Scarborough Town Centre. Photo: Jeremy Hopkin
Heritage Week Display – February 22-24
On Family Day, the third Monday of February, we began what was formally known as “Heritage Week”. To mark the occasion, the annual Scarborough Archives heritage display was set up at the Scarborough Town Centre by the Scarborough Historical Society.
Scarborough’s heritage is barely 200 years old if we set aside the early Native People who once inhabited the area. Yet local heritage is something on which we can all reflect, regardless of our ancestral roots.
Scarborough remained a purely rural community until about 1910 when suburban development then began at Birch Cliff. Electricity first arrived in the township in 1912, a water works in 1921 and high schools in 1922 and 1929. By 1940 the population reached 23,274.
During the post war boom, subdividers quickly transformed open farmland into streets of closely packed houses, commercial buildings and industry. By 1955 the population had surpassed 100,000 and Scarborough had become one of the federated municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto. During the next 45 years, families from all parts of the world came to make a new home in Scarborough. In 1998, with a population of over half a million, Scarborough’s municipal government, along with the rest of Metro, was amalgamated into one municipal government, a new City of Toronto. Community names such as Scarborough, Agincourt, Highland Creek and West Hill are still recognized and Scarborough had retained its own Community Council to deal with local issues.
As we celebrated Heritage Week 2013, the Scarborough Archives and Historical Society set up its annual display at Sears Court in the Scarborough Town Centre, during regular mall hours from Friday, February 22nd to Sunday the 24th.
This columnist and a host of volunteers were on hand to meet Scarborough Mirror readers and the general public, answer questions about our heritage and display the Archives’ extensive photo collection for all to view. Included in the photo collection were hundreds of aerial photographs showing the development of the communities during the boom years 1950-1975…
– Rick Schofield.