1780s: Jean Baptiste Rousseau straddles the many identities that are York. A first generation French Canadian trader, he works for the English and the Natives, and will help to repel American invaders. Rousseau is the first European resident of what will be York, the welcome wagon for the waves of refugees about to arrive from America.

When the French retreat from the region after their defeat on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, one of the few French left is Rousseau, a local fur trader. Son of a coureur de bois, he learns the languages of the Five Nations League and various Ojibwa dialects. He's an interpreter for the French traders, then the English, helping to settle the Loyalists and to negotiate land transactions with the Natives. He marries Margaret Clyne, the adopted white daughter of Chief Joseph Brant, solidifying his connections with the Native community. It is said that both he and Margaret court in the Mohawk language.

In 1791, Rousseau is running a small trading post on the shores of the Humber River, where Bloor west is today, when Upper Canada is created. He meets the first surveyors for the British Crown, who refer to him as Mr. St. Jean. Rousseau, or St. Jean as he is known locally, is much admired by the new Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe who enlists him to negotiate with the Natives. Simcoe writes:

"He has all the requisites for that office and is equally agreeable to Brant and the Mohawks. As to the Mississaugas, (he is) the only person who possesses any degree of influence with those nations."

In 1793, Rousseau's daughter is the first European child born in York. But Rousseau has a hard time getting more land from the Crown, and moves south to Ancaster, near Hamilton where he runs a mill. He also converts to Anglicanism.

Rousseau leaves his mark all over Upper Canada. He's appointed to the militia as an ensign in 1797 and his name appears on the Second Toronto Purchase in 1805. As hostilities heat up between Canada and America, Rousseau is made a captain of the Indian Department in 1812. He reports to superiors about Native negotiations to keep the Six Nations neutral in the coming battle with the Americans.

On October 13, 1812, Rousseau fights at the famous battle of Queenston Heights, where Sir Isaac Brock is killed by American fire. A month later, he dies of pleurisy and is buried with full military honours in St. Mark's churchyard at Niagara.

1792: Lt. Governor John Graves Simcoe is a former British commander in the Revolutionary war. With the creation of Upper Canada in 1791, Toronto passes from native stewardship to British control. The new colony needs a government and safe capital. John Graves Simcoe arrives to oversee both.

Simcoe sails into Toronto harbour in 1792 with his wife and family aboard the 120-tonne schooner "The Mississauga".. Within a month of establishing a military post, his Queen's Rangers fire a 21-gun salute along the shore, inaugurating the site for a new town. Simcoe calls it York, in honour of King George's son, the Duke of York - the same one the children sing about.

"The Grand old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again."

Simcoe chooses Toronto because he recognizes the strategic value of its natural harbour against Americans attack. Just as importantly, York is a lot further from the border than the temporary capital of Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake).

As a soldier in the Revolutionary War, Simcoe harbours an abiding hatred of the Americans; especially their tradition of slavery. In his first session of Parliament, he proposes legislation to abolish slavery in Upper Canada. It's the first distinctly human rights statute against slavery in the entire British Empire. Simcoe writes that he cannot assent to any law which: "discriminates by dishonest policy between the natives of Africa, America or Europe."

Though he stays only four years, Simcoe lays the foundations for Toronto, establishing a judiciary, a cleared town site, roads; and creating a land grant system that lures Loyalists to the village. It is his need for settlers, his tolerance for immigrants that shapes Upper Canada for the next several generations. His suspicion of the French is another lasting legacy that will colour the psyche of Toronto.

1792: Mrs. Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe, the adventurous wife of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, arrives in Toronto in 1792 with a boatload of ball gowns, jewelry, and sterling silver. She's accompanied by a French chef and 3 of her youngest children. For the next four years her home will be an elaborate 30 foot, embroidered canvas tent erected on a platform along the lakeshore. The wealthy, petite Englishwoman is curious, free-spirited person, open to the adventures awaiting her in Upper Canada. She loves the frontier and the danger it offers. Mrs. Simcoe rides horses through the forests, paints landscape watercolours and shows an interest in local Natives. She also keeps a diary, offering modern readers a lasting impression of 18th century Toronto.

