Majestic mountains, icebergs, even tree stumps: it’s this vision of Canada we can attribute to Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris. These canvases are national treasures, but there was a time when his eyes were turned toward less-exalted landscapes. A member of Toronto’s upper crust, he found wilderness in St. John’s Ward, one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods. Local, but alien and uncultivated, it was ripe with poetic potential.
The Ward, as it came to be known, was bound by Queen, College, Yonge and University. Home to waves of immigrants – African, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Eastern European and Chinese – it was the bottom layer of Hogtown’s hierarchy. By the time Harris wandered it, making sketches in the early 1900s, it was being expropriated, piece-by-piece, to build landmark institutions like…
