Lost Homes on Sheppard Avenue

There's a short strip of single family homes on Sheppard Avenue that I've been vaguely aware of for decades now, since I moved to North York in 2000. They're on Sheppard Avenue, a little east of the two homes I've had since moving here. They always kind of caught my eye in passing because of the pretty stand of trees that front them.

A few years ago, they were bought out and boarded up in anticipation of a single long unit of stacked townhouses. That will move more families into the same space, but it really will not have the charm of the current homes. I also don't think the little grove of trees in front of them will survive.

Here's how the places looked when they were still homes, and how they look at the moment. (From Google Maps street view.)

The homes appear to have been built in 1957. As you can see, this part of Scarborough was the fringe between suburban and rural at the time, and Sheppard Avenue was still just a two-lane cross-county road. (These shots are from the Toronto City Archives collection of aerial photos.)

So I thought it would be a good idea to go out and get some shots of these places before they're finally gone. They have been boarded up for at least a few years now. Odds are, it won't be long.

I got P-Doug to man the second W3 (these shots are all natively 3D; I'm just putting up the left side images here) and we set off on Sunday morning a week ago. The first place we took some shots of was the little strip mall on the southwest corner of Pharmacy and Sheppard Avenues. This mall itself is due to disappear soon, but for the moment, is still in business.

On the southeast corner, across the street, is a new condo building with some commercial space downstairs that replaced a different strip mall that had been there since probably the 1960s.

The houses in question are now fronted by a long wooden barrier. What I found most interesting is there was no evidence of any driveways; just paths to the sidewalk. It occured to me that the driveways might be coming into their backyards from the street behind, and P-Doug made the same suggestion when I mentioned the lack of sidewalks. That turned out to be the right guess. Once Sheppard was four-laned, either in the 60s or the 70s, that was probably a godsend to the people who lived here.

In order to get any shots of the places, I had to stand on tiptoe with the camera poised over the top of the barrier, and essentially shoot blind.

We didn't get any shots of the backs of the houses with their driveways that Sunday, so I decided to go back this Sunday just past and do that. Thing is, there, there are other houses, and I was a bit concerned I'd look creepy doing it. But, you have to break some eggs to make an archive, so it's either do it or whine that I didn't once the houses are gone.

I decided to walk it rather than drive. I took one of the W3s and also the S80 I had converted to shooting infrared. It was a bright June morning; just the time for making the ordinary look ethereal.

Getting to the boarded up places involves crossing the 401 on Victoria Park Avenue. This stretch is also designated "The Highway of Heroes" as it's the part returning fallen service men and women take after landing at CFB Trenton and the Don Valley Parkway (oddly enough, about a kilometre behind me in these shots below) that takes them to downtown Toronto to the coroner for certification.

Going through the neighbourhood to the south of the houses, I took a number of IR shots. These are the ones I liked best. Oh, I can't wait to be able to do this in 3D... hopefully soon.

The street that the houses back onto, where their driveways were, is called Abbotsfield Gate Lane. It's actually two streets that meet as a cross and all share the same name. The eastward branch was the part in question, and it still has one house extant on it, right on the corner. Sure enough, the people who live there were right outside; a dad and his toddler son and a friend or other family member. While, strictly speaking, it's still a public street, it still felt a little like I was intruding, since there's no real reason to go down there. The road ends in a cul de sac and doesn't have a path leading out... so why are you there, kind of thing? Fortunately they utterly ignored me, didn't ask why I was there, keep the evil eye on me, anything like that. Nah, it's just some old weird guy taking over-the-fence shots of places about to be torn down; a nerd, a harmless crank. If that's what they thought, they totally called it. :)

This is what I saw. Or, more correctly, what my cameras saw for me. (Note: in the shot immediately below, the house just off to the left side there is the one that's still a home, and likely will continue to be.)

I took a few shots on my way back, during which I decided to go past my place to the grocery store to pick up some stuff to make soup. The entire walk was 6.4 km, or just about 4 miles. That surprised me; I would have guessed about half that. Anyway, I saw a number of interesting things on the way back, a couple of which I'll share here in passing.

This house is also on Sheppard. For the moment, it's still a home, but I have to wonder how long it will be here. Single family homes are rapidly disappearing from up and down Sheppard Avenue East.

Whatever business this used to be, it's in the process of becoming something else.

I suppose The Toronto Sun thinks this is clever. And if you're a) over 50 and b) read at a grade three level, then yeah, I suppose it's a real laff-riot.

It's also been my observation that Scarborough, the eastern quarter of Toronto and, for about 200 years, a separate municipality, has been the poor stepchild since it was incorporated into Metro from 1953 to 1998 (after which it became part of the City of Toronto proper along with the rest of Metro). It looks like the people of Scarborough have started to speak up about that, too. This photo was taken on Victoria Park Avenue, which is the border between Scarborough and North York, the part of Toronto where I live.