"At eight this dark evening we went to see salmon speared - large torches of white bark being carried in the boat, the blaze of light attracts the fish, which the Indians are dexterous at spearing. The manner of destroying the fish is disagreeable, but seeing them swimming in shoals around the boat is a very pretty sight."

Mrs. Simcoe earns a reputation for strong passions and unusual proclivities. According to her diaries, she likes setting fires in nearby pastures, excited by the flames burning the grasses. Historian Marion Fowler thinks there's more to it. According to Ms. Fowler, the fires are burned only when Mrs. Simcoe is in the steamy company of one of the Governor's men, the young and handsome Colonel John Talbot.

William Moll Berczy is remembered as one of Canada's first portrait painters, but the German immigrant is a highly trained engineer with architectural skills. He designs St. James, the first Anglican Church 1806, as well as the first bridge on the Don River.

Leading 600 countrymen north from America in the l790s, Berczy makes a deal with Simcoe to bring in settlers and to build roads in exchange for free land to farm. During their early years clearing mosquito-infested bush, many of the Germans die from Malaria. Road building falls behind. Nervous that this German community may not be loyal to the Crown, the land grants are not honoured by Simcoe's successors. Berczy's original farm and the descendants of these first settlers, still remain in the Markham area.

HEROES, heroines and HOOLIGANS

1812: Bishop Strachan: John Strachan, minister and teacher, arrives in York in 1812. In a few short months he will earn his place as York's spiritual father, and remain an enduring object of the love and loathing of his fellow townspeople.

The son of a humble Scottish quarryman, Strachan re-invents himself in York, becoming one of the leading aristocrats, and an Anglican. He proves courageous protecting his flock during the War of 1812, and uses his hero status to establish a ruling class, post war. His clique of powerful businessmen, called the "Family Compact", rule Upper Canada from York with privileged obliviousness and self interest.

Strachan becomes rector of the most prestigious parish in the province and is its first Anglican Bishop; he founds hundreds of little schools across the province; is instrumental in the founding of Montreal's McGill University and King's College, which later becomes Trinity College. During the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834, he is untiring in his efforts to minister to the sick, arrange burials and to stop panic in the streets.

Cast in his most favorable light, writer and Dean of Massey College, John Fraser says, "He was typical of the kind of rough and ready Scots that came out here and made Toronto such a sturdy place." But Strachan is extremely aggressive politician holding elitist Tory ideological values that are discreditable even in his own age. He has trouble distinguishing between dissent and disloyalty. In this regard, another contemporary historian, Carl Benn of Fort York, sees him more as " the bald headed, manacled Nazi of Upper Canada."

Reformer William Lyon Mackenzie would agree. When Strachan erects a grand brick home at York and Simcoe streets for the whopping sum of 6000 pounds, about $30,000 today, Mackenzie is appalled and dubs it "John Strachan's Palace". "It adds to the pleasures, mean and groveling as they are, of such a man as Doctor Strachan, to have a hundred poor miserable wretches humbly attending at his gate or in his 'soup kitchen' begging for a morsel. Their poverty form an agreeable and striking contrast with the coach, the palace, the liveried footman... ".

John Strachan remains the eminence gris in most of Toronto's affairs. Though the influence of the Family Compact fades with the arrival of newer immigrants, Strachan remains its favoured member. His funeral is the biggest attended event in Toronto history, and thousands turn out to mark his passing in November 1867.

1813: Penelope Bleikie: There are some tough cookies living in York in the first part of the century. During the War of 1812, when the Americans land in York and ransack homes, Penelope Bleikie stands up to them. Bleikie, the wife of a soldier who has gone to war writes in her diary: "I kept my castle when all the rest fled; and it was well for us I did so... Every house they found deserted was completely sacked. Will you believe it? I had the temerity to frighten, and even to threaten, some of the enemy"?

