Local Heroes Past: William Holmes Howland

City can thank mayor Howland for being "Toronto the Good"

By Donald Jones - Historical Toronto

Reprinted from the March 7, 1981 issue of the Toronto Star

 

Just east of Parliament St., at the far end of the Necropolis, lies the grave of "the man who made Toronto the Good."

For as long as most people can remember, Toronto has been called one of the cleanest and safest cities on this continent, but only a century ago, in the 1880s, it was known as a squalid and dangerous place to live. The filth and the drunkenness in the streets shocked even the most seasoned travellers and you could literally die from drinking the tap water.

But in the mid 1880s, the history of Toronto was changed by a young president of an insurance firm who decided to devote the rest of his life to making Toronto a decent place to live.

New Life

In spite of the fact he had no political experience, he was elected mayor of Toronto and within four months had created the police department's first morality squad

and had begun closing the hundreds of brothels and unlicensed saloons that had existed in every part of the city for years.

This new life William Holmes Howland had chosen for himself would be marked by an almost endless series of moral and political victories, but it cost him both his health and his fortune. A few years after he retired as mayor he was dead at the comparatively young age of 49.

His story deserves to be better known, for the Howlands have played a part in the history of this city and this country for more than a century. His father was Sir William Pierce Howland, one of the Fathers of Confederation. His younger brother, Oliver Howland, became mayor of Toronto in 1901 and one of his nephews, William G. C. Howland, is today the Chief Justice of Ontario. {William G.C. Howland served as Chief Justice of Ontario from 1977 until his death in 1990}.

The Howlands were originally Quakers who came to America around the time of the Mayflower pilgrims. In the 1830s, four young Howland brothers moved north and settled in Upper Canada where they made their fortune in the grain and lumber business.

Family farm

One of these sons, William Pierce Howland, entered politics and served in the Great Coalition Government and, after Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald made him lieutenant-governor of Ontario.

Sir William's son, William Holmes Howland, was born on the family's farm at Lambton Mills on June 11, 1844. By 1860, the elder Howland had become so involved in politics that he was neglecting his business and the young William, who was then only 16, left Upper Canada College to take over the family's company and begin a business career of his own.

By the time he was 28, he was the youngest man ever to become the president of an insurance firm, the Queen City Insurance.

When he was 30 he was president of the Board of Trade. Four years later his life was changed dramatically and irrevocably by the arrival in Toronto of the renowned minister, Rev. Rainsford of St. George's Church in New York. While attending one of his meetings, Howland became convinced he was leading a meaningless life and decided to devote the remainder of his days to the service of others and became a fervent evangelical Christian.

He had been unaware of the extent of the poverty in the city and when he began to visit the slums in the east end he was appalled by everything he saw.

To help the children begin a new life, he became one of the most active workers with the YMCA. To help young men find jobs, he almost single-handedly raised the money to build an industrial school in Mimico. And to give hope, he started his own Bible classes. .

In 1880, he had been rich enough to belong to a syndicate that planned to build the CPR. By 1885, he had spent so little time at his business that he was virtually bankrupt. But through his work with the poor he had become one of the best known men in the city.

Empty brothels

With the encouragement of friends, he decided to run as a "reform" candidate in the next municipal election. His lack of political experience was considered a benefit by many voters who said he would be "free from contamination." He launched a moral crusade and on Jan. 1, 1886, he was elected mayor by the overwhelming vote of the church-going middle class who were fed up with the drunkenness and filth of the city.

By April, Howland had appointed Inspector David Archibald to head a new morality squad. Archibald and his men began clearing the streets of the drunks, beggars and vagrants and in the summer of that year Archibald took car-loads of reporters on a tour to see the empty brothels and saloons. In 1887, Howland was returned to office with an even larger majority. He was now a leader in the fight to keep streetcars off the streets on Sundays, since he believed, as did many others, that they would only lure the people to the pleasure grounds in the suburbs and away from church.

He also launched an investigation into the administration of the city's waterworks. For years, drinking water had been pumped from Lake Ontario, beneath the foul-smelling waters of the Toronto harbor, in wooden pipes that leaked. It was no wonder people were being poisoned by the water.

When his report was published exposing the corruption in the waterworks department, Howland announced that he would not seek a third term. To friends, he confessed he had had enough of "small-minded aldermen" who had blocked every reform because it would mean higher taxes.

Last respects

Howland's father had become gravely ill and William knew he was needed at home and to help save the family's business.

However, six years later, it was the younger Howland who was dead. He had never ceased his work among the poor and the work had finally exhausted him.

Among the thousands who came to pay their last respects were the women from the Old Folks Home whom he visited almost every day before going to work, as well as throngs of children from the "ragged schools" to whom he had become a friend.

It was said that no mayor in Toronto's history had ever been so beloved by the poor. On the day of his funeral, there was a severe snow storm but a procession of more than 1,000 walked behind his coffin to the Necropolis Cemetery where he was buried near the graves of William Lyon Mackenzie, George Brown and Ned Hanlan and other famous figures in Toronto's history.

New style

Did Howland have a lasting effect on the life of this city? In the words of his biographer, Desmond Morton, professor of history at the University of Toronto, Howland established a new and unfamiliar style of leadership and no longer would the mayor of the city be simply the official head of a council. '"

The famous "Toronto Sunday" and all the other "meddlesome" ,

regulations that Howland helped introduce would become the price that future generations of Torontonians would pay for the benefits of a clean and safe city.

"Toronto today is a good city," concludes Morton, "because a man named William Howland took two years from his life to make it good."

 

 

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