BETWEEN 1944 AND 1949 a large suburban development took shape in the valley north of the city limits of St. John’s. Churchill Park was one of the earliest planned post-war suburban developments in Canada — begun before Confederation, but completed shortly afterwards. The iconic suburb in Canada is Don Mills, but Churchill Park predates it by more than a decade, and also foreshadows many of the design innovations generally attributed to Don Mills. The Newfoundland development was noteworthy in several ways. Perhaps most significant is that the developer was the St. John’s Housing Corporation (hereafter SJHC) which was essentially a Crown Corporation financed directly by the governments of Newfoundland and St. John’s.

In keeping with the philosophy of the Corporation’s first chairman, the private sector was deliberately excluded from participating in the development of this suburb during the early years. The suburb was built on 800 acres of land expropriated from private owners using a system of compensation outlined in a report to the British government but never adopted in that country because it was deemed too radical. It introduced "modern" house and neighbourhood design into the country, offering to its inhabitants a residential environment radically different from anything seen previously. The development doubled the area of the City, and its long-term impacts on the development of St. John’s can hardly be underestimated. This northern valley had not been previously developed for urban use. It was the site of many productive farms, but was unserviced. The main trunk sewer which the SJHC built through the valley, the water lines they installed, and the main road they built opened the area for development, and during the next twenty years or so, a very significant amount of the City’s growth occurred here. This may be the most significant long-term legacy of the men who served on the first SJHC board. But there were more immediate benefits. The Government was anxious to avoid serious shortages of housing in the post-war period. By 1949 the Corporation’s own employees had built 242 houses and 92 apartment units, probably the first purpose-designed apartments in the country, and these went a long way toward achieving the Government’s goal.

In 1942 the central area of St. John’s still had many old, dilapidated houses, occupied by some of the City’s poorest citizens. They were often remarked upon by visitors; one British Parliamentarian wrote that "even in St. John’s there exist some of the worst housing conditions in the Empire, if not the world" (Ammon 1944: 15). The existence of what was commonly referred to as the slum had been of concern for many years. Possible solutions had been proposed by Canadian town planning experts in the 1920s (Dalzell 1926, Todd 1930) and in 1939 by municipal councillor John Thomas Meaney (Sharpe 2000), but the impoverished municipal and national (i.e., Newfoundland) governments had been unable to implement them. However the short-lived prosperity of the war years and the election of a new, reform-minded Municipal Council in December 1941 provided the opportunity to initiate a possible solution. The Government accepted the City’s argument that the time was ripe to find an acceptable solution to this long-standing problem, and appointed the Commission of Enquiry into Housing and Town Planning in St. John’s (hereafter CEHTP) on 8 May 1942. Its terms of reference were to make an enquiry into the state of housing in the City and to consider ways of replanning the city.

The members of the Commission were carefully selected to represent the City’s most prominent organizations and institutions. They included the Anglican, United, and Salvation Army churches, the Newfoundland Board of Trade, the Newfoundland Federation of Labour, the Newfoundland Law Society, the Long-shoreman’s Protective Union, the Rotary Club, the Railway Employees Welfare Association, the Benevolent Irish Society, and the Child Welfare Association. The only surprising omission was the Roman Catholic Church; it was invited to send a representative to the early planning meetings, but for some reason no representative was appointed to the Commission.

The Commission was chaired by Brian Dunfield, a prominent member of the Anglican establishment. Born the son of an Anglican canon in St. John’s in 1888, he earned a First Class B.A. in Philosophy from the University of London in 1909 and then returned home to read law with Sir Edward Morris, later Prime Minister of Newfoundland. He was called to the Bar in 1911 and after an unspectacular career in private practice joined the Department of Justice in 1928. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Newfoundland in 1939 where he put to good use "one of the finest legal minds Newfoundland has ever produced" (Winter 1999). He sat on the bench until he was required to retire by virtue of his age, and over his violent protests, in 1963. In addition to serving as Chairman of the CEHTP he was also Chairman of the St. John’s Housing Corporation (1944-1949) and of the St. John’s Town Planning Commission (1945-1951). He served a three-year term as President of the Community Planning Association of Canada beginning in 1953 and, at the time of his death in 1968, was Chairman of the Cornerbrook Housing Commission. He was named to the Order of Knights Bachelor in 1949 in recognition of his outstanding public service. The influence he had on town planning in St. John’s was profound.

