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During
the depression, the City of Toronto made a concerted effort to keep
many of its young men out of trouble by providing them with a program
of organised sports at a number of parks and playgrounds.1
The
most popular of the sports activities was baseball, and amateur
teams were followed by their fans with a degree of enthusiasm nearly
equal to that shown for the major leagues.
On
most evenings during the summer months amateur hardball and softball
games provided free and exciting entertainment for many who could
not afford more expensive forms of leisurely diversion. At one of
these games, played in Willowvale Park (popularly referred to as
Christie Pits), one of the most serious ethnic disturbances in Toronto's
history took place.
The
summer of 1933 was particularly hot and humid. The oppressive weather
only exacerbated the tensions created by growing protests against
poverty and unemployment in the city.
Toronto's
parks were the scenes of violent confrontations between communists
and socialists who had gathered to hear their leaders speak and
the Toronto police who, acting under the orders of Chief Draper,
were determined to break up those illegal gatherings. On the evening
of August 16, 1933 a semi-final softball game was played in Christie
Pits between Harbord Playground and St. Peter's.
This
was the second game in a three game series; there had already been
some trouble at the first game played two days earlier. A small
group of spectators waved around a black sweater with a white swastika
sewn onto it and harangued the Harbord team (the majority of its
players were Jewish) and its supporters with anti-Semitic epithets;
and Jewish and Gentile boys returned to the park on the evening
of the second game, Wednesday, August 16, ready for trouble.
Regardless
of who introduced the anti-Jewish taunts into the Monday game at
Christie Pits, members of the Pit Gang were not slow in recognizing
that this was an excellent way to cause trouble. Rumours of possible
confrontation brought out large numbers of both Jewish and anti-Jewish
supporters to the second game.
Rumours
about what had happened on the Monday evening and what was going
to happen on the Wednesday evening spread so quickly in the community
that on Tuesday the secretary of the Toronto Amateur Softball Association
appealed to the city police to take action to prevent a violent
altercation at the second game.
An
editorial in the Toronto Daily Star two days after the riot referred
angrily to this forewarning: Chief Draper had, owing to the rumours
of the trouble that was brewing, been requested by letter to provide
additional police protection for the occasion.
This
extra protection was not provided. No doubt if the request had been
based on the fear that somebody was going to make a speech in Willowvale
Park, horse, foot and artillery would have been there to prevent
the speech and drive everybody out of the valley. (18 August, p.
6) In response to the tense atmosphere, local people organised in
advance for trouble and made sure they got to the Pits before the
beginning of the ball game.
Most
of them were Jewish boys loosely referred to as the Spadina Avenue
Gang. Frequenters of the pool halls and restaurants in the Spadina/College
area, they were considered "tough guys" both within and without
the Jewish community. (In fact, their number included many amateur
boxers, several of whom went on to become professional fighters.)
Scores of these boys, perhaps more, went to the park in cars and
trucks before the game on the strength of the rumour circulating
since Monday night.
Trouble
came soon after the end of the game on Wednesday night, which St.
Peter's won 54, when a group of youths unfurled a large swastika
flag at the southern end of the Pits.
Jewish
youths charged across the field towards the swastika bearers and
an hour of uncontrolled fighting with baseball bats, clubs and lead
pipes, which left many injured on both sides, ensued. Four members
of the so-called Pit Gang - local unemployed adolescents from the
Willowvale area - were arrested. When questioned, they admitted
that it was their aim to keep the Jews out of their park.
Any
analysis of a riot requires some consideration of the sequence of
steps culminating in the breakdown of social control.As
Neil Smelser has shown in his Theory of Collective Behavior, riots
are typically sparked by a "precipitating factor" which triggers
off the riot proper.2
This
triggering incident, taken by itself, does not cause the riot but
becomes defined by those involved as appropriate grounds for embarking
upon the violent course of action. As sociologists of sport have
shown, sporting events frequently serve as both the social occasion
and social context within which the precipitating factors of riots
unfold.
An
understanding of the Christie Pits riot necessarily involves a general
appreciation of the anti-Semitism confronting Toronto Jewry at the
time, but, more importantly, Jews' perception of the horrifying
change in its manifestation with the sudden appearance of Swastika
Clubs in the 1930s, organised allegedly for keeping the public beaches
clear of "undesirables." Anti-Semitism and the formation of the
Swastika Clubs, however, are not the focus of this short paper.
Instead,
against the general backdrop of ethnicity, we examine the role of
a baseball game which served as the triggering incident resulting
in the inter-ethnic violence at Christie Pits. The area around Christie
Pits was predominantly lower-middle and working-class English then.
