Entrance to the town of Weston, Ontario

ca. 1942, looking northwest on Weston Road click to enlarge

The town of Weston saw its start in 1914. The above photo marks its southern end, probably at St. John's Road (now Clouston Avenue) where the town's Main Street began. I had come across folk who claimed that Weston extended its boundary to Edmund Avenue (one block further south) but when I researched the matter I could only find one attempt by the residents of Edmund Avenue to have this happen and that request was subsequently denied by the Township of York. I had forgotten when this happened and could not locate on my computer the newspaper article that reported it. In a new search today, I found a similar story dating to October 1920.

Of course the residents of Edmund Avenue could have asked again but I deemed it unlikely as I had a 1924 and a 1935 map that still had the St. John's Rd. boundary. In my new search I did find a resolution to all this. On page 34 of the 11 November 1930 Toronto Daily Star was an article on Walter Pollett running for Weston's 1931 mayoralty:

"Mr. Pollett was elected to the [Weston] council a year after he became eligible, since previously his home on Edmund Ave. had been in Mount Dennis. Seven years ago this month a portion of Mount Dennis bounding the southern part of the town of Weston was annexed and Mr. Pollett was one of the most active supporters of this step."

According to this, the boundary expansion happened in November 1923. That 1924 map might have missed the news, being too soon after. I had a close look at the 1935 map and could find no year that was part of the map itself. I now feel that the 1935 may have been a library misidentification.

Looking further, I found a 1923 map of York Township that I had not previously come across. And yes, this map clearly excluded Edmund Avenue from the township:

York Township (1923) click to enlarge

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Take Five (cover)

The Bird

Sixty years ago today, I penned this entry in my then-diary:

Since yesterday I've been writing short poems - pretty good ones - if I do say so myself. It's usually about a person. One I especially like is:

Brother Adrian

When the boys go out to play,
Brother Adrian stayed away.
"Have to study," he just said,
"By tonight I will have read
Books of every type and kind,
For I simply have to find
How in French to write the words,
'Reading books is for the birds!'"

A little context: I was at that time in grade ten at De La Salle College "Oaklands" which was run by Christian Brothers, a Catholic teaching order. Brother Adrian was our then-new-to-us (two weeks prior) French teacher. When I read this doggerel a couple of days ago it brought to mind a Brother who had been nicknamed "the bird" by his students, based supposedly, as suggested by my friend Alfy who also went to De La Salle back then, on his behaviour. Now, neither Alfy nor I have a direct recollection (sixty years can do that) of the bird's identity but it makes sense to me that it might have been Brother Adrian, inspiring the poem's raison d'être by way of its terminal double entendre.

That would indeed have been clever but a little subsequent research suggests that "the bird" was actually Brother Michael (O'Reilly), not to be confused with Brother Michael (Dillon) [the former "junior", the latter, "senior"]. It appears that Michael O'Reilly's three-month stay (5 Sep 1966 - 5 Dec 1966, our home room teacher for the start of grade eleven) was scrubbed from his RIP assignment list. Little wonder. We surely were his class from hell!