The CEHTP did most of its work in private. It held no public hearings and took surprisingly little in the way of formal evidence (Lewis and Shrimpton 1984: 217). Yet it issued five reports, all written by Dunfield (CEHTP 1942, 1943a, 1943b, 1943c, 1944). His authorship is not identified in any of the reports, but was confirmed by Erik Cook, the Deputy Mayor of the City and one of the members of the Commission and later a Canadian Senator (Cook 1982), and also by Gordon Winter, the man who succeeded him as Chairman of the Commission and who was later appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Newfoundland. Winter said that from the outset "everyone knew the reports were going to be Dunfield’s" (Winter 1998). One of the other members of the Commission was more blunt, saying "if, in addition to Dunfield there were ten Newfoundland dogs instead of people (on the Commission) there wouldn’t have been much change" (Miller 1981). The clear and elegant writing style is also a giveaway. Dunfield believed that those affected by decisions should be made aware of them in advance in a way they could easily comprehend:

we have thought it best to cast this Report in the form of numbered chapters and paragraphs and to write it in a simpler and more colloquial style than is normal in official reports. The first essential is that is be understood by every citizen, down to the humblest. By this method the people should get more while the expert or official reader need not get less. (CEHTP 1943b: 9)

The duty of the CEHTP was "to get at the fundamentals which have made our City the dirty, congested, ill-built, planless and expensive thing which in great part it is" (CEHTP 1943b: 9). Dunfield’s basic philosophy, outlined in the lengthy address he delivered to his colleagues at the first meeting of the Commission, was that slum clearance was a goal to be approached indirectly.

The central problem and the central difficulty of all housing schemes is the devising and financing of decent modern housing at cheaper rates for the lowest- income third or quarter of the population.... Some municipalities and governments in other countries have gone about (slum clearance) by the direct process of expropriating slum property, pulling it down and rebuilding on the site.... The main objection to this method is that unless landowners are ruthlessly expropriated, land costs too much. The housing erected on it has, therefore, to be skimped, and even so ends up costing too much. There is, therefore, difficulty in getting the people who occupied the land before back into the same area ... What is done in many countries is to develop housing settlements on the outskirts where land is relatively cheap or even vacant. This avoids the necessity of attempting to shift the existing population out and, back, and brings about a sort of automatic improvement of congested areas in that, as population drains from them, municipalities are in a position to raise their standard of requirements and to carry out condemnations and thus thin out and improve the slum.... One thing, however, is, I think, certain, and that is that by careful and thorough design and large-scale organization it is possible to provide people with better value in housing than they can obtain by themselves. (Dunfield 1942)

Since none of Dunfield’s papers relating to the work of the Commission have survived, we cannot know whether he had borrowed some of his ideas from the 1933 report of the Royal Commission on Newfoundland (i.e., the Amulree Commission). But there is an interesting parallel. Paragraph 615 of this report read

a Town Planning Commission constituted in 1931 has been investigating schemes for removing some 1,000 families in the centre of the town and establishing them in specially planned settlements outside the City limits, thus enabling what is now a congested slum area to be rebuilt. (Daily News 1941)

During the summer of 1942 four students from Memorial University College distributed questionnaires to the households of St. John’s, asking for details of their current housing conditions. It was hoped that a response could be obtained from every one of the estimated 6,500 houses in the city. This proved to be impossible, but the response was still astounding — 5,700 questionnaires were returned from 4,613 houses. On the basis of external inspection of houses, and the questionnaire results, houses were classified into one of six categories:

