The Junction & Junction Triangle

The Junction is one of the top requested neighbourhoods for the podcast... and it's also been the hardest to write. 

Let's get right into it. If you're walking in person, head over to the pedestrian bridge between Dundas Street West and the Railpath. If you're at home, sit back and relax.

For any new listeners, I'll take this moment to tell you a little bit about me in the podcast. But if you know the stuff already, skip ahead about a minute.

So, about me. I'm your host, Ashley McDonough. I go by she/her pronouns and I'm from a mostly Irish and French settler background. I've lived in Toronto for about eight years and before that I lived in Montreal and Ottawa. I am not a historian, or journalist, or a scholar- just someone who enjoys spending a lot of my free time learning about the city.

About the podcast. Each episode is designed to be a walking tour that you can enjoy from home or out in person. There are 30 seconds of ambiance between each stop. These are recordings from when I did the walk myself. If that's not your thing, you can always press the Skip 30 seconds button to get to the next stop. This podcast is created on, and tells the stories of, things that happened on the traditional land of the Huron Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Mississaugas of the credit. Today, Toronto is home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and is within the territory of the Dish With One Spoon Treaty, which means that it is our shared responsibility to take care of it. An important thing to think about on these walks.

Now let's get to today's episode.

We are now standing on the pedestrian bridge looking over a kingdom of railways. And by that I mean there's maybe three railways? This particular set of railways is called the Georgetown Rail Corridor. There's going to be a lot of railway and Train Talk today. But don't worry, it'll be just the right amount. But before that, let's talk about what was here way before the railways were even a fleeting thought in settler minds.

The Junction area was on an important Portage route to a Seneca village located at what is now called Baby Point. It's spelled like "baby" (B-A-B-Y) but according to its namesake, James Baby, it's pronounced "Babby"- which sounds like the kind of thing someone named "Baby" would say, in my opinion. Not only did he set up his home on this piece of land, but he was also a known enslaver. So he really is the picture of a shitty colonizer.

The first settler to own land specifically in the Junction area was named John Scarlett. He owned the stretch of land from Keele to the Humber River north of Dundas and called his estate Runnymede. Further south by Annette St., William C. Keele's estate included a farm that he used to form a horse racing track. These two properties were the main points of interest in the early to mid-1800s. But in the 1880s, things started heating up.

Scarlett sold some of his land to the Credit Valley Railway later acquired by Canada Pacific, which ran and still runs pretty parallel to Dundas. But a couple blocks north and east of Keele, a number of railways were laid down connecting in a somewhat diamond shape, forming what is called a junction.

At first there were smaller railways with names like the Ontario and Quebec railway, the Northern Railway, the Toronto Grey and Bruce railway, but over time, they got taken over by CP as well. The Grand Trunk Railway, which connected Ontario and Quebec to the States, also messed around a little bit in the area, but they got acquired by the Canadian National Railway which still operates today.

Nowadays that junction of train tracks is called the West Toronto Diamond and it connects the GO Transit Kitchener line, the UP express to the airport, Via Rail, and, still, the CP railway across Toronto.

So that's how the area got its name. The arrival of all of these railways made it a desirable location for factories and businesses... and homes for the owners and workers of these factories and businesses.

Enter Daniel Webster Clendenan, who recognized this great real estate opportunity right away. He bought the Keele estate and subdivided the land (including the race course) into residential lots, advertising it as the West Toronto Junction neighbourhood. He remained a prominent figure in the neighbourhood, which eventually developed into its own village separate from Toronto, and he was the mayor. We'll talk about him later- both in his capacity as mayor and as an outcast of the Junction community. But for now, let's go back to present day and onto our next stop.

This bridge takes you to the eastern side of the railway to a path aptly named the rail path. It's here for pedestrians and cyclists and runners etc. It has multiple openings onto side streets in the Junction Triangle area which we're headed to now. We won't actually be walking on the Railpath, unfortunately, since we are heading to 371 Wallace, which is the street near the bottom of the stairs of the bridge. See you there in 30 seconds.