1824: William Lyon Mackenzie is a feisty Scottish immigrant who establishes the first real opposition to the Family Compact. He's is a ridiculous looking character: short and square with flapping hands and mouth; and a mop-like red wig, which slides down on his head.. (His baldness is a result of childhood illness.) But Mackenzie is as determined as he is ugly, to press from responsible government. In 1824 he opens the Colonial Advocate and immediately starts lobbing invectives at the ruling class. Though always on the brink of bankruptcy, he has a ready audience in the disgruntled citizens of York. He thinks the men surrounding the lieutenant governor are using the colony to their own benefit and describes them as "a reptilian group of men who are in league with the devil..." Mackenzie mocks them so fiercely that the sons of the ruling class, disguised as Indians, ransack his printing shop. It's a blinding tactical error that works to Mackenzie's advantage. The hefty fine they have to pay keeps his business running.

It is Mackenzie who dubs the bunch the "Family Compact".. And his continued attack on them wins him great popularity. When York is finally incorporated as Toronto in 1834, Mackenzie is elected its first mayor on a frothy wave of reform. Three years later, Mackenzie leads the failed rebellion of 1837. He pulls a band of a couple of hundred scruffy followers together at Montgomery's Tavern, north of Toronto, and prepares to march on the city. They meet the defenders of the city, fire a few shots, and disperse. Mackenzie then scarpers off to the United States, some say disguised in women's clothing, to avoid prosecution.

Rebel Thomas Sheppard, has left us a first person account of why he became a rebel in 1837 "We thought we could break the Family Compact by sending the right sort of men to parliament, but the last election before the rebellion they drowned us with crooked votes. After that Mackenzie used to tell us we would have to shoulder muskets to get our rights."

Rebel Thomas Anderson, another rebel adds: "My father was a Tory, but ...... any one who wanted to see the country happy had to be a reformer in those days. Why, you couldn't collect a cent of debt from any of the Family Compact crowd if they didn't want to pay you. You could sue and get judgment all right, but you had to pay your own costs, for no matter how good the man was, if he belonged to any of the Family Compact houses the judgment would come back from the sheriff's officer marked nulla bona.

"All along we expected to straighten things out at the poll until Sir Francis and his crowd swamped us at the election in the summer of 1837. Why, his men distributed tickets giving titles to farms on the land shore road and the bush that no one ever knew were farms. There were no such farms... but with these tickets in their hands the hired men would go to the polls and swear that they got four dollars a year off farms that they did not own nor no one else ever did own. But these ticket holders swore enough votes through to beat us Reformers who had property in the country, and after that we saw that there was nothing before us but a fight..."

1837: Cornelia De Grassi is the teenage daughter of Italian born Phillipe De Grassi, a British Officer, who rides through the bitter winter to spy on the rebels. She leaves Government House where her father volunteers his services, and goes to the wheelwright's shop beside Montgomery's tavern. She's caught, takes off and races back to town on her horse, musket balls raging around her. Wounded in one leg, she's get backs and warns the others of the size and gun power of the rebels.

1838: Mr. And Mrs. Samuel Lount are two of the casualties of the Rebellion. Samuel Lount, one of the rebel leaders alongside Mackenzie is hung on April 12, 1838. He marches up the creaky steps to the scaffolding and tells the crowd that he regrets nothing. His wife writes after her husband's death, describing her efforts to save her husband's life. Before he is to be hanged, she acquires 35,000 signatures on a petition asking for her husband's release from the so-called "crimes" he has committed in the rebellion of 1837. But Tory Governor John Beverly Robinson is insistently deaf to her pleas.

"...The sad morning came - the victim was led forth - and the endearing husband and father fell a martyr in the cause of Canadian reform... was it fear..... that the Governor refused a defenseless woman the corpse of her murdered husband? Why then when upon my bended knee I begged the body of my husband, did he send me from his presence unsatisfied? My husband, just before his tragic death, said "That he freely forgave them (the Tories) for their cruelty, and that he was prepared to meet his God in peace."

