Sun Brick Company Ltd.

William Taylor with backing from Henry Pellatt started a brick mill here about 1908, The company was incorporated in 1911, but lasted only a year until new owners and officers took over, but the mill continued in operation until the 1930s.

After it stopped operation the Town of Leaside took over the quarry and used it as the town dump. In later years it was usually referred to as the Beechwood Drive dump. From 1953 to 1959 it was an open-faced dump for the Township of East York. In 1954 the site was acquired by East York for park purposes and in 1959 the Township agreed to sell it to MTRCA for parkland. It had an unsavoury reputation and became a political football in the 1953 municipal elections. From 1954-1959 the dump was operated as a sanitary landfill with heavy earth moving equipment. In Feb 1959 the township closed it. In 1967 Leaside was amalgamated with East York which became a Borough. About this time Metro took over the final disposal of waste, the borough still had responsibility to collect the waste from the households.

From 1962 to 1967 Metro operated the dump as a sanitary landfill known as Land Improvement Scheme #7 Sun Valley, which extended the dump area toward Pottery Rd. Some 400-700 trucks a day dumped at the site in 1964. To accommodate the traffic, signals were installed in a railroad grade crossing. Although the site operated 1962-1967, the really intense use was 1964-1965. The site stopped accepting trade waste in May 1965. In Late 1965 Metro and MTRCA agreed to change the use of the site to that of incinerator ash disposal. MTRCA member Charles Sauriol opposed the move, but was outvoted. In 1966 the site was accepting incinerator ash from the Commissioners St Incinerator. In 1983 consultants working for the MOE noted that leachate from the site was reaching the Don.

Information from Richard Anderson and from “Don Valley Legacy”