We are currently in the Junction Triangle. The Junction Triangle is a triangular piece of land bordered by a railway to the north, Dundas Street West to the south, a railway to the east, and the Railpath to the west. It became populated around the same time as the Junction since both were home to factories and manufacturing plants. Their stories have a lot in common and they overlap a little bit, which is why I put them together. While the Junction had a mix of workers' housing as well as the fancy houses owned by factory owners. The Junction Triangle had a bit more of just the workers' housing. Being near the factory you worked at was a huge plus. If you were a newcomer with no connections to the city, the Junction/ Junction Triangle was one of the places you could find cheap rooming houses and also be near job options. With time that brought community centers, churches, schools, all of which cohabitated with factories. This was problematic at times, pollution was a huge problem, as you can imagine. And there were a few incidents where the mixed use neighborhood really didn't play out too well.

If you look at 371 Wallace, you'll see a four story brick building with a gate that says "Wallace Station Lofts". For decades, this was actually a glue factory named Nacan. To be specific, they manufactured adhesives, resins, starches, and various chemicals. So, lots of great words for glue.

One April day in 1982, nearby residents and fellow factories- including Glidden, a paint factory that was right across the street (we'll talk about them in a minute)- all reported a horrible smell in the area and accused Nacan of improper disposal of chemicals. That sounds like a very specific accusal, but they were right! A worker at Nacan had miscalculated materials and ended up with an excess of a certain chemical, and to cover his ass, he poured it into the city sewer. That's something Homer Simpson would do, I feel like.

The next morning, the city was inundated with calls from residents panicking about the smell suddenly coming from the sewers and even in their basements. It makes me so uncomfortable to think about how close basements are to the sewage system. I've never thought about that before. I'm really sorry if you're listening to this in a basement right now.

Three schools were shut down and seven people had to be hospitalized because of the effects from the fumes.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take long before another sewage mix up happens. The following year. Glidden Paints-the factory that complained about Nacan- left two valves open on a tank which caused an overflow of 2000 litres (!) of flammable liquid vinyl to spill out into the sewers. A number of households in the area had to evacuate because of the fumes.

I can't help but imagine a petty drama between the two factories and if I can't gossip about something that happened 40 years ago at a glue factory then what is this podcast even for?!

Alright, let's walk back towards the Railpath. Turn right right before the Railpath on Sousa Mendes Street and keep walking to our next stop at the corner of Sousa Mendes and Ruskin, right before Sousa Mendes slightly curves and becomes Edwin Ave. It's about a three minute walk but you'll hear from me in about 30 seconds.

If you look at the southwest corner you'll see a newer building called the George Chuvalo Community Neighbourhood Centre. In the 1960s, George Chuvalo was one of the world's top 10 heavyweight boxers. George's parents were Croatian immigrants who worked in slaughterhouses in the Junction, and like many workers throughout the 1900s, their home was also in the Junction area. So George grew up here!

One of the most notable fights of George's career was his 1966 fight against Muhammad Ali at the Maple Leaf Gardens. If you've listened to the Queen and Ossington episode, you might remember me mentioning that fight because Ali practiced for it at a gym that used to be on Ossington. Ali won the fight but afterwards he was quoted as saying Chuvalo was the "toughest guy I ever fought". He retired in 1979 but is still a local celebrity to this day.

Unfortunately, he found himself in the news for a series of family tragedies in the late 80s and early 90s. I'll elaborate, but content warning for death and suicide, so feel free to jump ahead about 30 seconds.

First in 1985, his son, Jesse, took his life and eight years later, another son, Georgie, died from an overdose. Four days after that, his wife, Lynn, took her life, and three years later another son, Steven, died from an overdose. That's a lot of tragedies to happen in such a short period of time and so many children that he saw pass away. Following this, George became a community advocate to help Canadian youth with substance abuse problems.

In 2019, the city funded the build of this community center, which of course was named after him. George and his son, Mitch, attended the opening. The center is run by the Christie Ossington Neighborhood Center and its programming has a special interest in supporting LGBTQ2S+ initiatives.

