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 Worrying About Child's Play:
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Improving the lives of children through more effective
upbringing became a social objective near the end of the Victorian era. Attention focused
on how children spent their free time after school and church. Reformers worried about
unhygienic settings, dangerous street traffic, and the demoralizing effects of commercial
recreation and unorganized play. Toronto's demographic upheaval also raised concerns. The population boomed as non-British immigrants flooded into the city. The number of residents under age 15 nearly tripled between 1901 and 1921. Many newcomers joined Toronto's poor in the most densely populated and squalid areas of the city. These new concepts and trends were used to turn children's leisure into a public issue. Reformers claimed that because crowded inner-city neighbourhoods lacked adequate family control, domestic play space, and community facilities, children amused themselves in suspect ways and in places lacking proper supervision. Such conditions were said to foster gang formation and juvenile delinquency. Opportunities were being missed to steer vice into virtue and "Canadianize" young foreigners. Index 
Map of 1914 population density for each City block 
Rear dwellings, 210 Chestnut Street 
On the way to school, Sully Crescent 
Listening to a fiddler on a Toronto street 
Loitering on Elizabeth Street 
Skipping rope on Clifford Street 
Playing hockey on Major Street 
In a pond at Willowvale Park 
Looking at a regulation sign in Willowvale Park 
At and on the gates at Grange Park 
In the fountain at Allan Gardens 
View of Scarboro' Beach Amusement Park 
Midway booth, Canadian National Exhibition 
Outside a Dundas Street movie theatre |
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©2001. City of Toronto |
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