Applewood: A Historic Etobicoke House and the Birthplace of James Shaver Woods- worth

Chris Raible is the author of Muddy York Mud: Scandal and Scurrility in
Upper Canada.

This attractively produced book introduces an Etobicoke heritage house,
moved and restored in the 1980s, and now a museum and community centre.
Five authors each treat separate aspects of the building’s past
history and current activity.

“Applewood” was built as the Shaver family home. Stewart B. East
tells their story—from their 18th-century German origins, through
their farming life in Upper Canada, to Applewood’s last resident,
80-year-old Isabel Shaver Bishop. Like every family history this one
provides a particular picture, but in the process, it recounts
experiences common to many of the province’s early settlers and
continuing citizens. Rural social historians will value it for its
direct narration and personal details.

Applewood is especially famed because CCF founder James Shaver
Woodsworth was born there. (He did not live there long—his mother went
home for the birth and then returned with her baby to her itinerant
Methodist clergyman husband.) Woodsworth’s life of public political
service is sensitively and succinctly described by historian Desmond
Morton. Until the 1940s volume of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography
is published, Morton’s “appreciative essay” provides a superlative
summary of the legacy of an influential left-leaning Canadian.

The perils and the problems—both physical and fiscal—of saving,
moving, and restoring Applewood are carefully chronicled by J. Evans
Inch. His chapter should be required reading for every heritage
organization that may be contemplating the relocation and preservation
of some historic property. And students of 19th-century vernacular
architecture will appreciate Dennis Mills’s essay, with its full
detailing of the features of this fine homestead.

In the final chapter Robert D. Sage looks forward as well as back,
telling of the on-going activities and aspirations of the Applewood
Foundation, which is now responsible for administering the site.

Taken as a whole, this slim volume is much more than a purely popular
publication—it is a valuable description of a worthwhile endeavor.