One last thing before we move on. Across the street at the northwest corner is a Heritage property. Something tells me you might be interested in that. The Toronto Hydro Junction Substation was built in 1911. These hydro substations convert raw electricity so it can be distributed through the community, in case you're wondering what's happening in there. Some of them are really pretty in the city, some of them are disguised to look like other kinds of buildings.

Alright, we're going to take a fun little shortcut to get to the next stop. Let's walk north on Edwin Avenue and turn right down Ruskin Edwin Alleyway, then turn left on Franklin. If you're too chicken to take the alleyway- no, I'm just joking, if you don't want to take the alleyway, our actual stop is at 100 Franklin so get there however way you wish.

We are standing in front of the St. Josephat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. It's an interesting looking building. It's mostly white and it has three wooden doors with these really nice brass door handles that look like upside down "U"s. Each of the doors has an overhead covering that's like a deep teal color. And there's a bunch of stairs to get up to the doors.

Let's talk about the church and its community a little bit. Working class neighborhoods in Toronto, like I mentioned, were often home to immigrants because they were more affordable and close to the places that they could work. Over 150,000 Ukrainians emigrated to Canada from the 1890s to 1914. Many chose to settle in Toronto, just like many immigrants did at the time. The Ukrainians specifically found community in the Junction. This cathedral was Toronto's first Ukrainian religious institution and it opened in 1913 after the community worked together to find a priest and acquire the deed to the land so that they could build. Apparently most of the funds that they had went to the main structure and the exterior of the church and it took them another 27 years to finish the interior. They still congregated here regardless.

If you go up to the doors, you'll see a couple of plaques: a heritage plaque in English and one in Ukrainian. If you walk over to the far right, you'll see another plaque that shows a group of people in hats behind a tall barbed wire fence. It says 1914 on the left and 1920 on the right, and on top it says "Recalling Canada's first national internment operations." If you, like me, had alarms go off when you saw the word "internment", then here's the story.

During the First World War, Parliament enacted the War Measures Act, which gave them the ability to implement laws without going through the typical approval processes with the House of Commons or the Senate. One of the main reasons they wanted to do this was to restrict the rights of immigrants in the country, who they saw as a threat during the war. To be expected, they ended up disproportionately targeting communities that were seen as "other", so, basically, any communities that were seen as not white- and Ukrainians belong to this group. At the time, immigrants including Ukrainians had to register as enemy aliens. They had their freedom of speech restricted and they couldn't move freely either because they had to report regularly to the police. Discrimination against them increased and many lost their jobs. A lot of them tried to go to the US to find work, which was illegal for enemy aliens. When they would get caught at the border, they would be placed in internment camps. From what I read, most of those interned were poor or unemployed single men who had tried to go to the States, but it does seem like any Ukrainians who are deemed a threat by the police were placed in these camps. Some of them did have families who were forced to come with them, which resulted in over 80 women and over 150 children being interned as well.

The internment camps were sprinkled across Canada. In Quebec and Ontario they were forced to clear out wilderness to make space for farms. In the West, they were forced to work in national parks; to help build roads and carve out trails. I read that they also built a portion of the golf course at Banff National Park.

Over 100 Ukrainians died in the camps. Some died from infectious diseases, some from workplace injuries, some were killed while trying to escape. And more often than not they were buried in unmarked graves near the camps. Kind of wild to think about, especially in Quebec and Ontario- there's so much farmland and if you've ever been to Banff- I mean, any national park has a dark underside to it- but definitely something worth remembering when you're enjoying the land that we have.

Onto the next stop. Walk north to Dupont, and turn left. Stop when you get to the intersection of DuPont, Annette and Old Weston Road. When you get to the overpass that's just before that intersection walk on the right hand sidewalk and keep going following the curve until you get to the intersection. If you go on the left, it'll be really hard to cross the street and I just don't recommend it. I do have one thing to point out on the way and I'll tell you about that in 30 seconds.

As you approach the overpass at DuPont and old Weston Road, take a look over to your left. You'll see a large brick building. Surprise, surprise, it's another factory! Well, I mean, former factory. Currently the space houses a storage facility called Planet, as well as offices and workspaces for rent. But back in the day- the day being the 30s and 40s- it was the Viceroy rubber manufacturing company. Not only did they manufacture rubber, but also plastic, and what kinds of products used a lot of rubber and plastic? Toys! And... gas masks.

