Green Bush Inn
There have been several enterprises in the Toronto region called the Green Bush Inn. The first Green Bush Inn was a two-story clapboard structure built around 1830 on the northeast corner of Yonge Street and Steeles Avenue.[1][2][3] The Inn was a meeting place for those planning the Upper Canada Rebellion. A second Green Bush Inn was opened at 215-217 Shuter Street. According to F.R. Berchem, in Opportunity Road: Yonge Street 1860-1939, Joseph Abraham opened both establishments. Wes Porter, writing in Hort Pro magazine, asserts Thomas Steele, the namesake for Steeles Avenue, was the first proprietor. By 1876 the second Green Bush Inn was under new management, and by 1880 it had been renamed the Russell House.
In 1938, the structure was moved to the northwest corner and was used as a family home.[4]
In 1969, a student association at the newly opened York University made plans to move it on campus and reopen it as a student pub.[5] However, the structure was not moved and was demolished in 1972 although the pub adopted its early name.[6]
References
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"Information on Building Name: Green Bush Inn". Architectural Index of Ontario. Archived from the original on 2013-03-11.
Tavern, situated near Yonge and Steeles, initially known as the Green Bush Inn, and renamed the Steeles Hotel. Reportedly one of the meeting places of Upper Canada rebels during the 1834 Rebellion.
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F. R. Berchem (1996). "Opportunity Road: Yonge Street 1860-1939". Dundurn Press. p. 33. ISBN 9781896219158. Retrieved 2013-03-08.
Of lesser standing, but closer to the old days of pot-hoisting and roistering, was the Green Bush Inn, probably started in the pioneering era by the well-known but never apparently too successful Joseph Abraham whose original inn of that name was on the northeast corner of what is now Yonge and Steeles Avenue.
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Wes Porter (2000). "Home Horticultural History". Hort-Pro. Archived from the original on 2012-07-30.
One such was Thomas Steeles who ran the inn that bore his name at today's northwest corner of Yonge Street and Steeles Avenue. But for some time at least, according to Wise and Gould, it was named Green Bush Inn, "after a fine balsam tree that grew in front of it."
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"Steele's Hotel, Yonge St., n.w. cor. Steeles Ave. W., after being moved to Steeles Ave. W., n. side, w. of Yonge St". Toronto Public Library. 2013. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.
Later called Green Bush Inn; moved in 1938 and used as house.
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Michiel Horn (2008). "York University: The Way Must Be Tried". McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 80, 121. ISBN 9780773577244. Retrieved 2013-03-08.
A Key event in student social life took place when the 1969 session began. On 11 September, the Green Bush Inn, the first student-run pub on campus, served its first drink.
- "THE WAY WE WERE: History at the crossroads".