The Boardwalk Album: Memories of the Beach

Nicholas Pashley was a bookseller and a freelance writer and editor in Toronto.

In recent years, residents of Toronto’s bucolic Beach area have become unhappy with the growing popularity of their east end neighbourhood. A local organization, BRAT (Beach Residents Against Tourists), has engaged in protest activities against the thousands of outsiders who swarm to the beach during the summer months to enjoy the distinctive, almost small-town atmosphere, disturbing the quiet and clogging the streets with their cars.

Yet it is not only in the l980s that the Beach has been a bustling, popular pleasure spot. Barbaranne Boyer, Beach resident and Toronto bus driver, has produced a handsome illustrated history of the Beach that depicts a charming, quaint neighbourhood, but one that has long been a source of entertainment with its amusement parks and lakeside activities. Amply aided by copious photographs from the past, the author describes the parks, the gardens, the clubs, the schools, and the people that made the Beach a notable part of town more than a hundred years ago.

Between 1879 and 1925 a succession of major amusement parks graced the shoreline east of Woodbine Avenue, offering regattas, vaudeville shows, rides, dancing, six-day bicycle races, a Tunnel of Love, and the first local airplane flight. Torontonians flocked to the Beach on foot, by boat, or by trolley, bicycle, or carriage, and the area supported hotels and taverns to cater to the traffic. Many of the activities of the time were captured on film, and the author has drawn on a number of sources to find evocative photographs that bring the era vividly to life.

The Boardwalk Album is an unpretentious book that gives a historical context for the battles being fought along Queen Street East today. Barbaranne Boyer has compiled a useful, attractive record of the fascinating past of one of Toronto’s most recognizable neighbourhoods.