Toronto journal 1

Toronto, Ontario
Location of several of Carl Ahrens' residences and his grave

September 21st, 2004

My cousin, Chris, and I have made it to Toronto, which is where we will spend the next few days trying to find as many of our great-grandfather's residences as we can, as well as touring areas that would have been familiar to him, and seeing at least one of his paintings.

Our hotel is a no-frills sort of place, as my guidebook had said, but the prime selling point for me was the price and the location. Our room is small, but clean, and it overlooks Jarvis Street. We stay only long enough to drop our stuff before heading out for our first walk.

Carl's nearest address was 143 1/2 Queen Street East. I knew ahead of time that this residence no longer exists, but still wanted to see the neighborhood in case there were any buildings that had been there since the 1880's. It did not take long to realize that Moss Park is not such a nice place to be these days. We didn't feel particularly threatened, which was good, as it was right around the corner from our hotel, but we also had no desire to linger there long.

We headed south on Jarvis until we saw the St. Lawrence Marketplace and Hall. These are enormous grand old buildings that Carl would have seen often. This was the first time as an adult where I knew I was looking at something that would have been familiar to him, and it made the idea of chasing his ghost seem that much more real to me.

We walked west on King Street toward the financial district, taking lots of photos of any of the buildings that had been around since the 19th century, zig-zagging up and down the various streets in the area. After all my planning I had inadvertantly memorized all the cross-streets and never had to consult a map. Having never actually set foot in Toronto before, this felt rather odd.

September 22nd, 2004

We rode the subway to the Queens Park station and then walked to Spadina Circle. There is a small street off this circle and we easily found Carl's residence from 1895. The whole area is now student housing for the nearby University of Toronto. This particular street is tree lined, quiet, and beautiful. If it weren't for the cars and electrical wires, I imagine the street has not changed much since when Carl lived there. At the time Carl lived here he was with his first wife, Emily, and their three children, Carl, Robert and Pauline.

Once we finished walking this neighborhood we headed north on Spadina to Bloor, then west on Bloor. 278 Bloor no longer exists - his residence in 1922 - but there were many buildings that dated back to that time, so we snapped a lot of photos.

The Toronto Reference Library is at the corner of Bloor and Yonge. We got there as soon as the doors opened and rushed to the 4th floor special collections area. There is a copy of Madonna Ahrens' biography of Carl kept there, so I could get photocopies of the last couple of pages, which were missing from all of the drafts I had. It took quite awhile to get the copies. By the time they arrived I had no time to read them, so I folded them up and put them in my purse.

We finished late at the library and had to hoof it back to the legislature building in Queens Park. I had arranged ahead of time to meet the curator for the Government of Ontario Art Collection there at 11:00. The provincial government owns one painting by Carl Ahrens, purchased in 1895 for the grand total of one hundred dollars. As of this point it hangs in an off limits wing of the legislature building. My contact was kind enough to arrange for us to get passes to go see it.

Carl's painting hangs in the Speaker of the House's office which, while we were there, appeared to be more of a storage room than anything else. "Ripe Corn Time" was much larger than I had expected, painted in 1895, likely in the area around Doon, near Kitchener, which is where he had just moved from. He sold it to the government from the residence we had just seen a couple of hours ago.

After leaving the legislature building, we got back on the subway and rode it a long way west to the Landsdowne station. From there is was a very short walk to another residence.

This was the house where Carl and his second wife, Madonna, lived from 1909 to 1911. Their second child, Penelope, died in the house in December of 1910 at the age of 2. Sigrid was born there three weeks later. The house has been fixed up since the time they lived there. I believe the brick has been plastered over but all the windows and the structure of the house matched our historical photos. Madonna had named this exact address.

The neighborhood is older, but there is obvious pride of ownership there.

We continued west on the subway to the Royal York station. When we left the station we realized that we had inadvertantly found an area of town called The Kingsway, which Madonna had mentioned in her memoirs. Carl and Madonna's friend, artist Andre Lapine, purchased a house here around 1914. Today it is very upscale and artsy. Chris and I both wished we had the time to explore it more.

We walked East on Bloor a few blocks to Prince Edwards Drive, which is a dividing line between the Kingsway and the old section

of town called Lambton Mills. Carl lived in Lambton off and on through much of his life, and my grandmother, Chloris, was born there.

