A Yorkville Childhood: Swimming in the Don, a stolen car, and a brush with Fascists

Fortunately, his father (George’s grandfather) had a job as a caretaker in an apartment building on Bloor St., just east of the Church of the Redeemer at the corner of Avenue Rd., so the family had food and shelter during the lean years of the 1930s. Cliff and his pals used to swim in the Don River, buried a car they had stolen and were witnesses to the chaotic Christie Pits riot in 1933, which erupted after a baseball game over the display of a Swastika banner. (Jewish and Italian young men took on local antisemitic Anglo gang members to grab the Swastika sign, and the brawl spread until an estimated 10,000 people got involved in the fray.) George’s father also attended Nazi rallies in Toronto, some of which were so large they filled Massey Hall. Cliff grew up in a family that was staunchly loyal to the Crown. His father (George’s grandfather) belonged to the Orange Order, a WASP group that was an influential force in politics and controlled who got jobs with the municipality through patronage. The Orangemen tended to be both anti-Catholic and xenophobic. This video is one of a number George is making about his family’s four generations in Yorkville.