HISTORY

from Etobicoke Lakeshore Press - October 2021 Edition

HUMBER COLLEGE

“So, bye-bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry”

Song by: Don McLean, 1971

If ever there was a scent to set your olfactory glands into a happy frenzy, it would be the arresting aroma from a freshly baked ‘apple pie’.

So much so that when a WWII journalist asked American troops “What are you fighting for?” - their answer was “Moms and apple pie”.

Truth be known, the quintessential classical apple pie was actually a recipe of a fruit-based pastry honed in Renaissance England. The Roman Empire brought apples to Europe and Great Britain and the Far East traders brought apples to the Romans from the apple’s native soils in Asia and China.

In the 1600s, Jesuit missionaries, explorers and colonists were the first Europeans to bring the apple tree and its delicious fleshy fruit to the New World.

A few years ago I had the privilege to have a lengthy coffee chat with an elder of the Mohawk Mississauga’s of the Credit.

Not sure how we got onto the rarity of finding a ‘Snow Apple’ variety (another casualty of Global warming he surmised) but he did acknowledge that if anything was to be celebrated about the colonists, it was their bringing of the ‘apple tree’ to ‘our’ native lands.

Here in South Etobicoke, an 1846 county map highlights numerous apple orchards throughout the region. When the United Empire Loyalists took up free land in Canada they brought the apple tree with them including the ‘Empire’ variety - hence the name.

Besides the apple’s edible fruit for cooking and livestock feed, pressed apples with various degrees of fermentation made liquid currency; that of Cider. Like flour from grist mills, cider production had an equally important role in the local economy for trade and commerce. remaining fragmented apple orchard is the Hugh J and R McNeil orchard which is situated on the southwest corner of Lake Shore Blvd and Colonel Samuel Smith Drive.

The orchard was already half a century in productivity before the Mimico Psychiatric Hospital was built in the 1890s.

The Provincial purchase of the land from farm and land owners, included the McNeil farm, south to Lake Ontario and westward to Twenty Third Street. The acres of land (including the orchards) were then farmed and harvested for root crops including potatoes, turnips, squash, onions, and cabbage for the hospital kitchens.

In recent years the orchard was considerably reduced in size, giving up fertile land with the building of the Humber College Welcome Centre and Holy Trinity Catholic Public School.

On a recent study of the McNeil Orchard, a sample fruit was given to a pomologist and she said the apple fruit was extremely sweet, indicative of ‘very old trees’.

“Aged fruit trees have a substantial deep root system that absorbs the rich mineral bases,” she explained.

Today you can still experience the Historic Hugh McNeil Orchard, pick and scrunch on an apple or two, by strolling on the Humber College passageway between West and East campuses.

Plans are afoot to have the 175-year-old Hugh J &R Apple Orchard nominated by the Long Branch History and Culture Committee for Heritage Tree Grove recognition with Forests Ontario.

BILL ZUFELT

Long Branch Resident and Chair of the History and Culture Committee Long Branch Neighbourhood Association bill.zufelt@lbna.ca

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