Canada's first fully planned community 'wasn't just a spot on a grid of streets'

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First came Jocelyn Crescent.

When Don Mills was settled 55 years ago in 1953 to much fanfare as Canada's first fully planned community, it was residents on the small road just northwest of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue who were the first to call the neighbourhood home.

"It was the first street," said Gerald Fitzpatrick, who lives with his wife Betty at 55 Jocelyn.

They purchased the home in 1970 from Henry Fliess, one of Don Mills' main architects.

The Fitzpatricks - Gerald a city planner and Betty who raised their three sons as a stay-at-home mom - had recently returned from British Columbia and loved what Don Mills offered young families.

"The location, how can you beat this? You can't. There's the shopping centre. You can get on the DVP (Don Valley Parkway) in less than five minutes," said Gerald, praising the layout of the road system as safe for children.

"It was designed as a community. It wasn't just a spot on a grid of streets, as much of Toronto is. There are merits to that grid concept. (Don Mills) is four quadrants around a shopping centre and local schools could be accessed from foot paths and streets."

Ironically, the award-winning planned community of Don Mills was first destined to become a brewery.

Toronto business magnate E.P. Taylor had been busy buying up land in the area since the late 1940s to build O'Keefe Breweries, which was to have been surrounded by homes lived in by the employees.

By 1952, Taylor had purchased the 2,000-plus acres that would be turned into Don Mills, almost an island unto itself created by the city's ravine system.

But he abandoned plans for the brewery in favour of building Canada's first fully planned community, turning the reins over to Macklin Hancock.

About to be regarded as a wunderkind for his planning of Don Mills, Hancock was then a 27-year-old working toward a post-graduate planning degree at Harvard University.

While Don Mills would eventually become the model for generations of Canadian residential developments to follow, experts acknowledge it was born as a money-maker, pure and simple.

"I think ultimately it was a business venture by E.P. Taylor and his companies. He had assembled all of that land. It must have been many years before they broke ground " said York University's Douglas Young, an assistant professor of social science and coordinator of the urban studies program,

"It was a business venture. He had assembled thousands of acres of land and he was going to do something with that land as a development."

The heart of the community was the then-outdoors Don Mills shopping centre, which would eventually be converted to an indoor mall before owner Cadillac Fairview's current controversial plans to redevelop the site.

The four quadrants around the shopping centre each contained homes, a school, a park and a church.

Meandering streets slowed traffic and provided safety for the countless children playing in their neighbourhoods.

Where the road system discouraged vehicular traffic on local roads, a greenbelt and paths allowed pedestrians easy access to parks and other amenities.

The concept seems old hat now.

But at the time, it was unique in Canada, Young said.

"I think it established a model of planning. It is absolutely the model," he said.

What's more, said Ernie Simpson, who lives beside the Fitzpatricks, the architecture of the houses offered a West Coast design with sloping roofs and large windows,

And the placement of the houses on large lots provided an appealing streetscape, he said.

For example, the Simpsons and Fitzpatricks share the same model home, as do several of their neighbours.

But from the street, the houses look completely different due to the fact each home is rotated differently on its lot, said Simpson, who, along with his wife, raised two sons in their home.

"I'm an architect. Certainly, the house style appealed to me," he said, adding his family also appreciated the community's appeal.

"The shopping centre, from a planning point of view, it is almost elementary by now. You had everything from food stores to a barber shop with parking around. It was open then. We could go outside and sit and talk."

Don Mills was also the first community in Canada to integrate different kinds of housing, from single family homes to low-rise rental buildings, appealing to a variety of incomes.

"It was really perfect planning," Simpson said.

 

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