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The ribbon cutting ceremony of the Marysfield Co-op interpretative plaque. From L to R: Councillor Toor, Wards 9 & 10, Brampton, Barb Stein, Marysfield nonagenarian, original builder. Mary Quinlan, Marysfield nonagenarian, original Family Builders Co-Op and Tom Tran, Heritage Planner, City of Brampton.
Sue Palmer
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The site of one of Ontario’s first-ever cooperative housing projects received a special blessing alongside its newly installed commemorative plaque that marked 68 years since the initial blessing of the site's constructors by Bishop Francis Marrocco.
On July 6, descendants of the original families of the Marysfield Co-op gathered with Msgr. Owen Keenan, pastor of St Patrick’s Parish in Brampton, where blessings were bestowed upon the interpretive plaque installed by Heritage Brampton.
In the early 1950s, a group of 14 Catholic families from Toronto, with limited resources, joined forces to form the Family Home Builder Cooperative Ltd. The families purchased land on Marysfield Drive, just minutes away from St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, to construct their subdivision in a small community known as Wildfield.
Constructed on the rural backdrop of St. Patrick’s Parish Church Farm, the Marysfield Co-op was a housing program started out of necessity and has since woven its way into the hearts of the people connected to the community.
Chris Ryan, a spokesperson for Heritage Wildfield and The Wildfield Social, spoke to the commitment of the original community, which ended up constructing the 14 initial homes for each family starting in 1955.
“It was post-war times where there was an influx of people that led to overcrowding in Toronto where all the jobs were and so there were not a lot of places for housing,” she said. “These people were working in Toronto with no home and could not raise their children the way they were raised. All of a sudden, this opportunity came along where all they needed to do was roll up their sleeves and work hard, and that is exactly what those families did.”
Ryan recounts that Bishop Marrocco promised those families that if the houses were built on time, he would bring a delegation from Toronto to bless each home and the members of each family, a promise he delivered in July 1956. That moment ended up becoming an unforgettable memory for the Marysfield community, both past and present.
“Can you imagine feeling that you had no hope, sacrificing everything to build a liveable community for the next generation and then receiving a blessing on that community from the bishop?” she said. “It gave them hope, you can see in the old photos from The Catholic Register all the smiling faces of the kids on the front porches of those finished homes.”
In 2009, over half a century after the Marysfield Co-op was constructed, the Heritage Wildfield Facebook was created by Dave Browne. The page slowly began amassing a following of descendants from the original co-op families, with numerous photos, documents, memories, archives and stories being shared throughout the group. Years later, The Wildfield Social was created, a group that garnered similar attention and began circulating more stories of the community's past.
“It started with Andrew Munro posting photos of his childhood that his mother had saved in a Tupperware container. I messaged Dave Browne and requested to be his co-admin. He ended up bringing me in and as Andrew and others kept posting we began creating storylines for people to share. More and more people started to join and reminisce and that is how we got the attention and subsequent funding for the plaque,” Ryan said.
In 2014 Heritage Brampton, on the request of Ryan and the ever-growing group of online descendants, funded the interpretive plaque for the Marysfield community as well as provided research from the city’s staff.
The plaque which lays out the history of the construction of the Marysfield Co-op was installed on June 12 on land directly adjacent to 40 Marysfield D., Brampton, the location of the first houses built. After a detailed process that took 10 years to finalize, the plaque now enshrines the memory of a historic community and those who brought it back to life.
“The plaque is exactly what we wanted, it is a balanced story of as many types of prisoners and co-op builders from that era as we could,” Ryan said. “I told Dave, it is real now, it finally happened, and he is so touched by the whole thing.”
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