Returning to '54 and '62

Lawrence Ave & Markham Rd looking west; 1962

I've been studying the aerial photos of the Lawrence Ave and Markham Rd area quite closely since I posted those photos of the Steinberg site. Here are the full page scans of the area from Bonis' A History of Scarborough.

The red arrow points to the street I grew up on. Unfortunately my parent's house isn't in the photo, and is way down the street, off the photo's right edge. To get to Cedarbrae plaza, where Steinberg's was located, we would walk to the end of the street where the red arrow is, continue through the farmers field, which was by then abandoned, and then jaywalk across Lawrence Ave. 

Lawrence Ave & Markham Rd looking west; 1954

The blue arrows mark lines of interesting trees, most of which appear to have been chopped down by '62. If you look closely at the '62 picture you can see a few that were spared. In the '54 picture my street hadn't yet been built. I think construction on my parent's house didn't finish until '58, the year they moved in. 

These two pictures are astonishing. In '54 it appeared to be a pleasant rural area with what looks like many small working farms and fields. Just 8 years later it's a classic mid 20th century automobile-oriented suburb. Even so, for our family it was effectively what is today called a '15 minute neighbourhood', which the city of Ottawa defines as,

A 15-minute neighbourhood is a neighbourhood where you can walk to get to the grocery store, where you can easily walk to frequent transit, and where children can walk safely to school.

My mother didn't drive, so we walked to the grocery stores, as well as the other stores in Cedarbrae and Cedar Heights plazas, which might have sometimes taken 20 or 25 minutes. There were TTC bus stops which my father used to get to work. And I walked to school. Not to mention we walked to the library, bowling alley, pool, and skating rink. So, although it was designed to be automobile-oriented, at that time we used it as an ersatz 15-minute neighbourhood. If it only had streetcar service :-)