Kathleen Dunphy
AUDIO INTERVIEW
SUMMARY
April 4, 2016
00:36 PERSONAL HISTORY: Kathleen worked at the Toronto Star for a couple of years. She and her husband were both from New York State. She met her husband at the University of Toronto. He received a PhD in Philosophy and returned to Long Island until he received a position at the University of Toronto.
01:35 They had eight children when they returned to Toronto, and nine children all together. The youngest and oldest were born in Toronto.
02:10 PLACES OF WORSHIP / DEMOGRAPHICS: She was familiar with Holy Rosary Church. They wanted to live in an area with some diversity; this is how they ended up on Austin Crescent.
03:07 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: She lived at 27 Austin Terrace from 1964 to 2000.
03:50 LIFE OF A CHILD / INDEPENDENCE: It was a dead-end street with a dozen houses. Her children played ball-hockey and rode tricycles up and down.
04:39 When they were moving in, the two oldest boys, 12 and 13 years old, walked down to Chinatown (Dundas west of University) by themselves and found their way home on their own.
06:35 Her children were independent. They often went unsupervised to Hilton Ave. where there was a park with swings and a wading pool. They found other children to play with on their street.
07:25 DEMOGRAPHICS: There were many Jewish families on their street.
07:45 PLACES OF WORSHIP: At Bathurst and Austin Terrace there was a synagogue.
08:12 TRANSIT: Streetcars: The streetcar came up Bathurst and just south of St. Clair it went into the Vaughan loop. That was the end of the streetcar line.
09:34 SHOPS: There was a hardware store for many years across from the Vaughan loop. She briefly mentions the Jannetta’s grocery store.
10:18 ENTERTAINMENT: She remembers two movie theatres. There was one on Bathurst below St. Clair and another one on St. Clair.
10:56 SHOPS: There was a shoe repair store in every neighbourhood; you depended on them.
11:10 SHOPS / DOMESTIC LIFE / SAFETY: The shops were close enough that she could send her children to run errands. She sent them to the convenience store. There was always a lot of penny candy at the shop. At this time there were many of these kinds of stores.
12:00 SHOPS: She would do her grocery shopping at Loblaws (just west of Bathurst and St.Clair).
12:50 There was an electrical repair shop that repaired TVs or radios; they would do simple repairs.
13:33 SERVICES: There used to be a bank on almost every corner.
13:53 SCHOOLS / RECREATION: Her children attended Holy Rosary and St. Michael’s Schools. St. Mike’s put on plays. They were big on sports and specifically hockey. They used to have family skating on the weekend. St. Mike’s opened their skating rink to everyone.
15:30 RECREATION / LIFE OF A CHILD: When they moved to Toronto they learned that you “buy skates first and food second.” They would go to St. Mike’s for family skating.
16:30 The boys all played hockey in a league and also played shinny on the Well’s Hill Rink.
17:00 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: There were lots of things for the 7 boys and 2 girls to do. Her children’s friends went to different schools. Some of them went to Hebrew schools.
18:26 RAVINES / LIFE OF A CHILD: Her boys were in the ravine all the time. She considers it to be a special part of the city. She remembers seeing a fox walking down her street (Austin Crescent). Her children played around Casa Loma.
20:01 DAIRIES / DELIVERY PEOPLE / POLICE / LIFE OF A CHILD: There was a dairy down the Bathurst hill. (The interviewer asks if it was Silverwoods, but it was in fact Sealtest.) She tells a story of her sons breaking milk bottles that had been left out in a crate and the police coming to the door.
21:30 Milk was still delivered to your door in glass bottles 2 or 3 times a week.
22:13 SHOPS: They always ran out to get more milk at Jannetta’s which was their corner store at Alcina Ave. and Bathurst.
23:09 DELIVERY PEOPLE / LIFE OF A CHILD: Newspapers used to be delivered by kids, both in the morning and in the afternoon. Her 14 year old daughter delivered papers.
23:56 TRANSIT: Kathleen and her husband used the streetcars. He would take transit to work because a car polluted.
24:27 DELIVERY PEOPLE: She remembers a small pickup truck delivered kosher chicken every Friday. She thought it was the best chicken.
26:20 COMMUNITY GROUPS: They were very active in the Hillcrest Ratepayers Association.
26:34 HEALTHCARE: She talks about Hillcrest Hospital; it was a private rehabilitation hospital before OHIP existed.
27:33 ACTIVISM / RAVINES: She explains the process that was used to get the Spadina Expressway stopped. The Ratepayers Assoc. wanted to join with other ratepayer groups to stop the Expressway. They felt it would destroy the ravine system. She describes attending a noisy but peaceful protest with her nine children.
34:17 RAVINES / LIFE OF A CHILD: One of her sons ended up in the hospital after tobogganing down the ravine hill and hitting a tree; he broke his foot.
35:40 ENTERTAINMENT: There was a theatre on Bathurst in the early 1970s that was a one-man operation.
36:40 PLACES OF WORSHIP: Holy Rosary Church didn’t have many activities. You had events there that were connected with the church.
37:20 SCHOOLS: Two of her boys went to Oakwood Collegiate (OCI). One of her boys enrolled himself because they offered a class in law.
39:45 RECREATION / SCHOOL: There was a skating rink at St. Michael’s School which hosted many activities: figure skating lessons, family skating on weekends and hockey lessons, which Kathleen’s boys took. Social activities were held at the high school and in the church hall.
40:06 RECREATION: They went to Eglinton Park at Oriole Pkwy to swim in the summer.
41:25 LANEWAYS: There was a laneway just south of St. Clair off Bathurst going west; her children would find spots like this where there was ice in the wintertime for skating.
42:38 RECREATION / NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: She shares memories of flooding their backyard for an ice rink.
43:06 SAFETY: The community felt very safe to her. Kathleen tells a story of her son getting lost and ending up past Keele Street.
46:41 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: She felt that they moved into a lovely neighbourhood. There were neighbours who, without any kind of threat, told the children how to behave. Her children knew all the kids in the neighbourhood stretching westward almost as far as Oakwood.
47:58 IMMIGRATION / SCHOOLS: At Holy Rosary School there were quite a few immigrant families. Some of the parents didn’t speak English. Her children learned from these different experiences.
49:04 WYCHWOOD BARNS: Near the end of her activities with the Hillcrest Ratepayers the redevelopment of the Wychwood Barns got underway. She mentions the dog park and that her family always had a dog.
49:40 PERSONAL STORY / PLACES OF WORSHIP: After the death of her husband she moved into the townhouse condos on Bathurst at the end of Nina St., near the African Canadian Gospel Church .
51:44 COMMUNITY GROUPS / IMMIGRATION: She expresses her strong belief in the Ratepayers Association and the role it can play as a community bridge builder.
52:27 COMMUNITY SERVICES: Na Me Res did a First Nations ceremony every summer in the park on Hilton at St. Clair. They were an interesting influence on her children.
53:47 DEMOGRAPHICS / COMMUNITY: Kathleen says it best: “ I was forever grateful when I could look back, as I got older, when the children were grown and gone, and thinking how fortunate we were to end there. I never stopped thinking that -- just so fortunate. Our children grew up with such diversity. I never had to worry that I was going to have a bigot in the bunch -- that was very important to me. I needed to know that the kids respected and cared about other people, and the neighbourhood certainly taught them that.”
54:36 WYCHWOOD BARNS: She recalls a lot of pain working out the plan for the new Wychwood Barns. She thinks it all worked in the end.
55:45 NEIGHBOURHOOD: She just knew that this was the right neighbourhood for them as soon as they moved in; this is where they belonged.