Several years later, the government declares an amnesty. William Lyon Mackenzie returns to Toronto and helps to erect a monument to his fallen comrades. It stands today in Toronto's Necropolis.

1841: Robert Baldwin is the quiet, moderate political leader of the Reformers - a sharp contrast to Mackenzie's firry oratory and compulsiveness. Baldwin is a sad and private man, mourning the death of his beloved wife. He's a reluctant politician, but he despises the privileges of political appointment and makes heroic efforts to bring in responsible government. England sends out Lord Durham, who recommends uniting Canada as an English nation. Robert Baldwin forges a friendship with Quebec's Louis Lafontaine; together they create the foundations of a bi-cultural nation through the Bill of Union, which unites Upper and Lower Canada in 1841.

"If we all combine as Canadians to promote the good of all classes in Canada, there cannot be a doubt that under the new constitution, worked as Lord Durham proposes, the only party which would suffer would be the bureaucrats."

Toronto's Robert Baldwin sets the pattern that establishes responsible government in the entire British Empire. But through all his years of nation building, he is haunted by his dead wife - by the guilt of watching her die from a caesarian in childbirth. He carries her letters, forever caressing them in his breast pocket. Nearing his own death, he asks his doctor to perform a caesarian on his body, in order to assuage his guilt by carrying her scars into the next world. Though historians debate whether the doctor performed the procedure, the coffins of Robert Baldwin and his wife are chained together in the mausoleum.

1834: Francis Collins is the first Irish Catholic journalist in Upper Canada. In 1825 he establishes his own newspaper, The Canadian Freeman, attacking the administration of Lieutenant Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland and his Tory advisors. Like Mackenzie, Collins offers a critical voice against "petty tyranny and servility."

Collins also speaks passionately for the Irish and for other destitute immigrants huddling in slums. He connects poor living conditions with disease, and is one of the first journalists to sound the alarm about growing pollution. He asks how

"...the Magistrates can allow the horrible nuisance which now appears on the face of the bay. All the filth of the Town- dead horses, dogs, cats, manure, drop down in to the water, which is used by almost all the inhabitants on the shore." Collin's nagging pays off - within months the city directors "scavengers" to begin garbage collection in the poorest areas.

Collins stands firm on freedom of the press. While he's no fan of Mackenzie's, when the Scotsman's printing house is ransacked, Collins defends him. "Atrocious Outrage - total destruction of the Printing Office of the Colonial Advocate. On Thursday last, a set of men holding high and honorable situations under the Colonial Government formed themselves into a conspiracy against THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS...."

It is an act of courage to criticize a government that exercises such stinging vindictiveness. The authorities indict Collins on four counts of libel, but the public supports him and he's acquitted. Two more charges are laid and Collins is finally dragged to jail to serve 45 weeks. Collins returns to the Freeman and continues denouncing the government and religious partisanship, particularly between the Orangemen and the Irish Catholics.

"...This, thank God, is a land of civil and religious liberty, where ... some of our pious country men have attempted to butcher each other, for the sake of religion... But we call upon every Irishman, be him Orangeman or Green to put down such folly as party processions, party quarrels, and religious animosity, which has been the bane and ruin of our native land, and the reproach of Irishmen all over the world.."

It is for the Irish that Collins works most vigorously. In the horrible Cholera epidemics of 1832 and '34, he nurses the immigrants in the fever sheds, and rallies around their cause with pleas of compassion. Collins himself contracts the disease. He dies in August along with his wife and eldest daughter. He is buried in St. Paul's churchyard, without a monument, tablet or inscription.

1851: George Brown watches with horror as the Americans enact their brutal Fugitive Law. It is a cruel law that allows for the hunting down of escape slaves in free American states. Fifty thousand Black refugees hurry into British Canada for protection in the "lion's paw." While black citizens had been living peacefully in York for over fifty years, the flood of refugees from the Underground Railroad sends shudders down some white spines. George Brown, founder of the Globe newspaper in 1844, embraces the Black cause. In 1851, Brown and his family found the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society, using their newspaper to attack intolerance. At a meeting at St. Lawrence Hall, with the mayor in the chair, Brown launches the new organization with a view to ending "the common guilt of the civilized and Christian world."

