Woodsworth was designed for community life

This article was written by a member for the 30 May 1999 edition of the Way We Were In Woodsworth.

St. Lawrence was planned to be a neighbourhood unlike any other. And there was no other apartment building like Woodsworth in Toronto at the time it was built in 1979. “It wasn’t like any high-rise in Toronto,” according to Noreen Dunphy, who was the CHFT Development Coordinator. “It was a special place.”

The City of Toronto purchased 44 acres of land and invited various stakeholders to join what became the St.Lawrence Neighbourhood committee. From the start, they imagined a mix of private and non-profit housing, with a significant mix of co-ops. The Cooperative Housing Federation of Toronto had a role in developing the whole layout of the neighbourhood: retail, mixed-use, the percentage of non-profit housing, the street design, and so on. The first phase of the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood extended from George St., Sherbourne Street and included the DB Archer, Woodsworth, Harmony and Cathedral Court co-ops and the Crombie Park apartments. It was 100% non-profit and had four-fifths co-ops. The second and third phases came some years later. After the St. Lawrence plan was developed, the city housing department got down to the job of allocating sites. CHFT was handed the Woodsworth site. The basic design was an apartment building on Wilton and townhouses in back.

However, the City and CHFT had somewhat different visions of Woodsworth. And the differences centred on issues of densities and cost versus building a sense of community. The city wanted to maximize density and wanted high-rise towers, 11 to 12 stories high. There were to be 200 to 220 units. “We didn’t like the feel of that”, says Noreen. “We wanted something on a more human scale.” CHFT wanted lower density and more “door on the street” units. It ended as a compromise. “We bargained with the city. We would pay a higher land price per unit.”

Woodsworth was a collaboration between Cooperative Housing Federation staff, who all lived in co-ops and architects. It was designed for the community from the very beginning.

How Woodsworth got its name

“I had the original planning role in the St Lawrence Neighbourhood development and then also Woodsworth. I was there from the beginning to the end”, Noreen recalls. And she came up with Woodsworth’s name. The first suggestion was Toronto Harbour Co-op. “But I didn’t want that. I  wanted to call it after someone who would invoke the co-op spirit of service to others, that would reflect co-op ideas and values. I went to the Archives in the basement of City Hall and looked up the history of the site. I was looking for somebody great to commemorate. I wanted some connection to the Old Town of York (St. Lawrence Neighbourhood is located where the Old Town of York was founded).

The closest I came was a doctor who settled in the Old Town of York 200 years ago. There was a spot where the indigenous people lived, further back in the woods. But if they were going to travel down river and canoe Lake Ontario, one of their bartering spots was the base of the Don River and extended down to the St. Lawrence Market area.  A doctor used to donate his time. He would come when they would camp to barter and fish, and he would provide his medical services. But I couldn’t find his name and couldn’t justify naming it after him.

We finally named it after Woodsworth, the founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. He was a minister, believe fervently in social justice. While the leader of the CCF, he pushed for unemployment insurance,  old-age pension and Medicare. “And that’s how Woodsworth got its name.”

Looking at history being unearthed

“In the two-story townhouses, we wanted to create a townhouse feel in that everybody had a door and an address on George and Frederick. Even the apartment on the top feels like a townhouse.

On Albert Franck, the water level beneath the street is high. “When first under construction,” remembers Noreen, “it was a sea of mud. Woodsworth is where the water was 120 years ago. It was an area of wharves and piers. We had to drive piles far into the ground to get a firm foundation. We were taking a site tour as they did this. They kept driving piles, and they kept disappearing into the muddy ground. They kept finding old rotting piers and wood. It was like we were looking at history being unearthed.”

“We wanted Woodsworth to feel different than any high-rise,” recalls Noreen. “We didn’t want people to feel alienated. We wanted to highlight the natural aspects of co-ops – breaking down barriers to neighbours knowing each other. It was not just a long dimly lit corridor where you hurry out of the elevator and lock yourself in the apartment.”

