Today, at the intersection of Front Street East and Parliament Street stands a Budget Car & Truck Rental. Only two signs allude to the site’s former life as the location of Toronto’s first Parliament. The first is a plaque placed in Parliament Square Park just south of the intersection. The second is the street name. Many of the street names in “Old Town Toronto,” the area from Queen Street to Front Street and from Church Street to Parliament Street, are named after the places and people that Toronto’s city council considers significant. Names honouring Toronto’s early politicians such as William Jarvis are common across the city. What signs for Jarvis Street do not mention is that besides working as Upper Canada’s Provincial Secretary and Registrar, William Jarvis was also a slave owner.
William and Hannah Jarvis owned six Black slaves: three men and three women. Their names, unlike Jarvis’, do not appear on street signs. But, thanks to new public history initiatives by Myseum, we can learn them. Myseum takes a new approach to Toronto history through exhibitions, talks, tours, and public events. Myseum attempts to shed some light on the personal stories previously silenced in depictions of the city. In a recent initiative, Myseum partnered with the Ontario Black History Society to curate an online tour highlighting the history of slavery in Upper Canada. An online map takes users from the arrival of Black slaves in Upper Canada as the property of men like Jarvis (loyalists to the British crown fleeing the United States during the American Revolution) to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada. While outlining the legal, political, and social repercussions of slavery in Upper Canada, Myseum focuses on personal stories. Thanks to this effort, people can now know Jarvis’ slaves were Moses and Phoebe, a married couple; Sussex; Kitty; Prince, who was also known as Henry; and one “unknown” woman whose name has been lost.
Public history initiatives like Myseum can be hard to dig into. While the stories they tell are important and engaging, they are also often hard and unpleasant for Torontonians to accept. Digging into civic history sometimes reveals facts about the city that most people would prefer did not exist. Public history projects are popping up across the city and challenging traditional interpretations of Toronto. Queerstory examines the city landscape through the lens of queer history. Txtilecity presents walking tours with audio commentary about how textiles have shaped Toronto. Finally, UofT’s Professor Laurie Bertram is currently working on an interactive map that features the prominent role of sex work in the development of Toronto’s urban landscapes.
Each project has its own platform and its own hook, but all reaffirm the importance of Toronto’s history and all fight for the place of diverse and often ignored communities within that history. Take an hour or two to try a tour; you might even discover the name of Jarvis’s “unknown” woman.
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