Toronto Neighbourhoods ~ Baby Point - Humber Valley

Baby Point is a Historic upscale residential neighbourhood in west end of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The name is pronounced "Bobby Point" by long-time residents, a corruption of the French pronunciation of Baby, after whom the neighbourhood is named. A set of historic stone gates at the intersection of Jane Street and Baby Point Road mark the entrance to this neighbourhood, which could be said to be a precursor to modern gated communities. Baby Point is situated on a peninsula of land -- or a 'point' -- overlooking the Humber River. It is surrounded by ravines and parkland.

There is a consensus nowadays that the Village of Teiaiagon was located on a modest hill on the east bank of the Humber River, not too far north of the river's Lake Ontario mouth. Teiaiagon, meaning "Place Where the Knife Cuts Through the River at the Falls," was a Seneca village on the east bank of the Humber River.

The site is now known as Bâby Point [pronounced Baa-bee after James Baby (below), or as some local anglophone residents today say, "Bobby"]. The name commemorates a notable French Canadian family from the Windsor-Detroit area, represented on Lieutenant Governor Simcoe's Legislative Council. They would be granted the land in the late 18th century - in preference to the more deserving Jean Baptiste Rousseau, whose family may have been too "French and Indian" for the new British imperial officialdom.)

On a reasonable guess in the early 21st century, the village of Teiaiagon was home to at least a few hundred and possibly considerably more Seneca in the late 1670s and early 1680s. They lived in a number of longhouses, and Percy Robinson urges: "We may be sure that Teiaiagon was protected by a stout palisade and fortified with all the skill which the Iroquois could command."

Houses in Baby Point vary from large English manor houses shaded by towering oak trees to more modest two-story detached houses. The larger homes tend to back onto the Humber Valley ravine and are found along Baby Point Road and Baby Point Crescent, the neighbourhood's "signature" streets, while the smaller homes are found near the Jane Street and Baby Point Road entrance. Most of the homes in Baby Point were built in the 1920s and 1930s.

James Baby was a member of a prominent Quebec fur trading family and a former politician in Upper Canada. He settled at Baby Point in 1816, after discovering the abandoned Seneca village there. A lush apple orchard covered the area and salmon swam in the Humber River, giving it an Eden-like quality. Water from a fresh spring nearby was bottled and shipped worldwide.

Baby's heirs lived at Baby Point until 1910, when the government acquired the land with the intention of establishing a military fortress and barracks at the site. The government eventually changed their plans and sold the land to a developer named Home Smith, who began developing a subdivision in 1912. Home Smith would later develop a residential area across the Humber, The Kingsway.