Flynn House

During the nineteenth century the Irish were the largest group of immigrants to arrive in Canada.  The Great Famine of 1845-1851 and in particular Black 47, the worst year of the potato famine in Ireland, saw 38560 Irish refugees arrive in Toronto. At the time the population of Toronto was only 20000.  Although many of the Irish refugees travelled on to America some stayed and became an instrumental source of labour during the economic boom in the 1850s and 60s in Toronto.  

Daniel Flynn, a master shoemaker, and his wife Sidney moved to Canada from Ireland during the Potato Famine. Flynn worked as an itinerant shoemaker and cobbler for almost a decade.  It was common for a shoemaker, or cobbler, who primarily repaired shoes, to visit a home and mend or make new shoes for a family.  

After a decade Flynn purchased two lots of land in what is now North York, Toronto, formerly known as Newtonbrook, from a Joseph Beckett.  The two lots of land were located on what is now Yonge Street and Drury Road in Toronto.  Flynn built a house with a boots and shoe shop attached in 1858.  The Flynn family, now consisting of Flynn, his wife Sidney and their two daughters designed the house in Ontario Classic Style.  The building consisted of four downstairs rooms, all with wooden floors, two bedrooms and a combined living room and kitchen.  The front room was initially used by Flynn as his workshop.  Eventually as his business grew Flynn constructed a seperate boots and shoe store on the land beside the house, the vacated workshop in the house becoming the kitchen.

The Flynn house was relocated to the Black Creek Pioneer Village in 1959. It is a unique building in the village as it directly reflects how a tradesman lived in the nineteenth century in Ontario.  Daniel Flynn's boot and shoe shop was also relocated to the village.  

The Flynn house is said to be haunted by Sidney, Daniel Flynn's wife. She has been seen in the garden of the house in a long yellow dress.  A security guard saw the apparition of Mrs Flynn at 4am one morning  and reached out to touch her believing her to be an intruding in the Pioneer Village and she vanished.  He was so shaken by the experience he quit his job.  Mrs Flynn, in her yellow dress, was also seen by a group of guests at the village. She was said to be walking down the street and then simply vanished. The reconstructed Flynn house has paintings of saints on the walls, as was typical of Irish families of the time.  The pictures of the saints are said to move and sometimes be swapped according to staff at the Pioneer Village. Staff at the village would sometimes cook on the stove in the Flynn house.  One day a kettle was heard boiling and whistling in the house but when staff arrived the kettle and stove were cold.  Cookies and cakes baked in the Flynn house by the staff would be moved or taken. Mrs Flynn sometimes is said to bolt the door when men try to enter the house.  It's not uncommon for staff to find the bed on the right side of the parlour looking as though someone has slept in it. 

Although I didn't get to see inside the Flynn House when I visited the Pioneer Village as it was having work done, I did see it from the outside.  I did see the Flynn Boots and Shoe Store.  It is a wonderful representation of life in the ninteenth century for a couple who had come from a distant shore and made Canada their home.