The Orange influence was pervasive. Local inhabitants had suffered
under depression conditions and many of the young men had been unemployed
for quite some time.
Jews
were beginning to move into the area just south of Christie Pits
and many of the neighbourhood youths felt called upon to defend
their turf from the encroaching aliens. It is, therefore, no accident
that the street fighting took place in an area contested by Jewish
and Gentile groups.
The
major newspapers in Toronto contributed to the growing hostility
by describing the trouble which had occurred at the end of the first
game in the Harbord - St. Peter's series. Furthermore, both the
Toronto Daily Star and the Mail and Empire reported that the Jewish
boys had threatened that they would be coming to the second game
prepared to deal with any anti-Semitic provocation.
Interestingly,
after the riot, the Toronto papers emphasized the spirit of sportsmanship
and cooperation which existed among the boys of all ethnic groups
in the baseball leagues of Toronto. The Toronto Star, for example,
in reporting the riot stressed the mixed composition of Harbord
Playground, St. Peter's and other teams. Under the heading "Jews,
Gentiles Play Together," it reported: Amateur sport puts up no racial
barriers if the personnel of many of Toronto's most successful baseball
and basketball teams - with Jews, Gentiles, Italians and other central
Europeans playing together - is any criterion.
Irish
boys in minority groups play on predominantly Jewish teams. Jews,
singly and in groups, team with Gentiles, and throughout all there
is no friction of a racial character, according to sporting authorities,
closely in touch with the teams.... Most striking examples of this
inter-racial teamwork is seen in the Lizzie's basketball team, 1932
champions, the University of Toronto basketball team, Big Five champions
last year, and the Arlington baseball team, leaders of the Greenwood
Park Senior League, all of which have several races represented
in their line-ups.
Playing
on the Arlington team, which is predominantly Jewish, and managed
by Harold "Skin" Gallander (a Jewish athlete who plays for the Lizzies'
basketball team) are Jack O'Connor, Joe Hill (who plays softball
for St. Peter's, one of the teams playing at Willowvale Park where
the fracas occurred last night) Johnny Decker, and Herman Bush,
an Italian who is rated one of the best pitchers in the city.
There
are nine Jewish boys on the team. A sole Jewish member of the Native
Sons' team, playing in the Western City League at Willowvale Park,
is Myer Miller, while another similar example is that of Al Samuelson,
pitcher for the Bain's Coal softball team in the Davisville Park
senior league.
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Another
is Sammy Rubin, who is the only Jewish member of an east end softball
team in the Beaches League. (17 August, p. 3) Spokesmen for the
two teams vigorously denied that the players were involved in any
way with the provocations or the actual fighting.
In
an interview conducted by us last year, the manager of the Harbord
boys confirmed that there was no animosity between the two teams:
But the interesting part of this whole thing is there was no animosity
between the teams. There was nothing because St. Peter's was the
Catholic Youth Organization. They did not have an everyday programme,
they had a league programme. Most of these kids that played for
St. Peter's were in the same neighbourhood.
They
came to Harbord Playground and they probably played other teams
at Harbord. The boys knew each other. It was a good series. According
to former residents of the Christie Pits area, members of the Pit
Gang supported local sports teams from St. Peter's Church and Essex
Playground. While this support was partly a reflection of anti-Jewish
sentiments, the latter were not deeply rooted in anti-Semitism.
The
riot, they maintain, is best seen as the result of actions taken
by overly enthusiastic fans with a history of causing trouble in
the past. As one resident recalled: The peculiar thing that impressed
me about them [the Pit Gang members] was . . . they were fans of
local teams like Essex Playground ... and St. Peter's.... They were
your fans, and they come and cheered you up.... And there was no
doubt about it, they were trouble makers.... Whether they were anti-Semitic
or not, I don't know.... I mean, in that group, I got to recognize
this, that any Jew was an outsider.... Jews was outsiders, they
were good bait, and that was it.... I doubt very much if anybody
in that group really, really had a hang on anti-Semitism as we know
it today.
I doubt
it. That there was resentment, ya, but I think it was based on local
sport pride. This approach to understanding the riot, however, is
not strongly supported by the evidence. Contemporaries also explained
the Christie Pits riot as a clash between Anglo-Saxon and "ethnic"
youth. Both Jewish and Italian respondents pointed out that the
Jewish contingent was accompanied to the Pits by Italian allies.
They
reminded us repeatedly that the relationship between the Jewish
and Italian communities, in particular the connection between the
youth, was generally supportive and cordial. After all, both were
immigrant groups sharing similar life circumstances in the same
poor neighbourhoods.
