Toronto Cemetery Tours

05/01/2026

Today is Doctor's Day and I always take the time to remember and honour one of my my personal heroes: Dr. Emily Stowe - Canada's first female doctor.

We celebrate Doctor's Day on May 1st, her birthday. Today she would be 195 years old. Dr. Stowe practiced in a time when women were not allowed to be physicians. She trained in the United States but was not allowed to take the final licensing exams in Canada on account of her s*x - so she opened her practice unlicensed. On July 1, 1867 she advertised her new clinic in The Globe, calling herself Mrs. Dr. Stowe. She practiced this way until the College of Physicians and Surgeons finally granted her a license in 1880.

Dr. Stowe was also the first female principal of a public school and a driving force behind the Women's Medical College, a precursor to today's Women's College Hospital. She was at the forefront of women's rights and a founding member of the Toronto Women's Literary Club (later renamed the Canadian Women's Enfranchisement Association).

Sadly, Dr. Stowe died in 1903, 15 years before women were granted the vote, but her efforts paved the way for the rights of all women.

So please, as you thank a tired and hardworking medical professional today, take a moment to think of Dr. Emily Stowe and how she helped change the world not just for women, but for everyone.

04/19/2026

Did you know that downtown Toronto has been badly burned not once, not twice, but three times?

On the evening of April 19, 1904, a night watchman noticed flames coming up from the elevator shaft of the E. & S. Currie building on the north side of Wellington, west of Bay street. By the time he was able to reach a call box and alert the fire department, the third Great Fire of Toronto had already begun to rage.

Firemen came from as far as Buffalo, Hamilton, and London to help fight the blaze, but it was fully 12 hours before the conflagration was under control. By then, 20 acres of the city had burned. From Wellington to the Esplanade, and west of Bay to nearly Yonge street. 125 businesses were destroyed, over 5000 people were out of work, and over $10 million in damage was done - 1904 dollars.

Miraculously, not a single person died in the blaze. The same can't be said for the clean up.

John Croft was a relatively recent immigrant to Canada from England. He and his wife and their three children lived on Parliament Street. Croft was hired as a foreman to lead a team of dynamiters bringing down walls of some of the hollowed out buildings. He had experience with explosives from working in coal mines back home.

On May 4th, he and his team were tasked with demolition of the W.J. Gage building at 54-58 Front Street. A storage battery to set off the explosives had been ordered but had not yet arrived. The team had already lit more than 20 fuses that day with no issues and I'm sure were feeling confident. They set up three long burning fuses under the wall of the building, lit them, and ran to take cover.

Two fuses exploded as intended. The third did not. After waiting a sufficient amount of time, Croft approached the explosive, expecting to safely disable it. Unfortunately, the charge went off as he approached. The dynamiter threw his arm over his face in an attempt to protect himself from the full force of the blast and flying debris. He was gravely injured. The Globe describes his injuries rather graphically: "The flesh on his right arm was torn to shreds, and he sustained a severe scalp wound and a broken rib. The sight of the left eye was destroyed."

Croft was taken to the Emergency Hospital nearby and given opiates for the pain but his injuries were too great and he eventually succumbed to the shock.

John Croft, aged 38, died on May 5th. He was the only victim of the Great Toronto Fire of 1904. He was laid to rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Check the comments for a link to actual footage of the events of that fateful day 122 years ago. I can't believe we can see it with our own eyes.

04/15/2026

114 years ago, the Titanic met her end on her maiden voyage. The unsinkable ship hit an iceberg at 11:40 and two hours later, in the early hours of the morning of April 15, 1912, she sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. 1496 passengers were lost in the tragedy. 712 others survived.

There were 38 Canadians on board for the ill-fated voyage. Some lived through the ordeal but others, like John Hugo Ross, perished. Ross wasn’t even supposed to be on the ship. Originally from Glengarry, Ontario, he ran a real-estate firm in Winnipeg. In an effort to evade the terrible winter, Ross and two friends, Thomson Beattie and Thomas McCaffry, decided to spend the cold months traveling in Europe and Egypt. Sadly, Ross became afflicted with dysentery and the trio had to cut their trip short. Their ocean crossing tickets on the Mauretania were cancelled and tickets to the Titanic were obtained. Ross was so sick when they boarded the ship that he had to be transported to his first class cabin on a stretcher and never left his room for the entirety of the voyage.