Let me elaborate. Their main gig in the 30s was making toys like bouncy balls, sports balls, specialty balls, beach balls, all kinds of balls. They also made rubber bath toys. But during World War Two, rubber was needed for the war effort and rubber companies were banned from making toys. So instead, they made tires, medical equipment, boots, raincoats, and yes, gas and oxygen masks. Not only did they start making toys during this time, but they asked kids to donate their old rubber toys to help.

Like I said before, keep to the right side of the street. As you walk under the overpass the road will slant right and it will bring you to the wonky intersection of DuPont, Old Weston Road, Dundas Street West and Annette Street. As the road begins to curve northwards. Keep your eyes peeled for a narrow gated opening and the cement wall on your right. It has a staircase behind it. Where does it lead? Just keep walking up to the intersection and I will tell you in 30 seconds.

Here we are at one of the weirdest and most infamous intersections in all of Toronto. A few minutes ago, we were walking on DuPont, a seemingly straight road. But once you pass that overpass, things get weird. The road splits into a two pronged fork, with DuPont continuing on the right and Dundas Street West appearing on the left. This little Dundas strip is an uphill one, with a graffiti cement wall on the left and a brick wall topped with a narrow green space on the right. If you were to walk up that hill (and I'm not telling you to), you'd find this little strip of Dundas is actually an offshoot of the main Dundas that now is a busy North-South Street. Where I have led you to, at Old Weston Road and DuPont, is where DuPont goes to die. Or if you're a glass half full person, it's where it's born, I guess? What I'm trying to say is, as soon as we keep walking north DuPont goes poof, and suddenly you're on Dundas Street West. If you keep walking straight West, the street becomes Annette Street.

Are you dizzy yet? Let's talk about Old Weston road. It doesn't get up in the mix of the intersection per se, like the street sign is there, but it doesn't really seem like a real street. It's more of a vacant lot with a small road that leads behind some buildings. This lot is where the staircase lead. If you take a look back at the overpass we just walked under you might notice that train tracks run on top of it. And when we were approaching the overpass on Dupont, there was an orange pedestrian walkway overhead- that was the Railpath continuing over this way. Basically I'm establishing the fact that we're right next to another railway and from what I could tell this vacant lot was partially the parking lot of the West Toronto CP train station, which used to be located roughly behind the buildings on the north side of the lot.

Old Weston Road was actually a road that started here, leading to a bridge that used to run north-south crossing over the train tracks- the diamond of train tracks that I mentioned before, that's up closer to the stockyards. So if you can kind of picture it, Old Weston Road did start here, it ran on that little road where those buildings now are and then slowly inclined, and became a bridge that covered a lot of the land that's just north of here, crossing over the diamond of railways and heading into the Stockyards area. There is another Old Weston road up that way which used to connect via the bridge down to this Old Weston Road. So it's kind of the other side of the bridge.

I'm not sure exactly when the bridge was built, but I did find pictures of it completed in 1920. So what happened to it? By the early 70s, it had fallen into disrepair and was closed to traffic, though I did read some stories of people going on it anyway. It was eventually demolished in the early 80s. I read on spacing.ca as well as many old forums that this has since created congestion issues in the area since north-south traffic is stuck traveling via Keele, even to this day. If you're familiar with the Stockyards area, and you're wondering about Weston Road- so not Old Weston Road, but Weston Road- it did originally connect to Old Weston Road, but now it starts at Keele and St. Clair and runs up into Vaughan for a short distance in that area. The new and Old Weston Roads- I say new, it's not really new, but the Not Old Weston Road and the Old Weston Road run parallel to each other north of St. Clair. Both roads are named for the village of Weston, by the way, which is now a neighbourhood between Jane Street and the Humber River north of Eglinton. The OG Weston road was created to connect Weston to Dundas and the Junction.

Okay, let's move on from this twisty, turny, trainy area. Walk north on Dundas Street West until you get to an empty lot at 2760 Dundas Street West.