As
well, both groups were outsiders experiencing discrimination and
bigotry at the hands of the WASP establishment and British majority.3
These
explanations, however, are not convincing. According to several
respondents, some Italians fought on the side of the Pit Gang against
the Jews. Furthermore, as the newspapers reported, and as corroborated
by our respondents, although Blacks were hardly present in Toronto
in those days, a young Black boxer figured prominently among the
group which raised the swastika flag.
Thus
while the Christie Pits riot was motivated by ethnic and racial
considerations, any attempt to separate the two sides into distinctive
ethnic groupings is less than accurate. Clearly the most important
element leading to the outbreak of the open hostilities was anti-Semitism.
Jewish youths growing up in Toronto during the thirties met social
and occupational resistance from a smug Anglo-Saxon elite and a
xenophobic Orange middle and working class.
The
use of the swastika highlights the anti-Semitic sentiment. A quick
perusal of the newspapers in the first half of 1933 shows that the
extreme anti-Jewish policies of the German government were duly
reported by the Toronto papers. There can be absolutely no doubt
as to the implied significance of the swastika nor to the meaning
which the Jewish youth attached to it. The character of this anti-Semitism
is complex.
On
the one hand, it rested on a long tradition of Protestant anti-Semitism,
which, unlike the anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church, was founded
less on theological dogma than on the perceived economic and social
threat of upwardly mobile Jews. On the other hand, the geography
and social utility of Christie Pits is not without significance
here.
For
whatever else the Christie Pits riot may have signified, it was
also a struggle for turf between a primarily defensive déclassé
group of Anglo youths and an upwardly mobile group of Jewish adolescents
who had suffered discrimination. The baseball game, which pitted
a team perceived to be Jewish against a local team - albeit one
perceived to be Catholic - generated excitement among team members
and their supporters and provided the occasion for the outbreak
of violent confrontation.
To
the extent that Toronto was dominated by a stuffy WASP establishment
and the popular ideology of Orangeism, Jews, Italians and other
immigrant groups were forced into a kind of alliance. However, squabbles
between Jews and members of other groups were not unknown, even
though the data suggest that the intensity and duration of such
conflicts were limited.
iFor
the Jewish youth of Toronto, participation in the Christie Pits
riot was a reaction against years of bullying and a signal that
Jewish youths were no longer going to play by rules which were so
blatantly stacked against them.
NOTES
1.
N. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: The Free Press,
1963).
2.
One of the supervisors of the Harbord Playground in 1933 described
the organisation of the playground system and the importance of
organized sports for the generation of depression youth as following:
The
playground system was different then.... Today it's oriented to
folkdancing and art and things like that. At that time a fellow
by the name of Armstrong ran it. And he come out of the public school
system here. He was the writing inspector and started as a teacher
of writing at the old McCaul School at University and Elm where
the old Mt. Sinai Hospital is.
And
then the city hired him as a playground supervisor. His theory was
keep them off the streets. It was the depression years; keep them
occupied. So the playgrounds were opened wherever possible. And
this was at the back of Harbord Collegiate.
That's
where Harbord Playground comes from. And there were many like that.
Some of them were permanent: Moss Park was a permanent ground, belonged
to the city. East Riverdale was, Osler was, Glady Calhoun was at
Osler. Bob Abate sort of moved around - you must have heard that
name.
That
was Lizzie's, it was on the Elizabeth Playground, at the Elizabeth
School.... But then he moved to Central Tech.... But the theory
of doing things was to have teams and that was the basis of trying
to keep kids off the street and out of trouble.
There
was no money. The kids had no money. I had kids there who would
come at nine o'clock in the morning and if they didn't play baseball,
they'd be playing quoits. This was their whole life. There was no
money to spend. They might run home or get something to eat or bring
a sandwich, but they came from far away.
They
came from below College Street, even some below Dundas. And some
of them hung around all day and the joint was open from nine to
nine. You close up the playground when the lights went off.
3.
One of our respondents, an Italian Canadian who went to the Pits
with his friends to support the Jewish boys, provided the following
interesting account of the anti-ltalian sentiment in Toronto at
that time: They'd call you wop, ya. As a matter of fact we even
made up a song about the Italians . . . 'When I first come to this
country, people called me dago man. Long time ago they make me feel
just like an empty banan.
First
they called me Tony Spagoni, then they'd say, 'You're full of macaroni.'
Now it's a biga shame they gimme the nickname. Why don't you tell
them to stop, stop, stop. Why don't the Irish cop tell them to stop.
First
they called me Tony, you're full of macaroni, now they call me wop.'
Actually, this is how it was: 'You lousy wop.'
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