Susanna McLeod
Special to Ontario Construction News
The modern eye sees the community of Yorkville as an artistic and trendy neighbourhood in Toronto, representing luxury, wealth, and status. The scene is in stark contrast to its industrial, working-class history. In the early 1800s, the noise and tumult of sprawling brickyards echoed throughout the village.
During the Pleistocene Epoch, the Great Ice Age pushed sediment and rock across the region, depositing layers of soil each year. The deposits at Yorkville had few boulders, some large stones, and pebbles, and featured “clays that are limy and burn to a buff brick,” said A.P. Coleman’s Forty-First Annual Report of the Ontario Department of Mines, Col. XLI, Part VII, 1932.
Carefully removing the larger materials, the deposits “were extensively worked for brick-making years ago west of Yonge Street and South of Gibson Avenue in Pear’s brickyards, now Ramsden Park.” The lighter colour was related to the chemical composition—the clay had less hematite minerals and more goethite.
The province of Ontario was in a growth spurt in the mid-1800s. New residents demanded homes and businesses, and the materials to construct them. Several Yorkville families made their livelihoods and legacies with the development of the local brick industry.
Immigrating to Toronto from Yorkshire, England in 1835, 18-year-old John Sheppard learned the techniques of brickmaking. He opened a brickyard at Yorkville in 1851 in the Castle Frank Creek area where the riverbed supplied clay deposits. Perfect for brickmaking purposes, “the creek, ponds, and surface drainage into the pit, provided a supply of water essential for brick making, and later, for the operation of steam engines used in the process,” according to Ramsden Park: Centuries of Sustaining Communities by Avenue Road Safety Coalition, May 5, 2021.
Sheppard added tile-making to his operation, “and in the summer season employs twelve men, turning out over a million tiles annually,” said Electric Canadian in “History of Toronto.”
Abundant clay deposits accommodated several manufacturers. Four years after Sheppard, William Townsley (b. Yorkshire, 1827) established brick operations, working the northerly end of the property while Sheppard worked the southerly end. Devising machinery to manufacture bricks, Townsley was issued Patent No. 3096 on March 20, 1869 at Ottawa for “an improvement on Machines for making Bricks”. Townsley died in 1877 and his wife continued the business.
Another immigrant from Yorkshire also entered brickmaking. Arriving in Toronto in 1851, Leonard Pears gained experience over two years at Townsley brickyards. Working on contracts and producing bricks in Quebec for two years, Pears returned to the Toronto area. His business, called Yorkville and Carlton Brick Manufacturing Company, manufactured six million bricks annually.
The area’s clay produced whiteish-yellow bricks, and “the earliest examples were made of bugged clay (i.e., processed in a pug mill operated by human or horse power),” according to Toronto Historical Association.
The brickmaking process began with excavating the clay. When dried, the clay was ground into a powder, then screened to remove large particles and stones. On occasion, the clay “was placed in soaking pits to obtain the correct consistency for moulding,” described “Bricks, Bricks, and More Bricks” at A History of Ottawa East. When ready, the clay was mixed by a pug mill.
The pug mill may have been a large wooden box (the mill) with a long wood lever connected to a shaft in the mill. A strong worker, or a horse tethered to the lever, walked continuously around the mill, rotating the lever to turn the shaft. A blade was attached to serve as a mixing paddle. “The paddle stirred and mixed the clay, while workmen periodically added water to the mixture to keep it at the right consistency for packing into brick molds (also known as clay molds),” said “Brick Making (Pug Mill)” at John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library.
When released from the moulds, the bricks were laid in organized rows on drying racks outside. After firing, the building materials were cooled and were available for use. Along with the unique colour, Yorkville bricks had a fine, softer texture. Builders used the materials widely throughout the region.
The brick manufacturers—the Sheppard family in particular—utilized their products for “a large number of houses on Belmont Street, Hillsboro Avenue, and Davenport Road,” said Toronto Historical Association. As well, the distinctive bricks were used for the façades of cathedrals of St. James and St. Michael’s, for St. Lawrence Hall, Yorkville Town Hall, and many more elegant buildings of the era.
Brickmaking was a family affair, with sons joining their fathers’ businesses, and Sheppard, Townsley, and Pear families also intermixed through marriages of their children.
In February 1883, the Village of Yorkville was annexed by Toronto, becoming St. Paul’s Ward, The Yorkville brickyards came to an end in the 1890s. The city purchased the property in 1904 to develop the scenic Ramsden Park, named for Alderman George Ramsden.
© 2024 Susanna McLeod. McLeod is a Kingston-based freelance writer who specializes in Canadian History.