St. Lawrence resident writer took transit to see museum make his mark: author

Eric Morse –

After a lengthy career of journalism and writing—including two books on the Middle East—St. Lawrence Neighbourhood resident John Goddard has found treasure close to home.

With his latest book Inside the Museums: Toronto’s Heritage Sites and Their Most Prized Objects, launched in June by Dundurn Books, Goddard looks at ten of the small 19th century museums and historic sites of Toronto, almost all under city administration, and—remarkably—almost all connected in some way with William Lyon Mackenzie, Toronto’s first Mayor and a leader of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion.

Goddard began his journalistic career in the mid 1970s, working for Canadian Press in the Parliamentary Press Gallery after graduating in journalism from Carleton University. He was in Tehran during the last period of the US Embassy hostage crisis in 1980. He opened a CP Far North bureau in Yellowknife, freelanced for magazines for some years and then returned to the newspaper business with Southam’s Toronto bureau. He was with the Toronto Star between 2000 and 2013, covering general news and entertainment.

“One of my favourite projects as a Star reporter was a series I privately called, Hinterland,” Goddard told The Bulletin in an interview at Mackenzie House on Bond St., a hidden gem behind Dundas Square and MacKenzie’s residence between 1859 and his death in 1861.

“Whenever news got slow or a long weekend was coming up, I would pitch a feature story about an obscure aspect of Ontario. The stories fell into five or six categories. One was ‘natural wonders’ such as the bird migration at Hawk’s Point near Port Stanley. Another was ‘literary landmarks’ such as the cottage in Bala where Lucie Maud Montgomery wrote The Blue Castle, and which now hosts the annual Anne of Green Gables look-alike contest. Another category was ‘historic homes and museums.’ I wanted to write a book about some of them but I didn’t have a car. Then I thought, ‘I can get to all the Toronto ones by subway.’”

“One thing that surprised me when I started writing the book is that there had never been anything done like it. One of the things that the curator at Montgomery’s Inn in Etobicoke told me—Montgomery’s Tavern in Hoggs Hollow, where the rebels gathered, is an entirely different site, but both are connected with Mackenzie—is that the museums form a small community, really one museum in ten widely spaced locations. Seven of my sites are city-administered, they were acquired one by one, by pure luck, but all form a community. If you study the little museums all together, it all comes together in a picture of life in early Toronto.”

The ten sites are Colborne Lodge in High Park, Old Fort York, Montgomery’s Inn in Etobicoke, Mackenzie House on Bond St., Gibson House on Yonge between Sheppard and Finch, Campbell House at Queen and University, The Grange on Dundas West, Spadina (pronounced SpadEEna) House, the Market Gallery (Toronto’s first City Hall), and Canada’s First Post Office at Adelaide and Victoria.

“We had a horrible beginning to the city. We had this Governor, John Graves Simcoe, who for good enough reasons at the time was terrified of this American style democracy to the south. He decided to form a British-style aristocracy in York which would lord it over ‘the peasants.’ Their monopoly of everything in Upper Canada was what finally led to the rebellion.”

Goddard’s favourite artifact is George Lamb’s Rebellion Box at Mackenzie House.

“When the rebels of the 1837 rebellion were rounded up and thrown in jail, many of them passed the time making small, memento boxes as gifts to their wives and sweethearts. They made hundreds of them, apparently, all beautifully constructed with inlays, and poems, and specially constructed lids. Very few remain. The prisoners used cordwood meant for the fire, and their work was so precise that they must have used chisels, files, and coping saws, but how was that possible? It’s a mystery. Why would the guards allow prisoners to have sharp tools in jail during such a politically tense time? Or, if the guards didn’t allow it, how did the prisoners sneak the tools into the cells? Nobody knows.”

For his next project, Goddard is thinking of doing the same thing for Hamilton. “There’s a city in transition. They have a spectacular site in Dundurn Castle, they have Battlefield House from 1812, a historic home called Whitehearn, and a 19th century industrial site.”

Goddard’sprevious book was Rock and Roll Toronto on Toronto’s musical historic sites.

Inside the Museums and Rock and Roll Toronto are both available from www.dundurn.com.