1852: Egerton Ryerson is a lifelong opponent of John Strachan's efforts to make Toronto education singularly Anglican. A Methodist minister and educator, Ryerson is appointed superintendent of schools in the newly created Canada West in 1844. Eight years later he introduces Ontario's first free public schools, which becomes a model copied across Canada. He believes children fourteen and under have to go to school and that teachers have to be qualified. With a rural population moving to the city and streams of immigrants arriving, children are hanging out on the streets. In fact, 11% of Toronto's workforce is made up of children.

It is Ryerson's upper class opinion that school keeps poor children from running wild, who, he believes tend to be criminal and destructive by nature. Methodist Ryerson is also the founder of Ryerson Press, a second generation Family Compact member, and a contemporary of Robert Baldwin.

1869: Timothy Eaton opens a dry-goods store the size of a 2-car garage on Yonge St. in 1869, creating the first of what will eventually become a nation-wide chain of department stores bearing his name. The Irish immigrant employs inventive sales strategies, revolutionizing the way Canadians do business. He introduces the "set price" concept to merchandising, eliminating the common practice of haggling. He institutes a guarantee of "goods satisfactory or money refunded," hoping to win the confidence of new consumers. Eaton directs his business at the swelling ranks of working men and women in Toronto who have money to spend. It works. Starting out with 3 clerks, an errand boy and Maggie the Wonder horse, who pulls delivery wagons, his annual sales rise from $25, 416 in l870 to $154, 985 in 1880.

Eaton holds the first sidewalk sale in history, putting out bins of 5 cent ties and l cent spools of thread in front of the store. A strong Methodist, he won't sell playing cards or tobacco - thinking both are sinful. But he keeps adding to his roster of dry goods with other things; sporting goods, musical instruments, drugs, groceries, and furniture. It becomes a department store.

Eaton is also a pioneer of the Early Closing Movement, and by 1876 reduces the usual 12-hour working day. By 1904 the store closes at 5:00. By 1884 Eaton introduces his Mail Order Catalogue, uniting a whole country in its longing for goods. Out west they call it the "Prairie Bible."

Timothy Eaton leaves a succession of sons and grandsons to run his cross-country department store empire, but in 1999, the family declares bankruptcy, and a nation grieves the loss of a proud Canadian landmark.

1870: Thomas Scott is an angry, angular man, caught in the crossfire of a national crisis. He's also Orange Toronto's first martyr. Post Confederation Toronto is called the "Belfast of North America." It's an Irish Protestant town, and the Red River Rebellion in Manitoba hardens that identity. In 1870, Toronto sends 24 Kings Royal Rifles to Riel's Red River Rebellion. They can do nothing for Thomas Scott, a local Orangeman who is executed on the order of Riel. Anti-French and anti-Catholic rears its ugly face in Toronto again.

After Scott s execution, over 5000 indignant Torontonians gather at City Hall to listen to representatives from the Red River colony. They adopt a resolution supporting the colony and condemning the instigators of the Rebellion as murderers. Grisly, trumped up stories about Scott's torture feed the growing hatred. Rumours circulate about Scott being left half dead, screaming from a make-shift coffin hours after his supposed execution. In fact, Scott was led out into the Fort Garry courtyard, blindfolded with a white cloth and shot by 6 men with 2 or 3 bullets. When he lets out a ghastly groan, a man comes forward with a revolver and shoots him in the head. Dead.

But rumours persist and Orange fury percolates. Fifteen years will pass until Toronto can avenge Scott's martyrdom. When Riel's Northwest Rebellion fails in Saskatchewan in 1885, it is the threat of Orange Toronto's wrath that forces Prime Minister MacDonald's hand. Louis Riel must hang from a noose.

1881: Dr. Emily Stowe creates Canada's first suffragette group under the unassuming name of the Toronto Women's Literary Club. In 188l they come out in the open, asking for the vote. Three years later Toronto's single women are given the franchise. Married women or those without property will have to wait until 1918.