CHFT wanted to work cooperatively on the architecture. “We didn’t want an architect to go away, design a townhouse and fancy building and hand it back to us,” observes Noreen. She and CHFT staff spelled out a vision of a place of windows, light, community. The architects in turn tried to capture that sense. They showed them pictures of a fourteenth-century apartment building in Milan, Italy. “It was four stories high and had a “Galleria Approach” 120 years ago. But where Woodsworth’s arched windows are, it was an open-air arch.” In this ancient building, people would walk down corridors and chat with their neighbours in the sunlight. And this was the feel the architect was trying to create.

There were two rather unusual features architects used to convey this. One was a “single-loaded corridor,” a new concept for CHFT staff. It means apartment doors on one side only. This allows the other side to be all windows. The other feature is a “skip corridor”. You have a corridor on one floor and then skip. For instance, you have a corridor on the fifth floor, and then “skip” to the “sixth floor” where the two-bedroom units of the fifth floor are.

They designed with these two features for two reasons, says Noreen: “We wanted to offer as many units as we could with front and back windows. This lets in more light, more air. It just feels different. You can have a safer corridor, with more people travelling it. The one-bedrooms also let more light in from the corridor. The second floor can be bigger. The corridors can be wider. Also, it used indentations. It was not a straight smooth line down the corridor. It was brighter. Windows were allowed to open to give a sense of connection to the outside. So if you want to prop your door open for a few minutes and get some fresh air, you could. We wanted to give a sense of connection to the outdoors, light, kids playing.”

In the end, the architecture has helped to foster a sense of community and Woodsworth streets and corridors, and create a welcoming sight to come home to.

About Woodsworth Housing Co-op

Woodsworth was incorporated on November 8th, 1976 and members moved into the co-op in the autumn of 1979.  The project was sponsored by the Co-op Housing Federation of Toronto and the architectural firm was Sillaste & Nakashima.

The St. Lawrence Project

The St. Lawrence Housing Development Project was born during the early 1970s, somewhere in the offices of the City of Toronto’s planning and housing departments.

Housing was viewed as such an important priority that a department had been formed to foster housing development. In the preceding years, Toronto’s Housing Department had produced some noteworthy projects, but nothing large enough to really catch the public’s attention or to make a significant dent in the housing problem. This time the planners were asked to search for possible sites for a major housing project. From the several sites proposed they chose a 44-acre urban area south of St. Lawrence Hall and adjacent to the historic old St. Lawrence Market. The area was once known as the Old Town of York and was for a while the bustling core of the new city of Toronto. After the Great Fire of 1849, however, it never regained its former status. Through the subsequent decades it remained a nondescript and cluttered area of small factories, warehouses, trucks and boxcars adjacent to the railway yards.

Not far to the north of this area was a housing development known as Regent Park, a project which stood as a glaring reminder, to the politicians and the planners, on how not to plan and redevelop a housing site. In between Regent Park and St. Lawrence was Trefan Court another redevelopment project with many lessons for the politicians and planners.

The St. Lawrence site had many advantages. There was no housing which might have to be knocked down and no community to argue and/or consult with. The only [Sic] inhabitants were transients who found it convenient to live downtown, the railway and several agencies that specialized in the care of impoverished, homeless people.

The absence of a community was seen as a disadvantage by many, including politicians and planners. Therefore, in 1975, a St. Lawrence Working Committee was formed, comprising representatives from Regent Park, the Don Area, Cabbagetown, the Bain Avenue Coop and the local industrialists.

The concept of the new St. Lawrence Neighbourhood called for retaining many of the historic buildings and using the rest of the area for building moderate and low-cost housing, schools, stores, health care and recreation facilities for about 10,000 people.

The Co-op housing movement in Toronto

Just as St. Lawrence was seen as an opportunity to achieve some significant achievements by the housing and planning departments, the Co-op movement in Toronto saw it as an opportunity for major advancements in the role of co-ops in housing. Prior to this time, most^housing cooperatives were based on the renovation of existing developments. They were created often after considerable political and financial struggles.