Park Lawn Cemetery is on the southeast corner of this intersection and is quite large - not easily missed. The main entrance is a little way south on Prince Edwards, and there is a cemetery office just inside. We got a map to the grave site there. It is located not far off the path. that runs parallel to Bloor

The cemetery was incredibly beautiful with its magestic trees and colorful flowers - exactly the place where I had pictured Carl to be buried. We walked along the path for a small distance and it appeared from the map

like we still had a long way to go when I had this sudden odd feeling, almost like a gravitational pull to the right. Sure enough there was a ground marker over there. As I stepped closer I could see that the first letter was an 'A'. "This is it!" I said before I was close enough to read the whole name.

It was surreal standing there, knowing that all that remained of The Painter who had in many ways haunted my life rested directly under my feet. It was the grave of three people, only one of which I had met (as a baby.) Yet I feel closer to them than most of my closest friends.

I wanted very much to just sit there with them for awhile. I watched as my cousin struggled to hold his emotions together and finally resorted to leaving the site to take photographs nearby. I felt a complete sense of calm, at least until I dug the last couple of pages of Madonna's biography out of my purse and read them. It was so strange to me that all of my drafts were missing those pages about the very end of his life, almost like I was supposed to come to Toronto to retrieve them, to read them at this spot.

After leaving the cemetery Chris and I both commented about feeling sad that the monument was nowhere near what it should be for someone who was a celebrity in his day, someone who had lead such a full life. It doesn't even give any indication that he was an artist. I know it was all they could afford and that the plot was purchased back in 1910, after Penelope died. I have correspondence between Madonna and the cemetery and I know she wanted a much larger ground marker, but at the time, this was the largest one she could buy. If I ever earn enough from my book, I would like to replace the headstone with one more fitting.

September 23rd, 2004

Today we went to a couple more of Carl's residences, and since the subway went nowhere near these neighborhoods, we had to take a cab. The first one was quite a way east of the hotel, near the Toronto beaches area. The neighborhood was older and slightly run down, but the old residence itself was well kept up and had character. The photo on the right is of Carl's residence from 1892-1893. He was there with his first family. Depending on when in 1892 they moved here, his daughter, Pauline, may have been born in this house. During part of the stay here, Carl was in New York City alone while the family remained behind in Toronto.

Next we had a long drive to find Carl's residence in 1923, the place he and Madonna lived just prior to moving to Big Trees in Galt. It is in the Oakwood area of Toronto, just north of St. Claire Avenue between Bathurst and Dufferin Streets. Again an older neighborhood. The driver mentioned that most of the people living in the area now are Italian or Portugese and that many of them do not speak English.

We had the cab driver drop us off near Lambton Park on Dundas (Dun-DAS) Street. It took a little work, but Chris finally found a path down to the park on the east side of the Humber River. The area was full of new development and we saw very few houses that were of the right era. Madonna had mentioned that the rent on their place was cheap, so it was unlikely that a cheap house in those days would have survived so long now.

We spent a good hour, maybe even two, strolling our way through the series of parks that wound their way back down to Bloor Street. First there was Lambton Park, then Magwood, then Etienne Brule. Chris busily took photographs while I shot camcorder footage. It was easy to forget that we were still in the city. The river was especially beautiful and I knew that Carl had been familiar with every little bend in it, as it had been in his backyard for roughly ten years of his life. I found myself running my hand over the bark of the trees or dipping my hand into the river several times. The place was doubly special to me, as my grandmother was born here. The only disappointment was being so close to the location and having no idea how to pin it down.

January 2007

A major break. In going through my old documents I found an envelope addressed to Carl at Fisher Road in Lambton Mills. With this detail I managed to find an obscure document on the internet that, when combined with information from the 1911 census of Lambton Mills, narrowed the search down to a single block. I contacted my friend, artist Rick Taylor, who lives near the area and sent him a historic photo I had of the house. Within a couple of hours he sent me back this photo.

He said that while there have been some changes, such as the porch being taken out, the brick painted over, and a garage added, he compared every window and door and the angle of the chimney; everything matches perfectly. This house was Carl and Madonna's residence from roughly May of 1911 to 1920. At the time this area was quite rural and the back yard led right down to the banks of the Humber River. When Chris and I came here in 2004 we were about two blocks away from the house without knowing it. Our grandmother was born here on August 2nd, 1912.

Below is an interior shot of Carl's studio at Lambton Mills. Madonna mentioned it being to the back of the house, kind of like an old converted barn that was attached to the house. It could be that this building is no longer there, or was renovated again into a garage.

Click here to visit Rick Taylor's website

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