This lot was the location of the Peacock Hotel, one of the many hotels and watering holes of the early Junction days. After a long day at the factories, workers would come to establishments like this one to blow off some steam. They got a little too steamy though- or blew a little too hard? That's worse. You know what I'm trying to say, basically, by the early 1900s, things were pretty out of hand and the area was like frosh week meets happy hour every day. The turn of the century was coming fresh off of the Victorian era, which put high value on morality, and Toronto being a British settlement, they took it pretty seriously. Frat boy central didn't bode well with that image and the residents of The Junction, then called West Toronto, voted to ban alcohol in 1904. This was years before Prohibition was even a thing in the rest of the city. What's wild is The Junction stayed dry until the year 2000! So for more than 90 years, you could not buy alcohol in The Junction. I do wish the building was still here so we could look at it. It was demolished in 2020 after many years of being vacant, slowly falling apart, and even catching fire in 2019. That version of the building was built in 1890, but the original Peacock Hotel building was on the site in 1820.

Keep walking west on Dundas Street and turn right on Heintzman street, walking until the very end of that street. I'll see you there in 30 seconds.

You're now looking at a large brick condo building called Heintzman Place. This was the first, and still one of the only, high rise buildings in the area, I believe. It was built in, I believe, the early to mid 2000s, teplacing a Canadian Tire store. Before that, from 1888 until 1962, this was the location of the Heintzman Piano Factory, giving the condo place its name and the street its name, obviously. Heintzman and Co Ltd was founded in 1860, by a German man named Theodore August Heintzman. Heintzman had a history of working at piano manufacturers and is set to have started his own piano business from his kitchen. It grew pretty quickly, and after moving to bigger and bigger locations in 1888, they built a large factory on this site. Their pianos were seen as high quality and were priced as such. Heintzman was a very rich man. His sons and nephew carried on the family business as Heintzman became a huge name in the piano industry.

In terms of The Junction, they were one of the top employers- and earliest employers- in the area. In the 1920s, they acquired Nordheimer Piano and Music Co, a name you might recognize from the Casa Loma episode. In the 1960s, they built a new factory in Hanover, Ontario and retired this building. From the 70s until today the business and brand name has switched hands and changed operations quite a bit. Today, Heintzman pianos are still made, but in a Chinese factory.

Let's move on to our next stop, Dundas and Keele. Head back to Dundas and before you go straight to Keele, take note of the block of buildings from 2845 to 2853 Dundas This was called the AC Thompson block and it is one of the oldest buildings in Toronto. That's as much as I know about it though, and I know that it was built in 1886. But I wanted to point it out.

Okay, here we are at Dundas and Keele, where The Junction really came to be. If you remember from the beginning of the episode, it was this piece of land that Daniel Clendenan bought in 1882 and subdivided lots for sale, advertising it as the West Toronto Junction. People bought in, and by the mid 1880s, the area incorporated as the Village of West Toronto Junction. The next year its population grew to warrant town status and Clendenan, having led the development of the area, was elected the mayor.  He was responsible for getting sidewalks created and reserving spots for schools, churches, and a mechanic's Institute, which I mean, I guess he viewed as a pillar of the community. It makes sense given all of the manufacturing happening in the area, I guess. At this time, it was an independent community, keep that in mind, so he was pulling all the stops to get people to move from Toronto to The Junction. One of his tactics was a lower tax and water rate, which was appealing to businesses. Yet another reason why so many of them set up shop here. The Town of West Toronto Junction changed names multiple times. In 1892, it became the Town of Toronto Junction and in 1908, the Town of West Toronto. A year later, after officially taking on their catchiest name to date, in my opinion (besides The Junction, of course), they officially became part of Toronto after some financial trouble. So they were annexed into the city.