The St. Lawrence co-ops were developed by several independent co-op groups, but Woodsworth was developed by the Cooperative Housing Federation of Toronto — the granddaddy of all of the development groups — after a group of men and women met and decided to build a housing co-op as an integral part of the new neighbourhood.

Their vision was to build a model downtown residential housing complex that would include cooperative-minded people from all walls of life, different lifestyles and occupations, varied racial and ethnic origins, all age groups, single and married, with and without children, with different levels of income, as well as a set number of men and women who required government assistance.

1979 Spring Woodsworth

Agreement was finally reached on a housing complex that consisted of an eight-story building with 123 apartment units and 70 two-and three-story townhouses, for a total of 194 housing units. The new co-op was incorporated, construction extended over 30 months, and by the summer of 1979 was ready for occupancy.

The founding members decided to name the new co-op after the Rev. James Shaver Woodsworth, the renowned Canadian religious leader, pacifist, social worker and politician. Mr. Woodsworth spent his entire adult life fighting against poverty, injustice and every form of discrimination, and was a persevering advocate of democratic-socialism. He was the first leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the predecessor of the New Democratic Party.

In a way, the Woodsworth Co-op represented the flagship project for many of the pioneers of cooperative housing development in Toronto.

It is hard to quantify or make specific the benefits the current residents may have gained from that “favourite son” status. Compared to other co-ops in the community. Woodsworth seems to have good design, good location, a good community , a good size and good construction without extraordinarily high housing charges. In any case the physicians were willing to take their own medicine because many of these same pioneers moved into Woodsworth and are still residents.

Development Board

Woodsworth also benefited from an excellent development Board. That was the group of people who volunteered their time to act as an interim Board of Directors until the first resident board was elected. Most of them spent approximately two years on the Board. They helped to interview the original membership committee which then went on to interview everyone else. They were also party to the design of the co-op and the president, Dr. Hooker, frequently reviewed the construction to ensure that it was on budget. It so happened that his profession was construction quantity surveying so he was able to make better sense of all of that than almost anyone else.

First Membership Committee

Most of the original members found out about Woodsworth and about co-ops from the information sessions put on by the CHFT and the development board. After these meetings some of the prospective members were interviewed by the Development Board and by CHFT staff. These first members formed the original membership committee which then began the long and time-consuming task of interviewing every other person who was at the subsequent information sessions. Eventually, membership was offered to enough households so that the 194 units would be filled.

Pre-move and Move-in

Many of the original pre move-in General meetings were held at Innis College and the OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) building. From those meetings Woodsworth members and residents-to-be formed several committees, including a “shadow” Board which sat in on the development board to see what was going on and how things were done from the fall of 1978.

The original move-in was highlighted by great excitement, mud, a hike to Queen Street to get milk but a short hop to Market Street to get a bottle of rare wine), nothing natural (not even insects), and lots of rain!

Source: Woodsworth's member handbook, 1991

The St. Lawrence Neighbourhood

Looking for St. Lawrence Neighbourhood services and resources? See our neighbourhood resources.

About St. Lawrence
Our neighbourhood was created by the City of Toronto politicians, professional planners and community activists. It was new – meaning that it was built on waste land and created from the ground up. Here’s an article from 1990 by a professor and planner about the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood development. J. David Hulchanski was also on the incorporating board of Woodsworth. It still resonates for many of us who moved in early to this exciting new neighbourhood.

History of the co-operative movement

Our co-op story goes back to the 1840’s, to twenty eight weavers in Rochdale, Lancashire, England. Skilled workers were being forced into poverty through mechanization during the Industrial Revolution. These artisans chipped in a pound each to start their own shop with affordable quality unadulterated foods. Any surplus benefitted the community. “The Pioneers decided it was time shoppers were treated with honesty, openness and respect, that they should be able to share in the profits that their custom contributed to and that they should have a democratic right to have a say in the business. Every customer of the shop became a member and so had a true stake in the business.” Within 10 years, the British co-operative movement had grown to nearly 1,000 co-operatives.