There are two different accounts of what happened to Ross after the ship hit the iceberg. Major Arthur Peuchen said he attempted to rouse Ross by knocking on his room door. When told what had happened, Ross went back to bed, saying “Is that all? It will take more than an iceberg to get me off this ship.” A contradictory account was told by Ethel Flora Fortune which described Ross and one of his friends helping to load women and children into lifeboats while steadfastly refusing to board themselves. Interestingly, both Peuchen and Fortune survived the sinking but were both buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery many years later.

John Hugo Ross’ body was never discovered and it is unknown if he drowned in his bed or perished on deck like so many others. His mother was incredibly distraught by the loss at sea of her son. She erected this beautiful Celtic Cross in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in his memory.

03/15/2026

Did you know that Toronto’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade was banned for over 100 years?

Today is the Toronto St. Patrick's Day Parade! A procession of marching bands, floats, and green shamrocks will travel along Bloor and down Yonge Street in celebration of all things Irish, but it wasn't always that way!

Once upon a time in 1847, Ireland was gripped by a terrible famine and more than half the population fled. About 40,000 of those immigrants landed on the shores of Toronto - more than double the city's population at the time. Fast forward a few years, and by 1851 the population was more than a third Irish-born. At least half again were born to Irish parents. Toronto was more Irish than Boston. That wasn’t necessarily the problem….religion was.

You see, more than 75% of Toronto residents were Protestant. All of the top positions in the city were filled by Protestants: the police, the fire brigade, and almost every single seat on city council. Protestants did not like Catholics, many of whom arrived on those ships seeking refuge and a new life. Important to note is that many of those same men in power were members of the Orange Order, an organization founded in Northern Ireland that at its core was deeply anti-Catholic. The Orangemen made life very difficult for the Irish Catholic, branding them nothing but drunkards and thieves and blocking all meaningful employment.

Then came St. Patrick’s Day in 1858. A parade in honour of the Catholic saint proceeded as usual, then many gathered in front of St. Lawrence Hall to hear a speech by the famed Irish revolutionary and future father of Confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee. An Orangeman tried to force his cart through the crowd of listeners who then retaliated by throwing stones and mud. The area was near St. James Cathedral, in the center of Protestant Toronto, and when local merchants and residents came to defend their Orange brother…they came armed. A riot erupted in the streets of Toronto.

A young Irish Catholic man named Matthew Sheedy was helping to restore order when he went down an alley near Colborne Street. He returned clutching a stab wound in his gut. The man was brought to a hospital and witnesses identified the attacker as an Orangeman who was then arrested and jailed.

Sadly, it was determined that a pitchfork had pierced Sheedy’s large intestine and leaked “feculant matter” into his bloodstream. It was not a good death. The young man was only 23. He left behind a wife and an infant son named Paddy. His dying words were of regret to be leaving his son so soon. Matthew Sheedy was buried in St. Michael’s cemetery at Yonge and St. Clair, opened only three years earlier. A procession of 3000 mourners accompanied his coffin from the church to the graveyard.

An inquest was called and of course every single jury member was Protestant - most of them also members of the Orange Lodge. Catholic complaints of non-partiality fell on deaf ears. The coroner’s testimony contradicted eye witnesses. The Protestant doctor who had tended the dying man told that Sheedy confided to him that an Irish Catholic friend was his assailant. In the end, no formal conclusion was reached and the official death certificate reads “murder by person or persons unknown”. The Catholics held to a different conclusion and Sheedy’s burial record reads “Murdered by an Orangeman.” You can’t get more direct than that.

So what does this have to do with the parade you ask? Sectarian differences and violent disruptions between the two religious groups continued for many years. Following the Jubilee Riots in 1875, the Protestant led city council opted to outright ban the St. Patrick’s day parade. It wasn’t until after World War II and Toronto's election of its very first non-Protestant mayor (Jewish Nathan Phillips), that things began to change. In 1988 the city would finally see a return of Irish festivities, now without the religious and political overtones of the earlier parades more than 100 years prior.