Dundas Street was the main commercial street of The Junction and it falls between where the factories mainly were, so like north of Dundas and into the Stockyards area, and where people- mostly well-off people- lived below Dundas. And of course, Dundas connected to The Junction Triangle where many of the workers lived. This intersection in particular was the commercial centre. The fire station just south on Keele was the city hall. The BMO building was built in 1907. It was previously home to the bank of British North America (they got acquired by BMO in 1918). The parking lot next to it was once the post office and customs house. It had a tall pointed watch tower type thing that you might recognize from old pictures and illustrations of The Junction. The building with an A&W on the corner was called Campbell Block, and it was built in 1889 as a mixed use building. It was the location of the Mechanics Institute I mentioned, as well as a hotel called the Campbell Hotel.

We're going to head over to Dundas and High Park now. On the way we'll pass the W.H. Ives Taylor building at 2959 Dundas on the south side of the street. It's another one of the first buildings in the area and the last building in Toronto made of pressed metal. On the north side of the street at 2896 Dundas you'll see a building that says "Treasury" across the top in big letters. This was once the location of a Molson bank back when the Molson family made beers AND banks, apparently. That was in 1911. But before that, way before that, in 1840, it was roughly in this location that Colonel E.W. Thompson, the brother-in-law of the first settler in the area, built his estate called Aikenshaw. From what I read, he allegedly enlisted former enslaved people from the States to cultivate his land. This was six years after slavery had been abolished in Canada. I couldn't find whether he, you know, hired them, paid them, or if they were indentured servants, or if he had enslaved them again... Regardless, it's not a great story, but it does reflect the values of some of the types of people who set up a lot of areas in Toronto, including The Junction at the time. On that note, I will see you at Dundas and High Park in 30 seconds.

I mentioned before that The Junction was full of bars and hotels with bars inside of them and rowdy crowds at the turn of the century. One of these hotels was at the southwest corner of this intersection. It was called the Avenue Hotel. The night before the alcohol ban came into place. It was reported that people were spilling out of the hotel onto Dundas and High Park Avenue, drinking out of beer bottles openly in the streets. One man had to be moved by a wheelbarrow because he was so drunk. Ironically, this intersection is also significant for when the ban was lifted. Just a bit east, at 3010 Dundas, was the location of Vesuvio Pizza and Spaghetti House, a family run restaurant that existed for over 63 years. Besides being a neighbourhood staple, they made the news in the 80s and 90s when they spearheaded, along with other business owners in the area, the push to lift the alcohol ban. They succeeded, and many say the neighborhood is better for it since more restaurants, bars, and businesses have opened here since Vesuvio closed in 2020 because of the pandemic. Keep walking until you get to Clendenan street, then turn left. I'll be back in 30 seconds to tell you about an old scandal as you walked down Clendenan Street.

Drama stresses me out a lot in real life. Even watching shows like The Bachelor I can get really stressed out. But when that kind of messiness happened over 100 years ago, I want to know all the details. I'm completely fine with it. Luckily I found a Torontoist article that dug deep on Daniel Clendenan, mayor of the town. He and his wife Clara lived in a fancy house on High Park Avenue with their seven kids. They also had a private secretary/governess named Rebbie or Rebecca Marron. A governess is a woman who teaches and cares after your children. Rumour had it that she and Daniel were getting a little too close for Clara, and in 1892 she left to stay with family in Guelph, as well as issuing a writ for alimony. The papers of the time, like the newspapers, also alleged that Daniel had also had an affair with a local widow and her two daughters. So an affair with her AND her two daughters and his governess. Funny how, as soon as you get too involved in politics, all this stuff comes out. I don't know, either you think you can get away with it and it comes out or it's stories, who knows, but it's a tale as old as time.

Daniel couldn't take the heat and promptly left The Junction. He hid at a property that he owned near Coxwell Avenue, which seems kind of like a betrayal to me, like, you put all of this effort into West Toronto and The Junction but then you also own a piece of land in the east end of the city. When the writ for alimony came out he took off to the states. From Buffalo he sent a letter to a Toronto newspaper saying that he would allow the divorce, give Clara and the kids The Junction estate and try to start a new life in Buffalo.

