Frugal Film Project May Installment, The Smith Family's Toronto Years.

May 22, 2023

Over the past decade I've been researching family history, while I was born in Montreal, living there until I was 12. The Smiths dont't have deep roots in Quebec, never did. My granddad moved to Montreal in later part of the 1920s for work. The Smiths had deeper roots in Ontario. While I've explored where they lived in the 19th century, by the early 1900s my great granddad William George Smith sold his feed store in Cannington and retired to Toronto. Its that part I wanted to see for myself. Turns out Great Granddad William lived in a house at 16 Bigar Avenue half a block east from Oakwood Collegiate one block south of St. Clair in Hillcrest Village. Granddad Arthur called 16 Bigar home prior to signing up with the Queen's Own Rifles in the First World War at age 26 in 1915.

Great granddad William lived at 16 Bigar through the First World War and the 1920s before moving east along St. Clair to Moore Park specifcally the Southeast corner of Clifton and Glenrose, living there for only one year before passing in the early in the Great Depression. My great grandmother down-nested to an Apartment on Lawton Avenue backing onto what is now Line 1 Subway.

Camera: Nikkormat FTn, Nikkor HC 50 F2 lens.

Film: Kentmere 400, Ilfotec HC 1+31.

My great grand dad William G. Smith's house:

After a ride on the 512 eastbound to St. Clair. I'm in an another part of Toronto where the Smiths lived. My aunts Barbara and Mary-Elinor grew up on Avoca which has changed beyond recognition from when they grew up in Deer Park in the 1940s and very early 1950s.

In Great Grand dad William's final years, he moved from Hillcrest to Moore Park and lived in a litle pocket sout of St. Clair and west of Mt. Pleasant. His house is in the middle of being renovated by the current owners.