Discover Toronto's history as told through its plaques

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How St. Clair Got Its Name

Photo by the City of Toronto - Posted September, 2011

Photo and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted September, 2011

Attached to this westbound St. Clair Avenue West transit shelter at Yonge Street is this City of Toronto plaque. Here's what it says:

Coordinates: 43.688086 -79.394305

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel gained popularity throughout the continent. Uncle Tom's Cabin fuelled public debate about slavery as the American Civil War approached. It is said to have made a great impression mostly on women and young boys.
'[T]he American planter is "only doing, in another form, what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower classes"; that is, I take it, appropriating them, body and bone, soul and spirit, to their use and convenience.'
These words spoken by the benevolent slaveholder, Augustine St. Clare who frees Uncle Tom, may have impressed upon young Albert Grainger, who lived on a farm at St. Clair and Avenue Road. He adopted "St. Clair" as his middle name and used it as an alias when his military band with the Queen's Own Rifles, played at the Opera House. As a joke, he nailed a sign with the misspelt name to a tree - which surveyors took as a street sign for the Third Concession from the Bay.
You can find the correct spelling at Dufferin - St. Clare Catholic School and St. Clare Church.

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