An archaeological dig uncovers the secret history of Toronto’s long-forgotten first immigrant neighbourhood.
In early 2015, a team of archaeologists began digging test trenches on a non-descript parking lot next to Toronto City Hall — a site designated to become a major new court house. What they discovered was the rich buried history of an enclave that was part of The Ward — that dense, poor, but vibrant 'arrival city' that took shape between the 1840s and the 1950s. Home to waves of immigrants and refugees — Irish, African-Americans, Italians, eastern European Jews, and Chinese — The Ward was stigmatized for decades by Toronto's politicians and residents, and eventually razed to make way for New City Hall. The archaeologists who excavated the lot, led by co-editor Holly Martelle, discovered almost half a million artifacts — a spectacular collection of household items, tools, toys, shoes, musical instruments, bottles, industrial objects, food scraps, luxury items, and even a pre-contact Indigenous projectile point. Martelle's team also unearthed the foundations of a nineteenth-century Black church, a Russian synagogue, early-twentieth-century factories, cisterns, privies, wooden drains, and even row houses built by formerly enslaved African Americans.
Following on the heels of the immensely popular
The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood
, which told the stories of some of the people who lived there, The Ward Uncovered digs up the tales of things, using these well-preserved artifacts to tell a different set of stories about life in this long-forgotten and much-maligned neighbourhood.