Christie Pits

Infobox Stadium
stadium_name = Christie Pits


location = Toronto, Ontario, Canada
opened =
renovated =
owner = City of Toronto
surface = Grass
construction_cost =
architect =
former_names =
tenants = Toronto Maple Leafs (baseball)
seating_capacity =
dimensions =
coordinates = coord|43|39|53.55|N|79|25|15.74|W|region:CA-ON_type:landmark|display=inline,title

Christie Pits Park, originally Willowvale Park, is a Toronto public recreational area located at 750 Bloor Street West at Christie Street,cite web |url= http://www.toronto.ca/parks/parks_gardens/christiepits.htm|title= Christie Pits Park|accessdate=2008-05-04 |work= Toronto Parks|publisher= City of Toronto] just west from the TTC Christie subway station. The surrounding area has a significant Korean and Latin American community.

The park has an area of convert|21.9|acre|ha|1, about half of which is grassed picnic areas, the rest being various sports fields. Sports facilities on the site include three baseball diamonds (one full-sized and fenced), basketball courts, bocce field, a soccer/rugby/football field, ice rink, splash pad and pool. The sides of the pits are highly sloped, and are used in winter for tobogganing and related activities. Garrison Creek runs under "the pits", and can be clearly seen in winter. It is home to the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, which plays in the Intercounty Baseball League.

The park was named after the Christie Sand Pits which were on the location until the early 1900s. The sand pits had been named after Christie Street, which was named after William Mellis Christie, co-founder of the Christie & Brown Cookie Company, now known simply as Mr. Christie.

1933 riot

On August 16, 1933, Christie Pits was the scene of a six-hour riot, mostly between the Anglo-Canadian Pit Gang (also called the Swastika-Club) and the predominantly Jewish Spadina Avenue Gang which also included many Italian members. One of the baseball diamonds was being used for a series of softball games between two local amateur teams, one of which predominantly consisted of Jewish players. Two nights earlier, at the first game of the series, there had been a display of a swastika and police were warned that there could be trouble at the second game. Those warnings were ignored, and after the second game, a blanket with a large swastika painted on it was displayed by members of the Pit Gang. The Spadina Avenue Gang at the game responded to the display, and a riot ensued. The "Toronto Daily Star" captured the event the next day,

"While groups of Jewish and Gentile youths wielded fists and clubs in a series of violent scraps for possession of a white flag bearing a swastika symbol at Willowvale Park last night, a crowd of more than 10,000 citizens, excited by cries of ‘Heil Hitler’ became suddenly a disorderly mob and surged wildly about the park and surrounding streets, trying to gain a view of the actual combatants, which soon developed in violence and intensity of racial feeling into one of the worst free-for-alls ever seen in the city.Scores were injured, many requiring medical and hospital attention…. Heads were opened, eyes blackened and bodies thumped and battered as literally dozens of persons, young or old, many of them non-combatant spectators, were injured more or less seriously by a variety of ugly weapons in the hands of wild-eyed and irresponsible young hoodlums, both Jewish and Gentile".

A Heritage Toronto plaque was presented to commemorate the 75th anniversary in August 2008. The riotmay not have influenced history all that much but it certainly underscored the xenophobic attitudes that were headed at Jews. The Jews of Toronto represented the largest minority in Toronto 1933 and were no coincidence, a xenophobic target of non-Jewish residents. The Riot at Christie Pits was stimulated by three xenophobic catalysts: the rise of Hitler and the swastika emblem in Germany; the rise and debate of the Swastika Club on Toronto’s beaches and ethnic resistance in the Spadina-College district. The rise of the swastika in Germany in 1933 and its popularization in Toronto newspapers had an axiomatic impact on the riot. News headlines and articles describing the brutalities against Jews in Germany were articulated in Toronto’s newspapers and reiterated into forms of provocation. Locally, the rise of the Swastika Club and their media attention in Toronto’s newspapers had weakened racial tolerance by popularizing the debate over the swastika. Finally, the riot at Christie Pits underlined the long-term ethnic resistance between Jew and Gentile. On a map, the Jews were expanding northward past Bloor Street and into Gentile territory where Anglo unity was strong and ethnic tolerance weak. Therefore, the violent encounter with one another at Christie Pits was not a mere coincidence or sudden event; Jewish-Gentile relations were continually precarious in Toronto and the rise of the swastika only intensified attitudes at the other (ALGOMAu).

The iconic song "Bobcaygeon" by The Tragically Hip, from their album "Phantom Power" is set in part during the 1933 riot, and makes reference to "the men they couldn't hang" whose "voices rang with that Aryan twang".

Ballpark

A smaller baseball diamond is located next to the washroom facilities.There are two baseball fields at the Pits. The large and main venue is in the northeast corner of the park. The field has limited seating capacity with bench seats along the first and third bases with most spectators sitting along the grass hills. A wood broadcast booth is located at the top of the northeast corner. There are no change rooms at this field, players change in the washrooms near the concession stand beyond centre field. The park hosts the Toronto Maple Leafs of Intercounty Baseball, U of T's Varsity Blues, and local high school games.

References