More Than an Island: A History of the Toronto Island

Pleasance Crawford is a Canadian landscape and garden-history researcher
and writer and the co-author of Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian
Garden Writing.

To assume that this book is merely a history of the Toronto Island would be to miss one of the most interesting, well-researched, and well-written books available on the history of Toronto itself.

Although other books about the Island have been published in recent years, only this one is of more than local interest. It is based on ten years of research, begun when the author was commissioned by the City of Toronto to write its official report on the Toronto Islands Park Neighbourhoods, continued when she used the Island and Island residents as examples for a doctoral dissertation, and carried much further for this book. The research, much of it into primary sources, is presented in the context of the social, political, and natural history of Toronto, from before its permanent settlement to 1983.

Although the book has no bibliography, it does have extensive and carefully prepared notes. It is well illustrated in black and white, with maps, drawings, and photographs from public and private collections, some published here for the first time.