Housing co-ops in Canada started with the Antigonish Movement in Nova Scotia in 1861 where members came together to build houses for one another. They too used adult education to achieve their goal to improve economic and social circumstances.

Some of the earliest housing co-ops in Canada were student co-ops, including Campus Co-operative Residence at the University of Toronto, which opened in 1936, and Science ’44 Co-operative, which opened at Queen’s University in 1944. This wave of student housing co-ops continued throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, with co-ops like Neill-Wycik in Toronto.

Today, the co-op movement is huge and important. The International Co-operative Alliance says that at least 12% of people on earth is a cooperator of any of the 3 million cooperatives on earth. Cooperatives provide jobs or work opportunities to 10% of the employed population, and the three hundred top cooperatives or cooperative groups generate 2.1 trillion USD in turnover while providing the services and infrastructure society needs to thrive (GLOBAL 300).

And CHF Canada says that across Canada, there are over 2,200 non-profit housing co‑ops, home to about a quarter of a million people in over 90,000 households.

There are earlier examples of co-operatives than the Rochdale weavers, such as the Fenwick, Scotland weavers in March 14, 1761, who sold oatmeal at a discount from someone’s cottage front room. However, the Rochdale “Pioneers” are considered the founders of the co-op movement because they developed the Rochdale Principles, a set of principles of co-operation that provide the foundation for the principles on which co-ops around the world operate to this day.

The original principles were innovative at the time, but recognizable in our goals today, including fair practices, “one member one vote”, equality of the sexes, elected management, frequent statements and balance sheets presented to members and a fixed percentage of profits allotted to education.

Woodsworth Housing Co-operative follows the international co-op principles. These are guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice. This is the version tweaked for housing co-operatives by CHF Canada Vision 2020.

1. Voluntary and Open Membership
Membership in a housing co-op is open to all who can use the co-op’s services and accept the responsibilities of being a member, without discrimination.

2. Democratic Member Control
Housing co-ops are controlled by their members. Each member has one vote. Housing co-ops give members the information they need to make good decisions and take part in the life of the co-op.

3. Member Economic Participation
Members contribute financially to the co-op and share in the benefits of membership. The co-op does not pay a return on the members’ shares or deposits. Instead it sets aside reserves for the future and charges the members only what it needs to operate soundly.

4. Autonomy and Independence
Housing co-ops are independent associations. They follow the laws that apply to them and their agreements with governments or other organizations. But the members control the co-op.

5. Education, Training and Information
Housing co-ops offer education and training to the members, directors and staff so that everyone can play a full role in the life of the co-op. Housing co-ops find ways to tell the public what they are and what they do.

6. Co-operation among Co-operatives
By organizing together in federations, housing co-ops grow stronger and help to build a healthy co op movement. Where they can, housing co-ops use the services of co-op businesses to meet their needs.

7. Concern for Community
Housing co-ops work to build strong communities inside and outside the co-op. They help to improve the quality of life for others and they take care to protect the environment.

For more information on co-operatives in British North America and Canada, see this article from the Canadian encyclopedia:
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/co-operative-movement/

J. S. Woodsworth

His opponents in Ottawa described him as “a political saint.” Years earlier, the starving immigrants of Winnipeg’s North End saw in him a friend who helped to relieve some of their suffering. The railroads and politicians denounced him as a rebellious socialist, a threat to their establishment. At no time, however, could anyone undermine his integrity and determination to make Canada a better place for all.

James Shaver Woodsworth was born in 1874 at Applewood, the family farm near the village of Islington, Ontario. His father, a Methodist clergyman, moved the family to Winnipeg when James was eight. In time, James also entered the ministry. It was during his studies at Oxford that he became aware of the ways of the world. Next to the grandeur of Victorian society he came face to face with the misery in the slums of London. The division between wealth and poverty was also waiting for him when he returned to Winnipeg.

