Before staging, bully offers and virtual tours were commonplace in the housing market, there was Ferguson Real Estate. And in the Leaside of the ’50s and ’60s its president, Ernest J. Ferguson, was the only realtor in town. His son Gord, a long-time resident of Sutherland Drive, remembers his father as “the man who ‘sold’ Leaside.”
Born in Scotland in 1920, Ernest came to Canada in his youth. He enlisted with the RAF during World War II hoping to join an air crew. Unfortunately, after completing a vision test, he was labelled colour blind so instead trained as an electronics engineer and spent the rest of the war in remote areas on Vancouver Island. After the war he followed his older brother to Toronto and worked briefly in construction as a hod carrier. (A hod is a three-sided box attached to a long pole that rests on the carrier’s shoulder and is used to transport bricks.) On some days Ernest would shift more than 1,000 bricks; Gord remembers his dad saying his move to real estate was a good one since “it is easier to sell bricks and mortar than carry them.”
He set up shop at 850 Eglinton Ave. East in 1952 where he would stay for more than 30 years. At the time, Gord explains, “the big brokers in Toronto like A.E. LePage and Canada Trust stayed south of St. Clair, so Leaside was dad’s domain.” Arthur Slightham, a broker as well as a reputable builder of large Leaside semis, briefly sold in the area but shifted his focus to the newly built Don Mills community just to the east. The agents who worked with Ernest were all Leasiders, and the office supported local hockey and baseball teams, providing socks, jerseys and equipment.
Ernest might have been “Mr. Leaside” work-wise but, ironically, he never lived here. Gord recalls that his dad wanted to settle in the town but it was not easy finding a five-bedroom house to accommodate him, his wife and their five children. Finally in 1965 he found a large corner home at 73 Bessborough Drive, which he purchased and added onto with designs by noted architect Bruce Brown (also responsible for the 1950 addition to Leaside United Church). In the end, though, they never moved in; his wife felt it was wiser to stay in Willowdale for smooth family relations since her sister-in-law lived at the corner of Sutherland and Bessborough – a bit too close for comfort.
With the late ’50s midtown boom in development, the Toronto Real Estate Board moved its offices to Davisville and Yonge. This changed the friendly small-town feel of selling houses that Ferguson had exclusively enjoyed. In the ’70s Ernest announced he was cutting the home-selling commission (6% at the time) to 4%, a move which pleased many but angered others. He is quoted in the Toronto Star saying that as a result of his actions some brokers and salespersons “went so far as to say my house would be bombed and my family killed.”
Gord remembers as a kid driving from their home on Burbank Drive all the way down Bayview to his dad’s office, past E.P. Taylor’s cow and horse barns at the intersection of Bayview and York Mills and past Taylor’s palatial estate, Windfields, which is now the Canadian Film Centre. It was the mid-’50s, and Gord says “Eglinton ended at Brentcliffe, beyond which was forest, river valley and even a dump.” He also recounts time spent with his dad’s builder friends like Slightham, Brockington and Cairns. “Slightham and Cairns lived next door to each other on Bessborough on extra wide lots in houses known for their exquisite finishes.” Gord even worked with his dad for a spell before settling into his own career.
Ernest lived to 95, buying and selling well into his 80s …and by all account always with fairness and integrity, qualities developed early in his career which helped make him an unsung Leaside legend.
