The last Friends of the Guild Park and Gardens Monument Walk of 2016 took place on Sunday August 28th. It was a great tour lead by John Mason who is president of Friends of the Guild Park and Gardens.
The tour started with a keystone decorated with a Lion's Head from the O'Keefe Brewery that stood on Gould Street on the present day campus of Ryerson University. Next we discussed the original City of Toronto Coat of Arms carved into a piece from the Bank of Toronto Building.
After the Coat of Arms, we took a short walk over to the Garage where Spencer Clark had his offices and learned of the potential to restore this building to a new Guild of all Arts and building it up more for extra space. We also learned about why the building has such narrow windows, this is because the clarks stored their own art collection in that building. John was very clear though that there are no longer any of those works stored there today.
We talked about the likely origins of the Log Cabin, the oldest existing building on the property, we discussed the ecology of the area including the effects of the Emerald Ash Borer and about how Scarborough got its name.
The most interesting part of this particular tour was getting the chance to hear from Louis
Jr. whose father carved the Provincial Panels in the park that originally came from the old BMO building.
Overall it was a great tour and I hope that if you were not able to attend that you followed along during our Live Tweet. If you were at the walk and you have any images you would like to share with us you can share them with us at our brand new Instagram feed by mentioning @theguildwoodian and as always you can get a hold of us by Tweeting to @TheGuildwoodian, through our Facebook Page and by emailing us.
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