The North End had become the “dumping ground” for immigrants who could not afford the exorbitant price of prairie land, which was by this time under-the control of the railroads and a few enterprising politicians. Woodsworth gave up his comfortable position at Grace Methodist Church and moved his family into Mission House in the North End. He was determined that Winnipeg would not become another London. He not only fed the poor, but he also taught them English so that they might cope and survive in their new land of hope. This was the true beginning of a lifelong battle for Woodsworth. He was now out of the pulpit and among the people. His writings indicate the course of his life was to make ‘the welfare of one….the concern of all. In the city, for good or ill, we are all members of one or another kind. Vested interests and property rights must give way before the rights of men and the welfare of society.”

During his travels through the west, Woodsworth found himself in Gibson’s Landing on the Pacific coast. It was here that he managed to work a small miracle. The town was divided into two sectors because of ethnic differences. As the clergyman for the “coast” people, he bought his supplies for the co-op store run by the “hill” people. The town was soon united.

With the coming of World War One, he moved his family again, this time to Vancouver, where he worked as a longshoreman. When the war ended, many of his fellow workers were laid off. The situation was the same right across the country; but in those days there was no such thing as unemployment insurance or welfare.

It was on his way back to Winnipeg in 1919 that he heard of the General Strike. In order to break the strike and disorganize labour’s attempts to unionize, the government slipped in two pieces of legislation: a participant in the strike could be jailed, and if a striker was not a Canadian citizen, he or she was subject to immediate deportation. Woodsworth spoke to the strikers and condemned this undemocratic use of democracy. He was charged with seditious libel, but before he came to trial all charges were dropped. It was soon his turn to give the labourers of Winnipeg a chance to exercise their democratic rights. In the federal election of 1922, Woodsworth was elected to the House of Commons with an overwhelming majority.

Woodsworth allied himself with a small group of MP’s known as the “Progressives.” From the beginning he spoke out for what were unpopular issues. He fought every form of discrimination as he called for economic justice, denounced needless poverty, and alerted the government to the need for “national insurance” for relief against unemployment and its miseries. The Progressives, unfortunately, were only a loose knit group. Woodsworth saw the need for a united party, a political movement to achieve common social objectives. In the winter of 1932, after many meetings of “cooperative groups, ” the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was founded, with Woodsworth as party leader.

During his tenure as a MP, Woodsworth was one of the few parliamentarians in this country to have a private members bill passed into law. His bill allows unions to strike without fear of job dismissal.

Woodsworth helped create Canada’s social-security system. In 1926, Woodsworth realized his lifelong ambition when he and fellow Labour Party MP A.A. Heaps guaranteed Prime Minister Mackenzie King a coalition government in return for Mackenzie King’s creation of Canada’s Old-Age Pension plan. The following year, the plan was introduced and became the cornerstone of Canada’s social-security system.

Until his death in 1942, Woodsworth continued his battle for social reform. It was his belief that we should never import socialism, but rather develop our own system. “if you are going to have socialism, have Canadian socialism…it should be indigenous to our needs here.”

It is difficult to do justice to Woodsworth in this short space. As members of the Woodsworth Cooperative, we can be proud to carry on the work of our namesake. In fact, we have the opportunity to make J. S. Woodsworth’s ideals become a reality. We will all have a role to play to make sure that the spirit of Woodsworth thrives in a community of cooperation.

A few parting words from Woodsworth’s book “My Neighbour” might be in order to remind us of this man who would not tolerate injustice: “Someone is responsible! Every unjustly treated man, every defenceless woman, every neglected child has a neighbour somewhere. Am I that neighbour?”

By Peter Bernauer

Peter was a member of Woodsworth for over ten years. This article was reprinted form an early issue of the ‘Woodsworth Monthly’.