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Urban Toronto adds a new weekly feature today: Heritage Toronto Mondays. We have partnered with Heritage Toronto to capture a moment in Toronto's past. On a weekly basis, we will both be highlighting a historic photo of the city's people, places and events, and will be telling the stories behind them. Many thanks to both Gary Switzer of MOD Developements and Maya Bilbao for putting together the photos and research. This week's photo:
The Christie Street hospital was established as the Toronto Military Orthopaedic Hospital. Located just north of Dupont, the Christie Street Hospital was well known in Toronto, providing care to veterans of the Boer War, the Fenian Raids and the First and Second World Wars. Following the end of World War Two the hospital became too crowded, leading to the development of Sunnybrook Hospital in 1948. For a time beginning in the 1920s, patients of the Toronto Military Orthopaedic Hospital who were deemed incurable were taken over to the Toronto Islands. Accompanied by a police officer and nurse, this patient is being transported by wooden cart to the Lakeside Hospital. Located just a stone's throw from the water's edge on Lakeshore Avenue, the Hospital was on the grounds of the Lakeside Home for Little Children. Facing west over the expanse of Lake Ontario, Lakeside Home was established in the 1880's as the summer convalescent home for the Hospital for Sick Children. Rebuilt several times, Lakeside Home operated as convalescent hospital for children up to 1927. Before the children left the Island for a new convalescent hospital north of the city and also after they left, patients from the Christie Street Hospital benefited from the Islands nurturing breezes, away from their hospital life for two weeks during the summer months. Sources Plaque re Christie Street Veteran's Hospital More than an Island, Sally Gibson, passim p. 174*** Lost Toronto, William Dendy, p. 29 City of Toronto Directories, Toronto Reference Library 1925-1930
2010-05-10 00:52:10