Emily Stowe spends her life breaking down barriers against women. She's Canada's first woman physician but has to practice illegally - women aren't allowed medical licenses in Canada. Dr. Stowe couldn't even get educated here; she had to study medicine in the US. Because the University of Toronto makes it so clear that women are not considered adequate to even apply for medical school, Stowe and her colleagues open Canada's first medical college for women. Soon after they open a dispensary and then a full fledge hospital, aptly named, Women's College Hospital.

1886: WH Howland stands as a candidate for the mayoralty of Toronto, supported on the shoulders of an informal Municipal Reform Association. Their strength is greater than they suspect, and Howland is elected by a majority of over 1900 votes.

From a well to do family, Howland courts the new women's vote on a ticket of morality, religion and reform. He is concerned with slum conditions, filthy streets, drunkenness and a foul water supply. He is Toronto's 25th mayor, the first one to base his campaign on the reform of the working class. He appoints a one-man Morality Squad, and continuing in an old Toronto institution, makes prostitution the all-consuming evil that good societies are rabidly opposed to.

1892: Henry Pellatt is the son of Toronto's first stock exchange president, and an ambitious young dandy with a "Midas touch." Famous today for his monumental legacy, Casa Loma, Pellatt earns the nickname "Pellatt the Plunger" as a speculator in western real estate and railway stocks. By 1892, Pellatt's Canadian Pacific Railway shares make him a millionaire 3 -4 times over.

Pellatt's good fortune rolls through the decades. He has holdings in both the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the CPR; is on the board of the Toronto Street Railway and the Home Bank of Canada. By 1910 he sits on boards of 100 companies, is chair or president of 17, and has a net worth of $17 million. $485 million today.

Ever peering into the distance for opportunities, Pellatt makes a new fortune in 1903, joining a powerful private syndicate to harness hydro electricity from nearby Niagara. He finagles a 30 year monopoly to provide street lighting for the city.

In 1913, architect E.J. Lennox completes Pellatt's monument, Casa Loma for $3 million. Begun in 1909, the Pellatts move in five years later, entertaining thousands of guests at castle parties. Sometimes he invites the Queen's Own Rifles up for a weekend, and a thousand troops are quartered in the basement. An unabashed Anglophile, Pellatt finally earns his coveted knighthood by paying the freight of the Queen's Own to do maneuvers in Aldershot.

By 1923 Pellatt's fortunes come to a crashing halt. The Home Bank goes bankrupt. While shady dealings with bootleggers is part of the problem, risky loans for Pellatt's real estate speculating destroys it. Forced to give up Casa Loma, he hovers like a ghost over his own bankruptcy auction, watching his possessions sell for a song.

His last years are sorrowful as he moves to increasingly smaller homes, until his moves in by his chauffer. He dies in 1939, penniless, owing $6000. The Queen's Own Rifles take up a collection and raise $650 for a full military funeral.

1896: William Peyton Hubbard, the city's first Black alderman, is born in Toronto in 1842, the son of free Black parents. A baker and inventor, he's encouraged by George Brown to run as alderman in Ward 4; an area without a black constituency. He wins and serves until 1908.

Hubbard works for the little man. When rich laundry owners try to drive the city's new Chinese laundries out of business by charging exorbitant license fees, Hubbard is the single voice that defends them. Hubbard's argument isn't only with those in the community who want to see the demise of Chinese laundries, but also with certain members of council whose prejudice towards the Chinese borders on hatred. As for any racial prejudice aimed against himself, Hubbard states: "I always felt that I am a representative of a race hitherto despised, but if given a fair opportunity would be able to command esteem."

Hubbard also proves prophetic in the cause of public utilities. He lobbies for cheap, publicly owned electricity, insisting on provincial legislation to wrestle control of electrical power from private industry. It is a fight he eventually wins. It is William Hubbard's sense of fair play and racial tolerance that guides Toronto into the future.

