.on.ca/archives/
AS I SAY, LYING
Young Billy Falkner came to Toronto
from Mississippi in July 1918. He had wanted to be a pilot and fight in the First World War. He first tried to enlist in the U.S. Air Force, but did not meet the height requirement, so he headed north. Hoping to increase his chances, he faked a British accent and changed his name to the more formal-sounding William Faulkner. He was accepted by the Canadian Air Force and was sent to Long Branch for basic training. In September, he was shipped to Wycliffe College on the University of Toronto campus to study engine repair and navigation. Two months later, the war ended.
Faulkner returned home a changed man. Or rather, he returned home pretending to have changed. He had photos of himself in an officer's uniform, even though he was only a cadet. He boasted of solo flights despite never having earned his wings. He even affected a limp and alluded to a mysterious crash landing. War hero or no, young Billy really had honed his talents in Toronto, talents that would serve him well in his later career as a writer of brilliant fiction.
Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, & Fantasy
Judith Merril was an American science fiction writer and editor who came north with the influx of Vietnam War draft dodgers. Our gain! She moved into the notoriously bohemian Rochdale College, along with her formidable sci-fi collection, then groovily named the Spaced Out Library. It has ballooned into a 57,000-item research collection that's especially important for its original art and perishable pulp magazines dating back to the '20s. (The library holds the Fantastic Pulps Show and Sale on the last Saturday of April where die-hard fans can drool over such literary classics as the early editions of Weird Tales, Doc Savage, and Spicy Adventure Stories.)
239 College St. 3rd Floor, 416-393-7748, tpl.toronto.on.ca
Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books
Once upon a time there was a marvelous library with over 70,000 children's books and related items. Many date from the days before there really were books for kids: like "horn books little inscribed plaques for teaching first letters and prayers, tiny, readable "thumb bibles," and the earliest flash cards, from the late 1700s. There are also woodblocks and original illustrations; book-related games, lots of contemporary children's fiction, and a 14th-century vellum illustrated and hand-lettered edition of Aesop's Fables, the oldest book in any Toronto public library. (We know it's there,
and we know it's lovely, because the library happily
showed it to us when we went for a visit.)
239 College St. 4th Floor, 416-393-7753,
tpl.toronto.on.ca
BURIED AFFECTION
Folklore and children's stories may have been her life, but Joan Bodger's personal history was no fairytale. The beloved pioneering story collector and teller suffered great losses through illness and death in her immediate family, but she was never daunted, and shone as a beacon of wisdom and humour to her many friends right to the end of her life. Apparently typical of her courage, inventiveness, and loyalty is the story of how she buried her husband Alan Mercer. As he was nearing the end of his life, the couple decided that his ashes should rest in some Toronto cultural institution. Thus, when the Lillian H. Smith Library (destined as the home of the Osborne Collection of children's books) was under construction, Bodger perhaps on the theory that it's easier to get forgiveness than permission-made her own, quite unofficial arrangements to bypass the construction barricades and personally deposit her late husband's ashes in the foundations, where they rest to this day.
Parkdale Library
A particularly good collection relating to Black history and Caribbean Canadian culture, due in large measure to the pioneering efforts of the revered Dr. Rita Cox. 1303 Queen St. W., 416-393-7686, tpl.toronto.on.ca
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
Half a million books and other documents, including a 3,800-year-old cuneiform tablet, 14th-century cabbalistic works, Galileo's handwritten notebooks, and the extremely rare (11 known copies) "Wicked Bible," with the typo "thou shalt commit adultery," as well as maps, theatre programmes, chapbooks, and prints. And if you have a legitimate research project, they'll encourage you to handle almost anything in the collection - with your
bare hands!
120 St. George St., 416-978-5285,
library.utoronto.ca/fisher
The United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives
Housed in this quiet, medieval-style building are the records of that most Canadian of denominations, the United Church of Canada, as well as the churches that were merged to form it, and documents relating to the history of Victoria University. 73 Queen's Park Cres. E., 416-585-4563, vicu.utoronto.ca/archives/archives.htm
Urban Affairs Library
A companion and complement to the City of Toronto Archives, this sunny, airy reading room houses books, directories, planning documents, and other materials related to the building of the city. Metro Hall, 55 John St., 416-395-5577, tpl.toronto.on.ca
ANNE OF HIGH PARK
The name of Lucy Maud Montgomery is virtually synonymous with Prince Edward Island. But the Anne of Green Gables author actually lived out her last years in Toronto. In March 1935, the Montgomery family moved into a house she ominously called Journey's End, at 210 Riverside Drive, not far from High Park. Splitting time between writing and caring for her husband, who was in fragile mental health, Montgomery soon fell ill herself. She had a nervous breakdown in 1940 and never wrote another word. She died in 1942.
- Writer