A section of the report entitled "The Slaughter of the Innocents" pointed out that the five-year average infant mortality rate in the city, at 96 per 1,000 live births, was higher than that in Ireland, Canada, Germany, England, and New Zealand. Other observers also noted the deplorable state of public health in the City. Mona Wilson, the Canadian Red Cross Assistant Commissioner for Newfoundland between 1940 and 1945, noted that Newfoundland’s tuberculosis rate was triple that of Canada, and the infant mortality rate double (Baldwin and Poulter 2005: 284). The cause, according to the Commission, was the poor state of the houses and neighbourhoods in which the poor lived: "In a large number of cases these people are living in condemned or condemnable houses, not because they cannot pay for or do not want something better, but because nothing better can be had. The breakdown of private enterprise, the stranglehold of closely-held land and the absence of local transportation facilities all play their part in this situation" (CEHTP 1943b: 15).

Press reaction to the third report of the Commission was immediate and particularly in the case of the Daily News, very supportive. The first editorial to comment on the report said:

What kind of town is St. John’s? The third interim report of the Housing Commission leaves us no illusions. Dealing exhaustively and frankly with a deplorable situation which would be more disturbing if most of us did not already know in a general way how bad things are. But this is a constructive report and the Dunfield Commission has accompanied its humiliating catalogue of facts with a bold and imaginative plan which deserves the fullest consideration.... The fact remains that for the safeguarding of public health, overcrowding and insanitary conditions must be abolished.... The Housing Commission proposes certain remedies which involve the creation of a northern residential suburb of detached houses of varying grades but all adequately provided with modern conveniences and available on the hire-purchase scheme.... The Housing Commission merits the grateful acknowledgment of its painstaking efforts and courageous and constructive report. (Daily News 1943a)

Two days later a second editorial continued its praise of the report:

The report of the Housing Commission should be read by every citizen.... It presents facts that should shock us out of our complacency and into a determination to strive our utmost for the reconstruction of our city.... We may dislike but we cannot ignore the stark revelation of the slum characteristics of St. John’s. On a site that lends itself to healthful and artistic planning we have allowed to grow up a dreary, insanitary and depressing jumble of congested buildings overlooking narrow and dirty streets.... For this, make no mistake about it, is everybody’s business. Let no one imagine that because he lives in a modern home with all conveniences, clean surroundings and a garden, that he has no responsibility for how others live. If he wants to be purely selfish, he must still realize that the dirt and disease which are bred in the slums are never more than a few hundred yards away at their source, and are omnipresent in the air that he breathes.... This report is a challenge. Let us take it up and do all that is within our power to support the movement which the Housing Corporation has initiated, and which will lead in time not only to a modern town but more important still to a wholly comfortable, healthy, moral and happy community. (Daily News 1943b)

It was no secret that living conditions in the heart of the downtown were very poor, but this publication of this report made it easier to visualize the extent of the misery that was endured by so many. The sense one gets from the press reaction is one of embarrassment, and a desire to get on with the job of eradicating the slum — if not to improve the lot of those forced to live in it, then at least to improve the image of the City. The language was far more blunt than we are accustomed to reading today.

We must accept the indictment that we have tolerated in our midst conditions that are a disgrace to our personal and civic price and to our humanitarian instincts.... This report and all the effort that has gone into the drafting of it can be an historic document or a waste of time. If it should prove to be the latter we shall condemn ourselves as a selfish, apathetic community deserving of all the ills that may befall us. (Wayfarer 1943)

Dunfield wrote that "the remedy for our present condition is more and cheaper land for building, better and more extensive local transportation to render this land available, proper planning to make the most of our land, and cheap long-term loans" (CEHTP 1943b: 9). He was adamant that the land be acquired as cheaply as possible, notwithstanding the fact that much of it was being actively farmed, because "excessive prices for land are the first and worst obstacle to good housing" (CEHTP 1943b: 95). This concern is reflected several times in the document reproduced below.