1907: Red Ryan is a folk hero to some and just a plain criminal to others. Twelve year old, Norman "Red" Ryan begins his criminal career by pinching bicycles in 1907. A year later he's sent to reform school for stealing chickens. By 1914 he's serving a 2nd term at Kingston, when he gets released to become a soldier. Red spends a good part of the war in army lock-up for robbing stores. By 1923 he's serving 25 years for a string of bank robberies in Hamilton. In an attempted escape, he impales the Chief Keeper with a pitchfork. A young writer for the Toronto Star writes up the story. His name is Ernest Hemingway.

"As the chief keeper ...reached the ladder, Red reached for a pitchfork. Red swung with all his might... Walsh went down and Red... went over the wall."

Twelve days later, 3 armed men hold up a Bank of Nova Scotia, bagging $3000. Ryan and his cohorts race into The States. Letters home are intercepted and he's caught, returning to a life sentence in Kingston. Before long, Red, the consummate charmer, is winning back the hearts of Torontonians.

Red reforms under the watchful eye of a Catholic prison chaplain, inventing a pick-proof lock for post office mail bags. Newspaper stories about his rehabilitation arouse public sympathy, including reports that Ryan is using his stash of stolen money to help his sister dying of tuberculosis. In 1929, "Famous Bandit proves tender Nurse in Prison" makes headlines. He's working in the prison hospital, sweeping floors, feeding prisoners, taking temperatures and acting as an occasional scrub nurse. The prison chaplain begins working actively for Ryan's release, who is now his altar boy in prison.

Publicity finally gets the attention of Prime Minister RB Bennett. In 1934 he visits Ryan in prison, writing: "I was greatly impressed by what he said to me...I can only say that his demeanour, his clothes, his sleeping cot and surroundings were calculated to stimulate him to renewed efforts for usefulness. The minister charged with responsibility in such matters is at the moment absent. When he returns I will speak to him about this matter." Bennett eventually orders his release, and Red rides the wave of penal reform. He is going to be the test case for Canada's new emphasis on prisoner rehabilitation.

Offers of jobs and celebrity appearances abound. Ryan is hired by the Toronto Star to write stories about being the author of his own misfortune. He's feted by press and society and when taking time out to visit a religious shrine, the story "Dazed by Liberty, Red Ryan prays in little Church" appears. Ryan settles down with his younger brother, working two jobs and enjoys his celebrity.

While Ryan is living the life of Reilly, other crimes are taking place in Toronto. One night early in 1935 a man and his son are shot dead trying to stop a robbery. A few days later 2 masked men enter a crowded liquor store in Sarnia and a passerby calls police. When a constable arrives he's murdered at point blank range, by the taller robber. In a blaze of police bullets the 2 thieves are killed. The smaller one is a petty crook named Harry Checkley. The taller one, though his hair is dyed brown, is Red Ryan. For months, Ryan had been leading a double life as celebrity by day and murdered by night.

1912: Charles Hastings, Toronto's first Medical Officer of Health is truly a hero because of his tireless efforts to lower the city's soaring rate of death and disease. By addressing the social and environmental conditions he believes causes sickness, Hastings is revolutionary for his time - linking poverty, overcrowding and poor nutrition with the city's epidemics.

In 1912 he found: "...eight thousand unsanitary houses, 4,500 houses overcrowded as tenements surrounded by dirty, foul smelling un-drained stables, manure heaps and evil smelling privies. By 1918 he has 15,000 privies demolished."

Hastings loses his own daughter to typhoid because of infected milk, and swears to spare other parent the same agony. He crusades against impure milk, and eventually Toronto becomes first city in Canada to pasteurize milk. He begins health inspections for homes and restaurants, introduces childhood immunizations, public health clinics and appoints hundreds of public health inspectors and nurses to carry out the necessary work. By 1922, Toronto has the lowest death rate of any large city in North America and becomes a showcase for international medical professionals and the League of Nations.

