Illustration: Marlena Zuber

LESLIEVILLE began as a small village in the 1850's that grew up around the Toronto Nurseries owned by George Leslie and sons. The story of this contemporary village is not one derived from first glances or cursory footfalls. Leslieville is about daring dashes and hazy retreats, mysterious furniture stores, darling finds, eccentric back ways of feline intrigue. From the view across a leaf-fringed Queen Street on a summer day, Leslieville resembles many of her sister communities, a mix of shops and residences, growth and decline, green space and empty lots. Leslieville's older houses along Queen Street and south to Eastern Avenue were built in the late 1800's, including architecturally interesting Ontario cottages, second-empire row houses and stately Victorian homes.

Yet, Leslieville is also a bundle of clandestine routes interlaced among these visible façades, alleys wound tightly around narrow residential corridors where little pockets of urban forest renew in puffs. Backyards seem to gossip in a charming admixture of kept and unkempt about the speculative lives of their residents. It is parks on a humble-scale, but parks checkered throughout. Thriving shops, galleries, restaurants, bars and cafes in this ethnically and class-diverse neighbourbood, as well as a booming film industry make this part of our urban forest truly a notable village in a forest of wonders. Received wisdom also tells us this neighbourhood is the birthplace of Canada's original and strongly British-Loyalist national anthem "Maple Leaf Forever."

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Tour stops

1. 1A friendly bench
2. 2Big Trees of the park
3. 3Tango me Horsechesnut
4. 4Little ones
5. 5Taken hold
6. 6Nowhere to grow
7. 7The ghosts of trees past
8. 8A modern alley in-fill
9. 9Ailing ashes
10. 10Maple Leaf Forever
11. 11Young memories
12. 12Back alley beauty
13. 13A yard full o' trees
14. 14Scotch 'in' the rocks

Contributors

Writing: Ryan Kamstra, Todd Irvine

Photography: Torie Gervais