City names laneway after Black woman who made difference to early Toronto

Toronto has officially named a laneway in the city's east end after a Black woman who made a big impact on her community in the early 1900s.

Coun. Paula Fletcher, who represents Toronto-Danforth, unveiled the new street sign for "Luella Price Lane" on Friday. The laneway runs east of Greenwood Avenue and north of Gerrard Street E. in Leslieville. 

Fletcher said the location is near where Luella Price, a pioneering woman, formed the Eureka Club in her home on Redwood Avenue in 1910.

In a Feb. 20 letter to the Toronto and East York Community Council, Fletcher said the Eureka Club, composed of less than 20 women, aimed to offer aid to low-income Torontonians on an individual basis. Many of the spouses of club members were railway porters. The motto of the Eureka Club was "not for ourselves, but for others." 

At its 70th anniversary in 1980, it was said to be the oldest Black women's organization in Ontario, according to Fletcher.

"We're very proud of the work that Luella and her club did on Redwood," Fletcher told a small gathering before the unveiling. "They established a club that did good things for the entire neighbourhood."

Fletcher said the naming of the laneway honours Price and recognizes her contributions to Leslieville and Toronto. She said the Leslieville Historical Society, East York Historical Society and Gerrard East neighbourhood pushed to have the laneway named after her sooner but the COVID-19 pandemic ground their efforts to a halt.

"We can see what an important moment this is, not just for our neighbourhood, but for the city to recognize someone of this stature and what she did. I think the motto, 'not for ourselves, but for others,' does really speak to our whole neighbourhood. That is how we try to live our lives in the east end," Fletcher said.

Joanne Doucette, a founding member of the Leslieville Historical Society, told the gathering that Price was a free woman of colour in Maryland. Of humble origins, Price married Grandison Price, a man born into slavery in Kentucky, in 1875. They had a baby that died, and headed north to Toronto, where they worked a number of jobs to survive. They bought a house in Toronto.

The Eureka Club was formed to aid anyone who needed it without fanfare, Doucette said. It came about after they heard about a pregnant young woman who didn't have anything, including baby clothes, and needed help.

The club was a member of the Congress of Black Women of Canada, an organization that still exists, Doucette said.

"Their work goes on. I am so glad that we are finally recognizing Luella, and by extension, Grandison. They certainly had the support of their husbands," she said.

"This is history that has been lost. In these times, when there is a pushback against human rights and diversity, it is so timely that we are here today."

Rosemary Sadlier, former president of the Ontario Black History Society, said the work of the Leslieville Historical Society in bringing forward the story of Price is critical because so often the lived experience and reality of many Black people in many places in Canada has been erased.

Sadlier said rediscovering and reimagining Price is an opportunity for city residents to "become even more engaged in the diversity and the complexity and the nuance" of early Toronto.

"I think it's a wonderful reminder and a tangible expression of the early Black presence in the area," Sadlier said in an interview after the unveiling.

"It's just one point in time of a continuous track of African Americans who became African Canadians helping each other and helping the community."