When children were taken to the Islands for their health:
from:
http://www.travelandtransitions.com/stories_photos/to_stories_island1.htm by Bruce Bell
"If you continue up the road from the ferry docks past the languid lagoons and the wide expanses of playing fields you will stumble across an oval shaped clearing about 2 acres in size facing the lake. There’s a few picnic tables and some chunks of cement on its lakefront.
It was here from 1883 to the late 1950’s that the Lakeside Home for Little Children once stood. It was built as a summer retreat for underprivileged children mostly suffering from Tuberculosis in Toronto’s crowded inner city.
In 1891 John Ross Robertson founder of the Evening Telegram newspaper who lost his own daughter to scarlet fever, built an enormous addition and surrounded the entire home with a veranda to overlook the lake.
Every June these children, some still in their hospital beds, would be paraded in a long line of carriages from the Hospital for Sick Kids then on College Street down to the Island docks and in September crowds would form once again to see their return. The building was heavily damaged by fire on April 22, 1915 thankfully before any of the children arrived.
Robertson ordered repairs and this Island refuge continued to be a fresh air haven for thousands of children up until 1928 when a new country home operated by Sick Kids opened in Thistledown.
The rambling mansion was for a time used as emergency housing during WWII, and by the time of it’s destruction in 1956 was a housing complex known as Chetwood Terrace. That patch of grass where the home once stood is the one corner of Toronto Island that haunts my soul. How many poor and destitute children had laid in their cots on the veranda that once stood on this very spot and gazing out onto the lake wondering if they’ll live or die.
But for some it must have been a wonderful place, what with cool breezes blowing in off the lake, having grass beneath their feet and eating healthy food for the first time. A plaque to this noble home that at one time stood on the Island’s western tip would be deserving."
All gone:
