‘Always constant’: Richmond Hill’s Richvale evolves to welcome all

In the face of sprawl development, Richvale has not only survived, but also expanded.

Yorkregion.com
December 6, 2018
Sheila Wang

There is not much left from the past in Richvale.

Take a walk along Yonge Street in south Richmond Hill and you may wonder where you are. It looks like any other suburban area in the Greater Toronto Area: busy streets, highrise buildings and seemingly endless roadwork.

“None of these were here,” said Cheryl Butler, a lifelong resident in Richvale, who stood in a misting rain at a strip plaza at Scott Drive, pointing across Yonge Street.

It is only because Richvale – traditionally bounded by Bathurst Street and Yonge Street, Carville Road/16th Avenue and Hwy. 7 – has become so much more.

“Richvale has evolved to meet the demand of population growth. I think Richvale has responded very well,” said Butler, who is also the past-president of the Richmond Hill Historical Society.

The community has taken on many looks in its around 100 years of history – from a fledgling community of farmers in the 1920s, a cluster of homes to veterans after the Second World War, to a densely populated bedroom community in Richmond Hill.

It takes more than looks to retain the sense of community in Richvale. It is more of a willingness to embrace the changing times.

“Richvale is always constant,” said Andrea Kulesh, president of the Richmond Hill Historical Society, and a Richvale native.

Few communities in the GTA have ridden the tidal waves of sprawl development as well as Richvale, which has not only survived, but also expanded.

Following the transformation of the McLean farm into a subdivision in 1910, Richvale initially developed surrounding the Upper East Don into a self-contained farming community in the 1920s and 1930s, between Bathurst Street and Yonge Street.

“They had their own little community where they could go for their needs,” said Maggie MacKenzie, Richmond Hill's heritage services co-ordinator.

Early residents in Richvale also built their own enterprise and economy around the water source, including a gristmill, woollen mill, two sawmills and a cannery, according to MacKenzie.

The Burr House, a white cottage-style house on Carville Road, is probably the only remaining building that lives to tell the stories from that era.

Sawmill owner Rowland Burr built this four-room cottage with planks in 1820. It now houses a craft gallery and tea room after being acquired by the Town of Richmond Hill in the 1960s.

The opening of public facilities such as the Richvale School and Richvale Post Office injected new life into the rural community in the 1920s and '30s.

Their idyllic lives would last for a couple of decades before the end of the Second World War, when Richvale experienced a significant population growth and notable land development for the first time.

The affordable properties on large lots along Yonge and the easy commute to Toronto made Richvale – just north of Hwy. 7 – a perfect location for veterans from different countries to find homes and resume their civilian lives.

There was a desire by the subdividers at that point in time that people wanted deeper lots, said Patrick Lee, the town's director of policy planning.

Extra large lots, as deep as 200 feet, can still be seen along roads east of Yonge, such as Edgar and Spruce avenues. But the houses that used to stand on the lots have long been replaced.

When asked about the old buildings from her childhood, it took Kulesh a while before Abruzzo Pizza jumped into her mind.

The decades-old brick building that stands quietly on bustling Yonge used to be a “little hub” of the community when Kulesh grew up.

Locals frequented here for banking, medicine and even shopping for boats, she said.

Gone with the buildings are the farms.

“We grew up in an era when we could roam the fields and mess around,” Butler said. “You pine for what you lost.”

But there were places they were not allowed to go near, she said, such as a huge farm just east of Yonge, separated from the community by nothing but a fence.

It was the Langstaff Jail Farm, a minimum security prison built in 1912 as a supplement to the notoriously congested Don Jail. Petty criminals were sent there to work the farm: growing grain crops and raising cattle, chickens and hogs.

In their young minds, Kulesh said, it probably was one of the scariest place, housing the worst criminals in the world.

“It was really a different time. If you were found drunk on the street, they’d incarcerate you,” Butler said.

That part of history has stayed in the memories of a few, while most of the farm buildings were demolished in 1981 to make way for a provincial hydro tower corridor.

With demolition, comes building and rebuilding.

Shortly after it was annexed by the Town of Richmond Hill in 1971, Richvale started seeing a wave of development where new houses --often "monster homes" --popped up along Yonge Street, replacing the ones built in the 1950s. It once again transformed the community, which had strong Italian roots, into a more mixed area.

Statistics show Italians are no longer the largest ethnic group in Ward 5, which approximately overlaps with Richvale, as they accounted for 8.9 per cent of the area population in the 2016 census, down from 12 per cent in 2006.

Iranians are the largest ethnic group now, according to the latest census.

In 1974, Hillcrest Mall opened at the corner of Yonge and Carville, becoming a major shopping destination in southern York Region, followed by the opening of the Richvale Community Centre two years later, which included an outdoor swimming pool, the only one in Richmond Hill at that time.

People would sneak in at night and jump off the diving board, MacKenzie recalled.

In 1983, the town added another important public facility – The Richvale Library – to the community, replacing a smaller library at 40 Pearson Ave.

“It was a good thing when they became part of Richmond Hill,” MacKenzie said.

Kulesh would agree, only that she still considers Richvale separate from the town.

Before the annexation, Richvale was part of Vaughan Township, while east of Yonge was Markham Township.

Since the west side was brought together with the east side, many believe Richvale has expanded beyond its traditional boundaries to Weldrick on the north, and Bayview on the east.

Kulesh said some Richvale residents would identify themselves with Thornhill more than Richmond Hill.

While residents in communities such as Oak Ridges, who tend to consider their community a town of its own, Kulesh said Richvale only “semiexisted” as a post office destination from the beginning.

“It was never a town,” she said.

For this reason, residents in Richvale have been generally less concerned about the ongoing development and planned intensification.

“It’s been gradual,” Butler said. “At first, you lament, and that’s natural. You lament what you lost.”

Now, 15-storey apartment and condominium buildings are standing along Yonge in Richvale, home to new families from across the world.

“They’ve become accustomed to it and realized it’s not that big of a deal. So, their attitudes might be a little more open than people living in other areas,” Lee said.

In addition to Yonge, the town is also looking at the development opportunities on the extra-large lots farther west to the corridor.

“It provides a means by which intensification can occur within the built-up area in Richmond Hill. It’s starting to change the Richvale community to a great degree,” Lee said.

While Kulesh and Butler did reminisce about their childhood, they said they would not resent development.

“We can only go forward,” Butler said. “We’re not declining. We’re evolving.”

In Richmond Hill’s official plan, population growth has been directed to a few key development areas - including Yonge and 16th Avenue/Carville Road and Richmond Hill Centre at Yonge and Hwy. 7 – for the purpose of future intensification and transit.

Lee said the community, as a part of the Yonge Street transformation, will get denser and busier, especially with the planned rapid transit network to be completed by 2020 and the much-anticipated subway extension.

Without a doubt, Richvale will put on some new looks before long.

“Every generation is gonna have their own landmarks and places to gather,” Mackenzie said.