An enduring mystery at an east end Toronto café is the memorial shown here. Names on a bronze plaque with dates (1914-1918) indicate a tribute to those who died in the Great War. The inscription reads:
Our comrades / Who / Sixty-three in all / “Played the game” / Even unto death
Who were these comrades? Most such plaques name a school, a church, a business, a regiment—or in some way tell what group is remembered. The café owners don’t know the plaque’s history. Was this even a Toronto group?
We started our search with the less common names. Library and Archives Canada’s digitized World War I attestation papers give addresses of enlisted persons or their next-of-kin.
Familiar addresses popped up: Huron Street, Summerhill Avenue; St. George Street; Sussex Avenue; Brunswick Avenue; Walmer Road, and so on. All pointed to “Old Toronto.”
Religious denominations varied (Attestation Papers, p.1 or p.2): Church of England; Presbyterian; Methodist. Not a church memorial.
Occupations also varied (Attestation Papers, p.1): chauffeur; bank clerk; student; furrier; draughtsman; chemist, and others. Not the memorial of a business.
Pre-war military experience (Attestation Papers, p.1) mentioned Queen’s Own Rifles; 48th Highlanders; The Governor General’s Body Guard. Again, not one cohesive group.
Our own “For King and Country” database revealed former students of North Toronto Collegiate Institute; public schools such as Rosedale, Dewson, and Winchester; more than seven for University of Toronto Schools (UTS)—one of our schools-in-progress—but not one specific school that had perhaps misplaced a memorial.
Not a church; school; business; military group. What was left? Perhaps a social or fraternal club—probably with emphasis on sports. The “comrades” had “played the game” even unto death.
Sifting through (ProQuest) digitized Toronto newspapers—available online through many Ontario public libraries—was slow, but productive. Our search term “Herbert Klotz” (a name from the memorial) brought up a headline: 16 Aura Lee Men for the Empire. In the article about club members going off to war were three other names from the plaque: Percival Gibson; Richard L. Lyall; Bertram T. Nevitt.
Our new search term, “Aura Lee Club,” found the November 1917 death notice of Gunner G.A. Renfrew, also named on the plaque—and confirmed his club membership.
The Aura Lee Club, three acres of land around Avenue Road and Roxborough Street West—with a branch in North Toronto—had a whirl of social and sports activities: dances; tennis; canoe trips. Founder and long-time president, James Edmund Jones, had dedicated his book: Camping and canoeing: what to take, how to travel, how to cook, where to go “to my comrades of Aura Lee Camp.” City groups used the grounds for rugby and skating.
Aura Lee’s junior and senior hockey teams in the Ontario Hockey Association (O.H.A.) played many games at Arena Gardens (also known as the Mutual Street Arena)—between Dundas and Shuter streets—from 1916 to 1926.
Seventeen members went on to play in the National Hockey League; four were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The Aura Lee Club was founded in 1887. The competitive athletics part of the club began about 1903. In 1925, the property was turned over to the University of Toronto for use by its preparatory school (UTS).
Hockey, canoeing, other sports and social events evoke the lighter side of a Toronto club’s life, but this memorial shows the darker side—naming 63 comrades who went from the playing fields to the battlefields and didn’t come back.
| NAMES FROM THE AURA LEE CLUB PLAQUE | |
| Gordon Applegath | Charles McHenry |
| J. Russell Aikins | Roy F. McMurtry |
| E. Lambert Bach | Sidney McWhinney |
| Roy Bailey | George H. Morang |
| Beverley Ball | William Munro |
| Quintin W. Bannister | Bertram T. Nevitt |
| E.O. Bath | G. Courtland Noxon |
| Fred J. Blakey | Donald Osborne |
| Edward B. Booth | Paul Pettit |
| H. Stewart Boulter | John H. Pipon |
| Wilfred Britnell | John A. Proctor |
| Norman A. Brown | William Proudfoot |
| J.P. Cavers | Gaynor Reid |
| Duncan Chisholm | George Renfrew |
| Walter W. Conyers | Roy R. Riggs |
| Melville Crawford | Francis Rolph |
| Beverley Crowther | John E. Ryerson |
| Lindsay Drummond | Alex W. Scott |
| Douglas Q. Ellis | J. Murray Skeaff |
| George Evans | Dr. Harry R. Smith |
| Thomas Freebairn | Langley W. Smith |
| Eric Clarence Gardner | W. Burton Tait |
| Percival Gibson | W. Gordon Tait |
| Carl Heebner | Geoffrey B. Taylor |
| Fred J. Hore | Jack Topp |
| Francis C. Howard | E.C. VanEeghan |
| Fred Hutty | N. Eden Walker |
| Ralph Jones | Frank Waltho |
| Herbert N. Klotz | Arthur C. Williams |
| Basil R. Lepper | Lynn Wright |
| C. Gordon Likens | William B. Yuille |
| Richard L. Lyall | |
12 thoughts on “A Memorial Mystery—Solved.”
