Monday, December 31, 2012

Beaches and parks don't mix

At this point, this blog entry is under construction because I’m still sorting out how some of these city committees worked together. But I wanted to get a few thoughts down on paper, so to speak.

The city’s committee on property had this to say in its report no. 8 for 1911:
Removal of Bathing Shelter at Simcoe Park
Your Committee recommend the adoption of the following report of the property commissioner:
“The Park Commissioner purposes making a park of that portion of Simcoe Park situated at the junction of Cherry Street produced southerly, and the lake front, whereon we have at present a bathing shelter and dressing-room for girls and women.
I ask authority to move the shelter a short distance westerly along the beach to a point where it will not conflict with the intention of the Commissioner.”[1] 
One of the things I find interesting about the way the City of Toronto managed its parks and waterfront is that they were often slotted into two different categories. The parks fell under the Parks and Exhibition Committee while the beach and swimming areas fell under the control of the Property Committee, which looked after the free bathing stations that had been set up on Fisherman’s Island, which was also known as Simcoe Park, Sunnyside, though the shore line there looked very different in 1911, and along the Don River. Usually the two were mutually exclusive. Riverdale Park, which hugged both sides of the Don River, is never mentioned in the same breath as the Don River free bathing station, which was typically located at the foot of Winchester Street. Swimming, then, was not something one did when they went to a park. That divide is made explicit in this little excerpt because to create its “park space,” and it would appear the area had been set aside as park land already, the park commissioner request that the bathing shelter be moved out of the way so “as not to conflict with the intention of the Commissioner.”

What was the conflict? I would suggest it was a conflict between the bathing body and the activities that people were expected to do in a park, whether it be picnicking, or promenading, or potentially sports, though in most parks sports were controlled and limited to designated spaces. In this particular case, the female bathing body seems to have been a particular concern since the dressing-room for girls and women is mentioned specifically. It’s not clear where the men’s/boys changing room is in this discussion. It, assuming there was one, and there probably was because Fisherman’s Island was a mixed swimming area in 1911, may have been further down the beach or its presence may not have merited the same level of concern.

A wrinkle in this division of responsibilities for parks and bathing was Toronto Island, which in the first years of the twentieth century fell under the Island Committee, a sort of super committee that could draw instruction from the other committees as required. The Island Committee had responsibility for all things island related but even here it looked like the Park Commissioner continued to look after the park on the island, which at this point did not cover the entire island, leaving the committee to focus on the leasing of lots on the island, the placement of bathing stations and the ongoing physical transformation of the island. Even on the island, however, it appears that what the city thought of as “Island Park” was conceptually divorced from the areas it thought of as bathing areas; Turner’s Baths, located on its own spit of land was the most high profile swimming area, but practically people were diving in at various points around the island.


[1] Report no. 8, Committee on Property, (I need to add the date), City Council, 1911, Appendix A, Toronto City Archives.

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