1920: Lawren Harris is the leader and one of the most famous of the Group of Seven artists. The son of the wealthy Harris industrial family, he's a skilled organizer who blends vision with determination. Art is his personal mission, and Harris believes that a country that ignores the arts leaves no record of itself worth preserving.

Harris first studies art in Berlin, and upon returning home, sketches and paints slums and houses. No other member of the Group of Seven paints Toronto scenes as consistently as Harris. It is a subject that hasn't interested painters before.

In 1920, Harris is a founding member of the Arts and Letters Club, a vibrant meeting place where artists of all descriptions feel welcome. That same year, the Art Gallery of Ontario opens. The Group of Seven exhibits for the first time and seven times more in the next ten years, much to the delight and horror of local critics. After years of aping Europeans, Torontonians begin to discover their own art and geography.

1920: Lionel Conacher is the city's best loved all round sports hero, known as "the Big Train." In 1920 he wins the Canadian light-heavyweight championship then boxes a 3 round exhibition bout with Jack Dempsey the year after. Conacher's power, stamina and speed (he runs a l00 yards in under 10 seconds) are particularly suited to lacrosse and football. The same year he leads the Argonauts to a 23-0 victory over Edmonton, scoring 5 points himself in the Grey Cup, he turns hockey pro for Pittsburgh in 1925. He goes on to play for the NY Americans, Chicago Black Hawks and Montreal Maroons. He's hockey's first All Star in 1934.

Conacher caps his career by entering politics in 1935, then federal politics in 1949. He's voted Canada's Athlete of the half century, excelling in all sports - football, baseball, lacrosse, boxing and hockey. An athlete to the end, Lionel Conacher dies of a heart attack in 1954 after hitting a triple in a charity softball game at 52 years of age.

1925: Ted Rogers is the city's first high-tech communications mogul. He invents the plug in, battery-less radio and revolutionizes a whole industry. In 1925, he takes his new invention to Toronto's National Exhibition, and fame and fortune soon follow. He founds Rogers Majestic Radio Company and in 1927 his radio station goes on the air - CFRB. RB stands for Rogers Batteryless. Ted goes on to explore television and radar when he dies suddenly in 1938.

1928: Bobby Rosenfeld is one of Canada's Olympic relay gold medalist and a heroine to millions of Canadians. A Russian Jewish immigrant, Bobby is an astonishing, all round athlete - the only woman all rounder in the Hall of Fame.

In 1928 she sets 3 records which will last into the fifties: 18 feet 3 inches in the running broad jump, 120 feet in the discus and 8 feet l inch in the standing broad jump. At the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, she is a member of the gold medal relay team and returns to Toronto to a heroine's welcome.

1931: Conn Smythe is a tough little Irishman who erects Toronto's most venerated institution. Starting out as a hockey player for the New York Rangers, Smythe comes back home when he's fired. Looking for a team, he raises the purchase price of $160,000 for the St. Pats, which he renames the Maple Leafs.

In 193l, after creating the Maple Leafs, he raises the money for Maple Leaf Gardens. The place is yanked up in a measly five months.

In a bid for the Stanley Cup, Smythe tries to buy King Clancy from the Ottawa club in 1931. He's short $10,000 of the asking price of $35,000 to. Smythe makes up the money with a successful day of betting at the Woodbine. The Leafs win the first of 11 Stanley Cups and all through the '30s offer up heroes like Red Horner, Hap Day, Charlie Conacher, Busher Jackson, Ace Bailey, Syl Apps and of course, King Clancy.

1941: Johnny Wayne and Frank Schuster: Comedians Johnny Wayne and Frank Schuster get their first laughs as kids, entertaining their cub scouts packs with skits in the late 1930s. They continue doing skits all the way to university, when they get their first break, a morning show with radio station CFRB. During WWII, Wayne and Schuster follow Canadian troops to France. In the tradition of the "Dumb Bells", a WWI comedy troupe, they entertain the front line. Five times they perform in a cave in France.

In 1962 The Wayne and Schuster Hour is launched. Both Americans and Canadians rate t hem the top comedy team, beating out Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance.