David Finley, with dog Duey, yesterday looks at freshly laid cement covering a hole he nearly stumbled into in front of Neil McNeil Catholic Secondary School. Historian Gene Domagala estimated the hole, an old well, is one of 500 in Scarborough. The hole was just wide enough for a body to have fallen through.The top of the well started about 2.5 metres below the surface.
There was about a metre of brick piled atop a layer of shale that sat around the hole.
A 6-metre ladder lowered in by the workers vanished into the abyss. It's now under cement.
It, and a piece of Toronto history.
Peter Paterson, a wealthy manufacturer, built the well in the 1880s on what is now a grassy area on the east side of Victoria Park Ave., just south of Kingston Rd. It was about 12 to 18 metres deep and was one of likely two wells on his estate.
The land was called Blantyre.
Blantyre was given to the Catholic church in the 1890s and Paterson's home -- used as a summer home by the archbishop of the time -- would become St. John's Training School.
"There was no water until the city started taking everything over in 1910," Domagala said.
So the well provided water for all the bad boys sent to learn a trade.
Domagala estimates there are "easily" 500 wells scattered around Scarborough, waiting to be found.
Instead of being filled in, most retired wells were simply boarded up, only to be built or grassed over and forgotten about until someone -- such as Domagala's neighbour who unearthed a gaping hole in her Lee Ave. backyard while mowing her lawn some 25 years ago -- stumbles upon it. And hopefully, not into it.
St. John's traded hands in 1958 when it became Neil McNeil boys school.
It's not clear just who filled in the hole Wednesday afternoon.
The city says it knows nothing of it. Neither does the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
courtesy of http://www.torontosun.com
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