The Richview Cemetery in Etobicoke, with the clogged traffic on Highway 427 on the other side of the fence.Louie Palu/The Globe and Mail
It’s unsettling, to say the least, to be forced into considering the fragility of life when all you wanted was to hit the Dollarama, grab some chick-lit at the public library and then wolf down a cheeseburger at the food court. But here, smack dab between your car and the entrance to Bridlewood Mall at Finch Avenue East and Warden Avenue, sits the tiny Christie’s Methodist Cemetery, where the pioneering folks of Scarborough Township were buried between 1849 and 1950.
Before the asphalt, before the high-rises with their tennis courts and swimming pools appeared, this was the farm of Isaac Christie. And, according to Heritage Toronto’s Chris Bateman (writing for spacing.ca), “Christie and his wife Isabella Graeme, both immigrants from Armagh, Ireland, bought the 100-acre lot in 1836 and allowed local Wesleyan Methodists to set up a small wooden church among their fields. Permelia Roy, one of the first people to be buried at Christie’s, was interred in 1849.”
Christie's Methodist Cemetery, near Bridlewood Mall at Finch Avenue East and Warden Avenue, Toronto, with the shopping centre as a backdrop.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
Preserved headstones at Christie's Methodist Cemetery.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
Bateman goes on to explain that while there were burials here until the 1930s, when the church moved to Buttonville in 1938 that stopped, which left the graves “isolated and vulnerable.” Then, in 1974, a developer with dreams of building a shopping mall acquired the land. After the “cemetery’s board of trustees and relatives of the dead objected” at having the remains exhumed and moved elsewhere, the developer was forced to repair broken monuments and maintain the grounds . . . all while building the mall and parking lot around it.
It’s a curious sight, and it got me to thinking about other hemmed-in, hidden-in-plain-sight cemeteries in the big city.
Such as the one surrounding St. Jude’s Anglican that was just a stone’s throw away from the house I lived in from 1980 to 1995. Visible from Victoria Park Avenue between a break in the mid-rise apartment buildings between Surrey Avenue and Lawrence Avenue East, it’s one of the oldest churches in Scarborough – built in 1848 – with a cemetery to match. There are Wexford villagers buried here who were born in the 18th century. But why does the church sport such a lilliputian door?
St. Jude's Anglican. Visible from Victoria Park Avenue between a break in the mid-rise apartment buildings between Surrey Avenue and Lawrence Avenue East, it is one of the oldest churches in Scarborough, built in 1848.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
At St. Jude's Anglican, there are Wexford villagers buried who were born in the 18th century.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
We can thank St. Jude’s first pastor, William Darling (1818-1886), for the door, and no, he and his parishioners weren’t particularly short. Rather, after he’d convinced Wexfordians to erect a church – he got a great many churches built in his lifetime – he decided it should be “an exactly scaled miniature of the ancient Gothic church that [he] had known as a child in Scotland,” wrote the Toronto Star’s Donald Jones in 1980. Ordained in 1842, Darling watched as local farmers cut the logs to build the church and waited for the steeple, which was made in Toronto, to arrive by sleigh.
In 1853, Darling relocated to Church of the Holy Trinity to join Henry Scadding (son of John Scadding, whose cabin at Exhibition Place is the oldest building in Toronto), who was incumbent but in poor health and in need of a great deal of assistance. Darling’s son, Frank (1850-1923) would become a “remarkably prolific architect” (according to the indispensable Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada), especially of churches, dozens and dozens of banks, educational buildings (many at the University of Toronto), the first building for the Royal Ontario Museum, and private homes, including two adjacent private residences for his father located at 57 Benlamond Ave. and 6 Benlamond Dr.
A recent walk in St. Jude’s cemetery revealed a few things. First, there was a fresh grave, so it’s still a very vital place in the community, and, as one might imagine, the oldest graves are closest to the church. And, with a little digging (pardon the pun), I learned that the brick church closer to Howarth Avenue, which holds 10 times the parishioners, first held mass in a completed basement but was finished in 1959 after Sarah Edith Boyd, a lifelong member of the congregation, left the majority of her $164,000 to St. Jude’s when she passed away at 95 in 1957. Ms. Boyd’s father, wrote the Toronto Star in 1957, “hewed timbers” for the original 1848 church.
The first time I was made aware of Richview Memorial Cemetery was on a short CBC news video hosted by David Common with Heritage Toronto’s Chris Bateman (he gets around!) as guest. Being a lifelong east ender, I was gobsmacked by Richview’s location: Yes, access is via Eglinton Avenue West, but the little cemetery is completely surrounded by whizzing traffic. When viewed from above, Richview is a tiny crustacean, and the multiple lanes of Highway 427 curl around it like the arms of a hungry octopus, ready to strike.
Since it took me an hour to drive there last week, I wasn’t about to turn around after confronting a locked gate. Tracing the fence to the east, I found an entry point under the underpass. Of course, when I got to Richview itself, I found another fence around it, but, luckily, as I walked to the east side – which is quite close to the highway – I found the gate open enough to shimmy through.
Richview Cemetery is sandwiched between lanes of whizzing traffic where the busy Highway 427 meets Highway 401.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
It was worth it. According to the heritage plaque, the oldest monument here belongs to Ann Garbutt, who was “interred in 1846, before the official establishment of this burial site.” I found Ms. Garbutt, who died at the age of 36, along with other members of the Garbutt family. And while it’s too lengthy to get into a full genealogy here, the Garbutt name makes itself known in Etobicoke: There is the 1860 Garbutt-Gardhouse residence at 105 Elmhurst Dr., and there is Garbutt Crescent, closer to Pearson International Airport.
An expanded version of this, with a few more cemeteries and the people found in them, will be featured in my book, Hidden Toronto (and the GTA), which Firefly Books will release in the spring of 2026.