PRESENTS
LEGENDS OF THE JUNCTION
Mayor D.W. Clendenan
By David Wencer
Daniel Webster Clendenan has been called the founder, the father,
and even the King of the Junction. The son of a traveling evangelist, D.W.
moved back and forth across the U.S. border several times in his youth. He
earned a law degree in West Virginia and set up as a lawyer in the Niagara
region. At 29, in 1880, he saw the economic boom the railway would bring to
York Township. Partnering with his uncle, a man named Laws, D.W. purchased
much of the land which would become the Junction, a total of 82 acres, including
the old Carlton Race Course which had boasted the first runnings of the Queen's
Plate.
The Clendenan/Laws purchase stretched from what is now Dundas down to Bloor,
from Keele St. to near what is now Evelyn Ave, the majority of it farmland
and undeveloped estate. D.W. portioned it into blocks and had surveyors divide
the land and lay out streets, many of them as they are today. He marketed
the Junction to the next wave of adventurous spirits: merchants, speculators,
laborers; anybody willing to start a new life. The boom was on, with D.W.
right in the middle. He pushed for the Junction to be incorporated as a village
in 1887. D.W. became its first mayor.
Known as an affable family man, he and his wife Clara and six children lived
at 191 High Park Ave. which became a popular meeting place, with businessmen
and VIPs dropping in (his son Charlie likened it to a hotel). Personal accounts
describe an "amiable" and "gregarious" man with a salesman
like personality. D.W.'s sister-in-law, Via Macmillan, was principal of the
Junction College of Music and D.W. owned the rowdy and successful White Swan
Tavern right across the street. A Conservative, D.W, was clearly a Tory in
the John A. Macdonald style.
The great political rivalry in the Junction was between D.W. and Dr. John
Taylor Gilmour, provincial Liberal member for High Park and publisher of the
York Tribune. In 1890, D.W. embarked on a spirited campaign to unseat
Gilmour. He bought his own newspaper, the Junction Comet to present
his political platform and hired his wife's nephew to edit it. D.W. was running
as a temperance candidate, dedicated to the prohibition of alcohol, ever a
popular position in the Junction. A teetotaler himself, he still owned the
White Swan Tavern. Gilmour invited D.W. to a debate at James' Hall. As the
host, Gilmour spoke haltingly for five minutes then sat down. D.W. replied
for an hour and it looked as if the election was in the bag. But when Dr.
Gilmour rose again, his final reply was a "cyclone of invective sarcasm"
ridiculing the tavern owner running on a temperance ticket. Twenty years later,
Stephen Leacock would use a similar story as the finale to his Canadian classic
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Leacock's tavern owner won the
election. D.W. lost.
The Junction Comet faded. D.W. let it be known that he would be willing
to return to the mayor's seat. His next major task was to attract more business
to employ the Junction's surplus labour pool. Unfortunately, most of the factories
he attracted closed. History was against him: the Junction was entering its
second phase after the initial land boom, the economic "slough of despond"
which would last for five years.
D.W.'s decline into obscurity was nothing short of spectacular.
He had bought land in the Don Valley in the hopes of another Boom Town. It
never happened. He was caught up in a sensational libel trial amid allegations
he was found in bed with a servant. His wife left him and went to Guelph.
D.W. left the Junction never to return.
The family honour was redeemed when D.W.'s cousin George Washington Clendenan
became Junction mayor later in the decade. D.W. surfaced in Nebraska, evidently
practicing law and living with a new wife. He died in 1892 under mysterious
circumstances. There is a letter in the West Toronto Junction Historical Society
Archives accusing his second wife of murder.
One thing is certain; D.W. Clendenan lived and died a colourful man.