Historical Toronto

Toronto - The Great Fire of 1904

King St. East ca. 1856 - Toronto

Christie Pits (Willowvale Park) - 1914

The sign reads

WARNING

PERSONS DISTURBING THE TURF IN THIS PARK IN SEARCH OF MUSHROOMS WILL BE PERSECUTED

Baseball Games at Christie Pits (then known as Willovale Park), 1922

On the evening of August 16th, 1933, over 10,000 Toronto residents rioted for 6 hours in Christie Pits park. The event followed a baseball game in which a local Nazi group displayed swastikas in the crowd.

The Toronto Daily Star described the event the next day:

"While groups of Jewish and Gentile youths wielded fists and clubs in a series of violent scraps for possession of a white flag bearing a swastika symbol at Willowvale Park last night, a crowd of more than 10,000 citizens, excited by cries of ‘Heil Hitler’ became suddenly a disorderly mob and surged wildly about the park and surrounding streets, trying to gain a view of the actual combatants, which soon developed in violence and intensity of racial feeling into one of the worst free-for-alls ever seen in the city.