The specific proposal that the slum problem could be solved by building houses for owner occupancy beyond the northern limits of the city was based on a number of assumptions:

The house in a range is an undesirable survival of the past.... The trend of the public desires is unmistakable ... even a man of small means wants a house he can walk round, with a bit of garden, and a place for the garage he hopes to have some day.... We believe that we must not be afraid to envisage a bold expansion of the city in the course of the next generation, with the individual family house and garden the general rule.... We can no longer tolerate conditions which make it difficult for the enterprising small man to get out into better surroundings; and we can no longer tell the slum-dweller to wait until he can, if he ever can, buy himself out of the slums; he must be helped to get out of them, and they must be abolished by public action. (CEHTP 1943b: 40-44)

The Third Interim Report laid the groundwork for the eventual development of Churchill Park. The most significant portions have been reproduced below. Of necessity most of the original Report’s 129 pages have had to be omitted. But it is hoped that by omitting sections which are more rhetorical than fundamental to the principal argument, it will be possible to get a sense of the enthusiasm, noblesse oblige, and endearing naivete which characterized the operations of the Commission of Enquiry and then of the St. John’s Housing Corporation which was established in 1944 in keeping with one of the report’s principal recommendations.

The Commission’s proposal for a new suburb was characterized as "bold and imaginative ... sound, and unquestionably both necessary and progressive" (Daily News 1943a), and "the first concrete and apparently sound proposal ... for the total replanning of St. John’s. It is not a visionary report, but rather the preliminary blueprint for a design for better living for the people of St. John’s" (Daily News 1943b). The Governor wrote to Dunfield to say "you are doing a splendid job with your committee" (Walwyn 1943). Lord Ammon, leader of a British Parliamentary Mission to Newfoundland in the summer of 1943 wrote that "the Commission of Enquiry into housing conditions ... [has] issued an illuminating and outspoken report ... whieh will revolutionise standards of both housing and health" (Ammon 1944: 15).

There was some opposition from prominent members of the local community to the proposed scheme, as it necessarily involved expropriation of some of their land, but their complaints were disregarded by the Government which firmly supported the proposals (Sharpe 2005). Governor Walwyn reported to the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs that the proposals have "evoked strong support from several organized bodies representing labourers, shop assistants, clerks and the like. We have reason to believe they are also warmly approved by bulk of citizens who give consent mainly by silence.... There would be widespread dissatisfaction if scheme were abandoned" (Walwyn 1944).

The Municipal Council approved the Third Report in principle on 9 October 1943 and wrote to the Government asking that "immediate steps be taken with a view to carrying out the recommendations" in particular the one advocating the creation of an independent Housing Corporation to oversee the implementation of the Commission’s reports (City of St. John’s 1943). The Fifth Interim Report of the CEHTP, entitled "Detailed Proposals and Provisional Estimates for Suburban Extension and Housing" was released on 13 January 1944. It began by saying:

The Housing Commission feels that the present easy financial situation and the present wave of enthusiasm regarding housing should be availed of, and that we must at all costs get the essential framework of the new suburb in 1944. Once this is established the future of the City is secure. (CEHTP 1944: 1)

This final report was approved by the Government on 21 January, and by the City three days later. The St. John’s Housing Corporation was created in the morning of 20 July 1944 with Brian Dunfield as its first chairman. The Corporation had unusually broad authority. It was empowered to construct streets, sewers, drains, swimming pools, monuments, bridges, parks, and playgrounds; to plant trees, flowers, and grass; and to procure the installation of tramway and trolley bus lines, and power, light, gas, and telephone systems. In his history of Canadian housing policy Albert Rose comments that "the reader may be forgiven for wondering whether the new corporation is much more like an urban development corporation than a housing corporation, and why the new corporation should be able to enter the field of public transportation and public utilities" (1969: 116). He missed the point. The St. John’s Housing Corporation was an urban development corporation masquerading under another name.

Dunfield and his colleagues set to work during the afternoon of the day the Corporation was created to begin implementation of the bold plan to "increase the area of the city.... Then, having obtained more land, we want to see that it is laid out in modern style so that every future street will be broad and lined with grass, as in American and Canadian cities" (Dunfield 1943). This they succeeded in doing. However, the new suburb created by the SJHC did not solve the problem of the inner city slums. It took Confederation and the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to do that — but that is another story.

casharpe@mun.ca