I wonder how Matthew Sheedy would feel knowing that these days on March 17th everyone is a little Irish and the green beer flows in honour of his home country.

03/06/2026

Happy Birthday, Toronto!! 192 years ago today, March 6th 1834, the muddy little town of York was incorporated into the city of Toronto.

Let's talk briefly about this city's first mayor: William Lyon Mackenzie.

He was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1795. His father died when Mackenzie was only 6 weeks old and his mother Elizabeth raised him on her own. In 1820, Mackenzie sailed to Canada and settled in York, opening a book and drug store.

After a moving around and opening a series of stores, he eventually purchased a printing press and began publishing his first newspaper, The Colonial Advocate. The paper was openly critical of the Family Compact, Upper Canada's ruling class of the time. The Family retaliated by sending 15 youths, led by Samuel Jarvis, to destroy his offices, smash his press, and throw his type into the Toronto harbour. This event is now known as "The Types Riot."

The police and magistrates, most part of the Family Compact themselves, refused to press charges, so Mackenzie sued some of the participants. He won the case and a large sum of money. The publicity from the case helped catapult him into politics and he became a member of the Upper Canada legislature, representing the Reformers.

William Lyon Mackenzie was chosen by his fellow city councilors as the very first mayor of the newly incorporated city of Toronto in 1834. He only held the position for one year and was not chosen the following year. The Reformers became more discontent and it culminated in Mackenzie leading the Rebellion of 1837 in a wild play for responsible government.

The rebellion failed and Mackenzie had to leave behind his prosperous business while he and his loving family lived in exile in the United States. It was 12 long years before Parliament passed a bill granting amnesty to those who had taken part in the uprising of '37.

In 1850, the Mackenzie's moved back to Toronto where he published a new paper and continued in politics before becoming fed up with the lack of movement forward. He resigned his position in 1858 and the family fell on hard time. A friend started taking up a collection for Mackenzie and people donated, believing he was owed for his public service and time in exile. This led to the purchase of a brick house on Bond Street - a house now owned and operated by the City of Toronto as a museum that is free to visit.

William Lyon Mackenzie, Toronto's first mayor, died on August 28th 1861. He was buried in the Toronto Necropolis beneath a beautiful Celtic cross - a fitting symbol for the Scot. His legacy was continued by his grandson, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's longest serving Prime Minister.

02/22/2026

Tim Horton, a name synonymous with Canadian culture, died 52 years ago today in 1974. The Toronto Maple Leaf defenceman and coffee shop entrepreneur was ejected from his car after a single vehicle accident on the QEW in St. Catherine's. He was only 44 years old. An autopsy report wasn't released until 2005, when authorities finally admitted that the Canadian icon had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. Tim Horton is buried at York Cemetery in Toronto and it's not uncommon to find a little hockey stick or cup of coffee left on his grave.

01/27/2026

“I had to help them. They were my friends. I could not let them be butchered by the Germans.”

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and I want to introduce to you a man that you probably had no idea is buried in Toronto.

Victor Kugler was described by a colleague as “a husky, good-looking man, dark-haired and precise. He was always serious, never joked.” Kugler was born in 1900 in Hohenelbe in the German-speaking part of Königgrätz region of north-eastern Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic. He served time in the Hungarian Navy during the First World War before being injured and discharged in 1918. Then in 1920, he moved to Amsterdam and began working for a company importing spices and selling pectin, a thickener used in jams.

The company was named Opekta and it was run by a German Jew by the name of Otto Frank. When N**i occupiers arrived in the Netherlands in 1940, the company was rebranded in order to keep it from being confiscated as a Jewish-owned business. Kugler became the director of the newly named Gies & Co. By the spring of 1942, N**is were arresting Jews and sending them to camps. That’s when Frank asked Kugler if he would help hide him and his family.

From July 1942 until August 1944, Kugler and his colleagues Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman, and Bep Voskuijil concealed 8 people in a sealed-off annex in their work offices on Amsterdam’s Prisengracht. A door hidden behind a revolving bookcase helped shelter the Van Pels family, Fritz Pfeffer, and the Frank family including their youngest Anne, just turned 13 years old. For her birthday, Anne had received a little book with a red checkered cover and a lock and in it she began keeping a diary of what it was like living in hiding. She referred to Victor Kugler as “Mr. Kraler”. Of him she noted that the enormous responsibility of taking care of the 8 of them was so difficult that “he can hardly speak from pent-up nerves and strain.”

