Both Heydon House, located at the northwest corner of (Old) Weston Road and St. Clair, and Brown’s Hotel, located further north, had a reputation for fights and general rowdiness. For several years Heydon House, the Junction’s largest hotel in 1903, was also a regular venue for cockfighting, and sometimes the subject of police raids. On February 22, 1903, Rev. T.E.E. Shore gave a sermon at the Annette Street Methodist Church on “Some Needed Reforms in Toronto Junction.” Shore outlined several problems he believed to be plaguing the town, including the existence of gambling dens, to which he accused the local police of brazenly turning a blind eye. He reserved most of his ire, however, for the local hotels, the primary (legal) purveyors of alcohol in the Junction. The
Star quotes Shore as saying “Many a poor fallen girl has told me down in yonder mission how she fell into sin and degradation in Junction hotels. Men do not go to those hotels merely for refreshments or to quench their thirst. They are cesspools, I say. Cesspools of harlotry, vice, and iniquity.”
The sermon ignited a debate over local option which raged in Toronto Junction throughout 1903. The town divided into those who saw alcohol as the root of the problem, and the moderates who argued that they could make do with more vigorous enforcement of the current laws and an investigation into the liquor licensing system. The pro-local option side was led by several prominent townspeople, in particular the Protestant ministers, who increasingly called for prohibition in their sermons. The cause was also championed by some members of the town council, particularly Councillors A.H. Perfect and future MPP
William A. Baird. The “Antis,” as the opposition was known in the press, were understandably led by the local hotel owners, whose livelihood depended on alcohol sales; on the town council, their political champion was councillor and former Junction mayor James Bond.
That autumn, both sides held public meetings around the town, each believing their opinion to be that of the local majority. The issue was amplified by a fight at Heydon House that September. The fight is described in a 1987 family history by A.J. Heydon, who writes that the fight “was said to have been fought between some cattlemen from the
Union Stockyards and a group of
C.P. railway workers—the subject of disagreement having been the favour of one of the neighbourhood prostitutes… It was largely the result of this incident that public sympathy began to side with the prohibitionist cause.”