This article does not credit Sandy McNamara who has done a lot of work to determine the origin of this plaque. Are you aware she has been researching it?
Hi Janet. Yes, we’ve been in touch with Sandy.
Janet Lee Evans, thank you for mentioning my work. I have continued to research and have made contact with descendants of the men named on the plaque worldwide, many even before above article was posted. Considering only a couple of the men were married, that is quite an accomplishment, I think.
Sandra McNamara UE
Thanks for looking into the references to Aura Lee and the valiant men who died in WWI.
In researching a new book by Maria Popova called ‘Figuring’ which I am producing in the U.K. as an audiobook, I came across references to Aurora Leigh, the poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Do you think there is any connection between the name of the Aura Lee Club (and the sports field where we at UTS trained for football games in the 1950’s) was in any way a shortening of the Browning poem?
Best,
G.H.
Hello Garrick,
I recall that there is a definite connection between the Aura Lee Club and the UTS playing field, but will have to look for paragraph(s) that will confirm this, and send you the ref.
Will let you know asap. Please let me know if you have a deadline.
Did not consider a possible shortening of a Barrett Browning poem when I was researching the Aura Lee Club, but will look into it. The song “Aura Lee” dates from the U.S. Civil War—at least—origins of folk tunes often hard to pin down, but will look further.
Would like to know the address—even if approximate—of the 1950s field where you practised. Toronto is undergoing constant changes, and I’ve meant to go back and walk the area. This will spur me on.
Martha Jackson
Project Coordinator
For King and Country: War Memorials in Toronto Schools
P.S. Have photographed the UTS memorials, and attended an open house there. Will also check my notes from that visit.
The Aura Lee playing field and clubhouse was located on the north-east corner of Avenue Road and Davenport.
Hello again, Garrick.
The Aurora Lee playing grounds on Avenue Road, remembered from your UTS days, did belong to the Aura Lee Club. When the club closed in 1925, the deed—and mortgage—were transferred to the University of Toronto, which kept the name. It was “the intention of the university to take steps for the preservation of the name of Aura Lee in some way.” Many UTS students had been members of the club. (Details of the land transfer are in the Globe-April 10, 1925.)
The Aura Lee Club took its name from the song “Aura Lee,” published in 1861. The song’s popularity grew during the American Civil War. I could not find any connection between the Barrett Browning epic poem “Aurora Leigh” (written in 1856) and the song.
Best wishes with your audiobook production.
Martha Jackson
Thanks, Kevin Shea, for pinpointing the playing grounds’ location.
Do you have the address of the east end cafe in which this plaque is located?
Well done, solving this mystery. I, too, would like to know which east end cafe has the plaque and if you have any ideas why it is where it is?
~Kristine
Hello Kathy Parks, Kristine Morris, and others interested in the fate of the Aura Lee plaque. The café where the plaque hung was at 290 Main Street, but was slated for closing about May 2018; to be replaced by a condo. The owners planned to take the plaque with them, as it was part of the family’s military collection. For King and Country had no email address for the owner at the time, and no current home phone number because of the subsequent closing and move. We are trying to contact the owner through several methods, and will let you know if we are successful.
The Globe, December 25, 1918, page 16 lists almost all of the names on the plaque. Do we know where the plaque ended up after the shop closed?
Kevin Shea