You'd think it would quiet down by then, but two years later, Marron, the former governess, sued a woman named Agnes Youmans for slander. She accused her of spreading rumours and getting her kicked out of an anti-Catholic group that she belonged to. If you remember from previous episodes, the Protestants and the Catholics were not fans of each other at the time, and I guess her getting kicked out of her anti-Catholic group was just the last straw in terms of her social standing. Not only were the alleged rumours about the affair with Daniel, but Rebecca Marron alleged that Youmans had told others that Marron had given birth to Clendenan's illegitimate child in Buffalo. Gasp! It went to trial and a bunch of not so great details came out about the Clendenans. After Daniel and his wife split, he and Marron exchanged affectionate letters. She visited him at that Coxwell property and even went to Buffalo with him. A servant testified saying that she had seen them kiss goodbye at the High Park House, and that she brought him breakfast in bed once, and that once she even fixed his tie. Gasp! Again!

Clara (the ex-wife) also told a pretty damning story about a time when she and the governess switched beds for some reason? That was never explained. Clara and Daniel had separate bedrooms and the governess Rebbie (Rebecca) Marron had her own room, of course. The children often slept with their mother, but even sometimes with Rebbie. The night Clara and Rebbie randomly switched beds, Clara heard some noise and later found Daniel in her bed- Rebbie's bed. They were both undressed, which is especially disgusting because one of the kids was laying next to her. I'm not implying that anything happened with the kid, thank God-  no one said anything about that, but it's definitely still really odd. Rebbie denied it happened when Clara first confronted her at the house. But then Clara found a secret note that Rebbie had written to Daniel and she lost it. She confronted him, and then when rumours started spreading in town, Daniel threatened Clara with a gun asking her to publicly deny them. But instead, that was when she chose to leave and stay with her family in Guelph.

All that to say, Daniel Clendenan was done with The Junction forever. He moved to Nebraska and that's where he lived until he died. I didn't see how the trial ended up. But I'm guessing that Agnes didn't go down for slander, because there's a lot of damning testimonies.

Onto our last stop. When you get to Annette Street, turn right and stop in front of 288. It has a hedge in between the house and the sidewalk, so only take a respectable peek as you walk by since it is a private property.

This house was called The Birches and it was the home of the Heintzman family. It's a pretty big house- it's over 5,500 square feet and it's taller than most of the homes in the area, even from the sidewalk above the hedge, you can see the top of the house. It has these curly, twirly designs on the face of the house which make it stand out. It also has a tower and a veranda out front. It's a pretty cool house. It was built in 1891 by Theodore, the founder of the company, who at this point was super rich. His sons, also in the business,  owned nice homes nearby, one of which is just south east of here at 166 High Park Avenue.

Theodore died in 1899 and his son sold the house in 1920 to the Catholic Church, who turned it into a convent school. Between that and the piano history, I bet there are some pretty interesting ghosts in there. The house went back on the market in the 1970s and it didn't sell right away, so it was left vacant. People came and stole some of the fancy antique features like doors and hardware, and some people even tried to set it on fire in 1981. Luckily, there was minimal damage, so they were able to restore it instead of it being this huge vacant house. It's now split into three condo units and on the grounds of the property they built 15 townhouses!

That concludes our tour of The Junction and The Junction Triangle. We walked around where the factory workers lived. And now we're in the neighbourhood where the factory owners lived. We also walked by some of the actual factories and we got to know the namesakes behind some of the streets in the area. While it is technically part of Toronto now, it does still have that town feel to it, I think, which is why so many people love this neighbourhood. I hope you enjoyed it, especially the people who have requested it. I hope it lived up to your expectations!

Like I mentioned at the top, I do have a Patreon page and I'm going to be adding some of the extra stuff that didn't fit into today's tour on there. So check it out. It does cost me a couple 100 bucks every month to keep this podcast going, and so if I can cover some of those costs, I would love to. Anything extra, you know beyond my production costs, I will be donating when there's enough of it to a rotating list of community organizations, and you can find that list on the Patreon as well. If you're curious about other ways to support me and the podcast, you can buy me a coffee on my website, you can join an in-person tour as well. I have in-person tours on Airbnb experiences and I will soon have a tour up on the Story City app. So check it out. Leaving a rating or a review wherever you're listening would be amazing too! But honestly, just you listening at all is supporting me. So thank you so much for being here. See you next time.