Bruce Bell –
On the hot sweltering Tuesday afternoon of August 10, 1909, passengers lining up for the ferry to take them to the coolness of the Toronto Islands could see a thin line of smoke rising above their Hanlan’s Point destination.
That stream of smoke developed into such an intense blaze that it not only destroyed the historic Hanlan’s Hotel but marked the beginning of the end of old ways on the Island.
In the days before air conditioning and weekend trips (for some) to Muskoka, Hanlan’s Hotel was the place to while away the last idyllic Victorian summers.
The hotel stood a short walk from the present-day ferry docks. Today it sports an enormous statute to the Toronto-born sculler Ned Hanlan, who in 1880 won the World Rowing Championship. Created by sculptor Emanuel Otto Hahn, the statue was unveiled at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1926 and was moved to Hanlan’s Point in 2004.
Once a thin peninsula that the British named Gibraltar Point upon their arrival in the 1700s, Hanlan’s Point is named for Ned’s father, John Hanlan, an Irish immigrant who went to Owen Sound before arriving in Toronto.
Hanlan’s today is the least built up and most pastoral section of the Toronto Islands, mostly because whatever was built there was burnt, demolished or removed.
In 1865 during a severe storm, John Hanlan, his wife Ann and their two sons Ned and Ed were huddled in their small island shack at the eastern end when a huge wave washed them – home and all – into Lake Ontario. They floated safely to the western end where John, undeterred, built a new home on land that the next year would be officially deeded to him.
A few years later he built his first hotel and by 1880 the enlarged Hanlan’s Hotel became the centre of Island life, where Islanders picked up their mail, held their first church service and used the island’s first telephone.
Ned Hanlan began rowing when he was a kid, crossing the bay to St. Lawrence Market to sell fish that he caught that morning. He realized that the first to arrive at the market would have the freshest fish – and soon after a legend was born.
Ned’s arrival into Toronto Bay on July 15, 1879, after winning a big race in England was celebrated with the largest regatta in Toronto history.
Continuing up the road from the ferry docks past the languid lagoons and wide playing fields, you’ll come across an oval-shaped clearing of about two acres facing the lake. There’s a few picnic tables and some chunks of cement on its lakefront.
From 1883 to the late 1950s the Lakeside Home for Little Children stood here. It was built as a summer retreat for underprivileged children mostly suffering from tuberculosis in Toronto’s crowded inner city.
Every June these children, some still in their hospital beds, were paraded in a long line of carriages from the Hospital for Sick Kids (then on College Street) down to the Island docks. In September crowds formed once again to see their return. This Island refuge continued to be a fresh air haven for thousands of children until 1928, when Sick Kids opened a new country home in Thistletown in Etobicoke.
The rambling mansion was used as emergency housing during the Second World War, and by the time of its destruction in 1956 was a housing complex known as Chetwood Terrace.
Using a 1910 city map, I counted 122 cottages lining the beach at Hanlan’s plus the giant baseball stadium, two merry-go-rounds, a boardwalk, a theatre and a dance pavilion.
But when the Sunnyside Amusement Park opened in the city’s west end in 1922, Hanlan’s Point own fun fair was in a steady decline. In 1937 the enormous stadium was demolished and construction of the Island Airport began (completed in 1939).
In 1956 the last carnival ride was dismantled on Hanlan’s Point and other structures either moved to Algonquin Island or demolished.
Today Hanlan’s Point with its clothing-optional LGBT friendly beach is peaceful and serene – a far cry from when it was known as Canada’s Coney Island.
