Lowing in the Wind: When Packing Houses Surrounded Fort York

For over a hundred and thirty years Fort York has been besieged by the sounds and smells of livestock from across the rail corridor to the north where, in 1875, the City opened the Western Cattle Market and Yards. Like the slaughterhouses and feedlots established in Toronto’s east end in the 1860s, the western yards were located where land was available and good rail connections existed. Cattle, sheep, and pigs from northwest of the city were penned and fed there to await shipment onward or sale to Toronto’s butchers. All slaughtering took place elsewhere.

This changed in 1897 when W. Harris & Co. built an abattoir between the rail corridors east of Strachan Avenue. Known as the Cattle Market annex, the area was joined to the main part by a ramped bridge so livestock could be driven over the railway. William Harris had been encouraged to go into killing beef by Joseph Flavelle, managing director of the William Davies Co., Toronto’s largest pork-packer. Initially Flavelle considered the beef business too risky because it might offend the independent suppliers of beef to Davies’ large network of retail stores, but Harris’s success soon changed his mind.

Early in 1899 it was rumoured that the Dominion Government might sell part of the Garrison Common west of Fort York so the Market could expand again. Flavelle began talks soon after about purchasing a site on the east side of Strachan, ‘from the [rail] track to the Lake Shore.’ A contentious point was ‘a small cemetery for soldiers’ in one corner, evidently the Strachan Avenue burying ground. He also commissioned designs from Chicago’s William R. Perrin & Co. for a packing house that could handle both cattle and hogs.

When Harris heard what was afoot he counter-proposed that Davies acquire a half interest in his business, to be reorganized as the Harris Abattoir Co. Flavelle agreed and became its president while still remaining head of Davies. There was an understanding between the two companies that so long as their ownerships were interlocked Harris would not kill hogs, and Davies would stay out of beef.

Meanwhile, in 1898, Charles Blackwell built the area’s second abattoir, a pork-packing plant, at Fort York’s east end. At the time Bathurst Street ended at Front Street, where a bridge led south over the railways to a fork. In one direction lay the fort, in the other the Queen’s Wharf.

Blackwell’s plant (plans for which came also from Perrin, the go-to firm for such things) sat at the fork. Originally called Park, Blackwell Co., it became Matthews-Laing in 1911, then Matthews-Blackwell (1915-19), and finally the Canadian Packing Co. (1919-29). The Blackwell’s plant was expanded several times between 1898 and 1929, when it was demolished to allow the extension of Bathurst from Front to Lakeshore Boulevard. The most controversial expansion saw part of the fort’s southeast bastion removed in 1903. Permission to encroach had been given by the Government of Canada in 1901, but the company delayed acting until the eve of the transfer of the fort and CNE Grounds from the federal government to the City. During construction the remains of five soldiers, identified as Americans by coins from their pockets, were exhumed. While some bones were taken into custody by a lugubriously named Lieut. Col. Gravely, others “were unearthed and . . . carted away with the debris,” according to Jean Geeson, an eyewitness.

The years before the Great War were good ones for Canadian exporters of beef and pork. In 1913 the Harris company, wanting to expand, relocated in the Union Stockyards at Toronto Junction. Its old premises became a cold storage plant. Anticipating Harris’s departure, Council decided to build a municipal abattoir at the Western Market to serve the city’s two or three dozen smaller wholesale butchers. Locating it in Stanley Park was considered briefly, but dropped in the face of opposition from the South Parkdale Ratepayers’ Association. Instead, a handsome structure designed once again by William Perrin was erected looking out on Fort York. It opened 4 August 1914, the day Great Britain declared war on Germany.

Unfortunately, the enterprise never succeeded in the City’s hands. An upset in the meat trade caused by the war drove a dozen smaller butchers out of business. Then William Davies, which accounted for forty percent of the abattoir’s capacity while its plant at the Don was being enlarged, withdrew. By 1917, the abattoir’s annual operating budget was almost half what it cost to build. Harris offered to buy it for the City’s investment, but was refused. Instead, Council chose to enter the meat trade and slaughter for its own account.

Forty-three years passed before the City admitted defeat, probably never having turned a profit. In 1960 it sold the abattoir to Quality Meat Packers, a local business established by the Schwartz family in 1931. Quality Meat processed both cattle and hogs until 1976 when a fire destroyed its beef facility. Today it specializes in supplying top quality, value-added pork products under the Legacy Brand to the Far East and domestic retail markets. Nearing its fiftieth anniversary on Tecumseth Street, it is now one of the downtown’s largest employers with over 700 people on its payroll and sustains Toronto’s nickname of Hogtown.