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This installment of my "Ghost City" column for The Grid was originally published on February 12, 2013. Portrait of William Peyton Hubbard, 1913, by W.A. Sherwood. When William Peyton Hubbard was born in 1842 it’s doubtful his father, a freed slave who had arrived in Toronto two years earlier, imagined that the infant would become one of the city’s most powerful politicians. The road to that accomplishment took time: Before Hubbard entered politics in 1893, he baked cakes and drove a horse cab, occupations that were the norm for the city’s small black population.

During the recent run of Acting Up / Obsidian 's production of The Wild Party , I was invited to give a pre-show chat prior to three performances. I split the talk into two sections: the black community in Toronto during the 1920s, and a brief look at vaudeville in the city during that decade. Wedding of J.M. Williams and Rachel Stephenson, July 28, 1926. City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 8380. Click on image for larger version. Among the weddings detailed on the social and women’s pages of Toronto’s major newspapers on July 29, 1926, regular readers might have noticed something unusual about one of them. As the Toronto Star ’s headline put it, “Toronto Jamaica Folk Attend Smart Wedding.” The Star , along with the Globe and the Telegram , covered the union of merchant Joshua Michael Williams and Rachel Adina Stephenson. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the coverage is that, apart from references to the couple’s West Indian origins, ...

This post offers supplementary material for a recent "Ghost City" column in The Grid , which you should read first before diving into the following text. Among the neat things I found while looking through the city archive files on William Peyton Hubbard was a letter from 1907 stamped with Toronto's official civic seal. The document was an official notice from Mayor Emerson Coatsworth vouching for Hubbard while the latter toured Washington and other American cities. Given the racial attitudes of the time, I suspect there were numerous occasions this letter aided Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard is a highly esteemed citizen of Toronto. He is now and has been for many years a leading member of our City Council, during which time he has occupied a number of positions of prominence. He has been repeatedly elected to the Board of Control by the City at large, and has occupied the position of Vice-Chairman of the Board, a position second only in importance to that of Mayor...