Lane-naming a trib­ute to ‘hid­den gems’, note­wor­thy Torontonians

Laura Blenk­in­sop, National Post

City works crews arrived last week amid the Vic­to­rian row houses and cot­tages of Cab­bage­town, halt­ing their trucks at eight nar­row laneways. Res­i­dents watched as they erected street signs with names like Wood­ward Evans Lane, after the two Toron­to­ni­ans who first invented the light bulb and then sold the patent to Thomas Edi­son; Drovers Lane, after the occu­pa­tion of some early City of Toronto res­i­dents who drove herds of live­stock to mar­ket; and Hagan Lane after award-winning artist Fred­er­ick Hagan, known for set­ting up his easel to paint in Cabbagetown’s laneways.

It is the first lane-naming project of this scale in Toronto; before they are done, 44 more lanes will get names.

They are a trib­ute to the per­sis­tence of Dou­glas Mc-Taggart, who has spent three years push­ing to name all the back alleys in Cabbagetown.

“There’s a beauty to the laneways now, and I think it’s really try­ing to accen­tu­ate the pos­i­tives,” said Mr. McTag­gart, chair­man of the Cab­bage­town Preser­va­tion Asso­ci­a­tion Laneway Nam­ing and Sign­ing Initiative.

“They’re part of the Vic­to­rian plan so they are his­toric. I think there is so much poten­tial for them.”

Cab­bage­town is the largest con­tin­u­ous area of pre­served Vic­to­rian hous­ing in North America

Cab­bage­town, named for the flood of impov­er­ished Irish immi­grants who used their front lawns for veg­etable gar­dens filled with cab­bages, is shed­ding its slum past, although not quickly enough for some residents.

The signs erected this week are all in the neighbourhood’s more trou­bled west­ern edge.

Mr. McTaggart’s inspi­ra­tion to name lanes came as a way to deal with the prob­lems he faced in the alley behind the Seaton Street home he moved into in Jan­u­ary, 2002.

A Toronto Com­mu­nity Hous­ing Cor­po­ra­tion build­ing is across the alley from his home and with all the res­i­dents, he said over time garbage was piled five to six feet high and 20-feet long. He found used syringes and bro­ken glass when chil­dren in their bare feet were play­ing nearby.

After a drug deal gone wrong, a per­son was thrown to their death off a bal­cony into the alley, he said.

“I believe it’s a lia­bil­ity to have an unnamed thor­ough­fare in Toronto in this day and age,” said Mr. McTag­gart. “It’s really life and prop­erty that are at risk.”

His com­plaints to the city proved fruit­less, he said, so in 2004 he decided to sub­mit an appli­ca­tion to get the trou­bled lane a name.

In Decem­ber, 2005, his back alley was offi­cially named Oskenon­ton Lane, after a First Nations enter­tainer from the early 1900s.

Since the lane’s nam­ing, Mr. McTag­gart said he’s noticed a reduc­tion in crime.

The TCHC building’s garbage is col­lected three times instead of once each week and new light­ing has been installed.

“It really was a tan­gle of issues of urban decay,” Mr. McTag­gart said. “Nam­ing and sign­ing the lane was a step that really vaulted us forward.”

He decided nearby lanes should also be named so they could be cleaned up, to speed up emer­gency response times and increase traf­fic safety.

So the human resources con­sul­tant and his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion enthu­si­ast bought prop­erty data maps and spent three win­ter weeks can­vass­ing the area and not­ing down the loca­tions, prob­lems and his­tor­i­cal icons of every lane.

He also cre­ated the laneways ini­tia­tive, which sub­mit­ted the appli­ca­tion to name 52 lanes on March 22, 2006. Desmond Christo­pher, the city’s super­vi­sor for Street and Par­cel Map­ping, said that is a lot of lanes.

“Nor­mally we don’t name lanes unless we are required for emer­gency pur­poses,” he said.

The city also names lanes if a new building’s front entrance looks onto an alley instead of a street, or if city coun­cil­lors and res­i­dents want to hon­our some­one who has died.

For the sig­nage for the first eight lanes, the city has spent about $2,500 in labour and materials.

Mr. McTag­gart intends to con­tinue his activism for the laneways, push­ing for road sur­face, sewage and green­ing improve­ments until Cabbagetown’s lanes are “hid­den gems.”

He said he’s been hum­bled by thank you e-mails he’s received from neigh­bours for the signs that have already been installed.

“I don’t think any­body should under­value the sig­nage that’s in place,” he said. “Sig­nage brings great benefits.”

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