What
Paul Kane House
Where
56 Wellesley Street East
Why you should check it out
A lot has changed – and is changing – in the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood as condofication encroaches on the nexus of Toronto’s original gay village.
But tucked on the north side of Wellesley just east of Yonge, the historic house of celebrated Irish-Canadian artist Paul Kane has remained a fixture, despite the fact that it too was once destined for the wrecking ball.
Kane arrived in the Town of York with his family from County Cork, Ireland when he was nine years old. The house was built by Kane in 1853, first as a stucco cottage and later expanded to accommodate his growing family. Kane would father four children and the house would remain in the family until 1903.
From 1925 to 1973 it was used by the Evangelical Church of the Deaf before it was sold to a developer. It looked like the house’s days were numbered. It was boarded up, and for years it was an eyesore. A fire nearly destroyed the place when a community effort sprang up to build a park on the site and save the house from demolition. The house would become an early flashpoint in the battle over heritage preservation in Toronto.
Signs on the property encouraging locals to deluge city hall with calls to save the property finally embarrassed city council into action. The mayor of the day, David Crombie, relented to community pressure and in 1978 the city bought the property. It was added to the city’s inventory of heritage properties the following year and a park was added to the site. In 1985, the house was incorporated as a museum into a housing development built by the Church-Isabella Residents Cooperative.
Kane travelled throughout North America and Europe to pursue his craft, at one point earning his keep as a furniture painter. By the time he had moved back to Toronto to wed his childhood sweetheart at the ripe age (for then) of 43, his celebrated travels to paint the life of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples were over.
But he had yet to turn the more than 700 sketches, watercolours and oils on paper collected on his journeys into the portraits that would make him famous.
In 1845, Kane set out from Fort William, near present-day Thunder Bay, and travelled to Fort Vancouver on the Pacific coast documenting the way of life of Canada’s First Peoples. He had embarked on other trips before, getting himself almost killed on one occasion for venturing into the lands owned by the Hudson Bay Company without permission. But this would be a three-year journey to document the way of life of Canada’s First Peoples – this time with HBC’s blessing, which had commissioned a number of paintings. Sadly, what Kane found was a fur trade in decline and the last surviving herds of buffalo roaming the Canada-U.S. border showing signs of decimation from overhunting.
Kane wrote about his journeys in a book entitled The Wanderings Of An Artist Among The Indians Of North America From Canada To Vancouver’s Island And Oregon Through The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Territory And Back Again. It was published in 1859 and was reportedly well received. But other writings on Kane suggest it played to mixed reviews. His paintings also received global recognition, as well as criticism.
Kane produced more than 100 portraits from his renderings in the wilds. But his biography on the National Gallery of Canada website notes that his studio paintings “often reflected Eurocentric attitudes… despite seeking out testimonials to assert his faithful rendering of landscapes and portraits in the field.” Kane “heightened the moment” in his paintings by adding “dramatic lighting” just like the masters he learned to emulate as a young artist travelling through Italy, France and Switzerland on his way to London.
Several of Kane’s works would be exhibited at the 1855 World Fair in Paris. But the latter years of his life are not as well documented.
According to an Art Canada Institute biography, Kane maintained a studio on King East in Toronto until 1864 “and continued to be identified in the Toronto city directory as an artist.”
But Kane’s eyesight had reportedly started to fail him. A fall in 1870 left him with an injury to his spine that significantly curtailed his artistic output. He died “suddenly” in Toronto on February 20, 1871, of a “liver complaint,” leading some to speculate that Kane may have suffered from alcoholism. He is buried in St. James Cemetery in Toronto. A large grey tombstone marks his grave. The words carved on the stone have been faded by weather and time. The plaque outside Paul Kane House, meanwhile, pays tribute as much to Kane as “to the persistent efforts to local citizens and heritage preservationists” who saved the site.
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Hidden Toronto is a weekly feature exploring the city’s alternative history through contemporary landmarks.
