Toronto Hunt Club

The Toronto Hunt Club was established by British Army officers of the Toronto garrison (Fort York) in 1843. It held gymkhana equestrian events at various sites around the city. In 1895 it acquired its first permanent home in a rural area east of the city between Kingston Road and the waterfront. In 1898 the streetcar was extended eastward to the site, and soon the area became a cottage district and then streetcar suburb of Toronto. This forced the equestrian activities to move further afield. In 1907 the horses were thus moved to a site in Thornhill (Steeles' Corner at Steeles Avenue and Yonge Street).

In 1919 the club moved to a location closer to town at Eglinton Avenue and Avenue Road. Known as the Eglinton Hunt Club, a polo arena, clubhouses and other facilities were erected. The 1930s saw the club run into financial difficulties, however. In 1939, with the outbreak of the Second World War, the large site was purchased by the federal government and turned into a secret Royal Canadian Air Force research facility, the No. 1 Clinical Investigation Unit. Noted scientists Frederick Banting and Wilbur R. Franks were employed there, and it was at the CIU that Franks invented the anti gravity g-suit. The club was also home to RCAF No. 1 Initial Training School, a unit of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.

After the war it became the RCAF Staff School, and remained an officer training facility of the Canadian Forces until closed in 1994. By 1998 the Government of Canada transferred the property to the Toronto Catholic District School Board and the Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School was built there. The area surrounding the old Eglinton Hunt Club is now an established residential neighbourhood of Forest Hill.

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