Unfortunately, this relative safety was not to last. On August 4th, 1944, the building was raided by Dutch police, headed by SS-Hauptscharfürer Karl Josef Silberbauer. The Gestapo took all of the hiding Jews into their custody. We know that Anne and her family were sent to Auschwitz and eventually transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Anne Frank and her sister Margot eventually died there, mostly likely during a typhus epidemic.

For his part in the concealment, Victor Kugler was also arrested and sent to camp Amersfoort. From there he was selected and taken to Zwolle where he was forced into hard labour, digging anti-tank trenches. In December of that year he was forced to do the same at Wageningen under the German S.A.. Then in March of 1945, as his group of prisoners were being marched towards N**i Germany, the column was attacked by British Spitfires. In the confusion, Kugler managed to escape! He remained hidden for a few days, then returned to his wife and his home in Hilversum. Only 4 weeks later, on the 5th of May 1945, the Netherlands was liberated by Canadian troops.

His wife Laura died only a few years later and Kugler remarried to Lucie van Langen. In 1955, the couple emigrated to Canada, where Lucie’s family had already moved. Kugler worked for a time as an electrician, then as an insurance agent. After his retirement, he began giving talks to schoolchildren about Anne Frank. Her journal had been rescued from the Amsterdam house and was first published in 1947. In 1952 it was translated into English and published as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since been translated into over 70 languages.

In 1973, at the request of Otto Frank, the only surviving family member, Kugler and the others who hid the families in the Annex received the Yad Vashem Medal as a “Righteous among the Nations”. He was also recognized in 1977 by the Canadian Anti-Defamation League, who awarded him $10,000 for his aid in helping the Frank and van Pels families. Kugler also received a key to the city of North York for his work challenging Holocaust deniers.
Sadly, he began suffering from Alzheimer’s in the late 70’s. Victor Kugler, the man who hid Anne Frank, died on December 14th, 1981. Even though the man had sold insurance, he had none of his own and so was buried in Sanctuary Park Cemetery but his wife could not afford a grave marker. One wasn’t placed until 2011 when the Neighbourhood Interfaith Group raised funds for a headstone.

If you would like more information about this incredible man and his selfless act, may I recommend Victor Kugler: The Man Who Hid Anne Frank. The book was begun by Ida Shapiro, who befriended Kugler and wrote down his musings and memories. After her death, it was completed by Rick Kardonne and published in 2008.

12/24/2025

Every Christmas Eve, school children and volunteers in The Netherlands place candles on the graves of fallen soldiers buried in Holten and Groesbeek Canadian Military Cemeteries to honour their ultimate sacrifice in liberating the Dutch. Photo from .

12/02/2025

John Smith. Killed by Lightning. July 17, 1843. Aged 33 years and 11 months. As photographed December 2nd, 2025 in St Peter's Anglican Church Cemetery in Erindale.

11/15/2025

Joseph Logan was born in Ireland in 1807 and died of old age in Orangeville in 1893 where he was laid to rest in Greenwood Cemetery. I particularly love the symbol atop his grave - a hand holding a short chain, meaning his life was cut short. It's worn and difficult to see, so I filled in the links for you.

11/13/2025

As far as I can tell, he was from Michigan, but the invention is still used in cemeteries all over today. He also invented a type of butter churn and a "bug destroyer".

In 1894, Richardson saw a problem with the way the bodies of dead people were buried. It was common at that time to simply bury bodies in small, shallow graves or to try to lower their caskets with ropes into a deeper hole. Unfortunately, this required several people to work in unison to ensure that the casket was lowered evenly. Failure to do so could cause the casket to slip out of one of the ropes and to be damaged from hitting the ground. On November 13, 1894, Richardson patented the casket lowering device which consisted of a series of pulleys and ropes or cloths which ensured uniformity in the lowering process. This invention was very significant at that time and is used in all cemeteries today.