In the summer of 1903, Toronto had a party—a four-day blowout over the Dominion Day holiday—July 1 to 4. The organizers invited well over 4,000 former Torontonians to “come home” from all across Canada, the United States, and wherever else the organizers could find them.
A souvenir edition of the Globe newspaper, dated 4 July 1903.
Back in 2017, I came across the handwritten invitation list, in the Baldwin Collection at Toronto Reference Library. Since 2014, the Baldwin Collection has been housed in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the fifth floor.
The two volumes of the Toronto Home Comers’ Festival fonds in the Special Collections Centre at the Toronto Reference Library, June 2025
The invitation list is labelled as the Toronto Home Comers’ Festival, but with almost no other information. Two volumes of names, with addresses from Skagway, Alaska to Sydney, Australia. I was looking for something entirely different, of course. So I took a couple of pictures of the manuscripts—with the intention of investigating further—someday.
That someday arrived a few months ago, when I suggested a presentation on the Toronto Home Comers’ Festival for the Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society. (Nothing inspires research like an audience who might ask questions!)
These two volumes, along with other records from the Toronto Reference Library, newspapers, records of the Toronto Board of Trade and the numerous businesses and organizations roped into showing the visitors a good time—helped me reconstruct this nearly forgotten extravaganza.
The records also revealed the network of expats who kept connected with Toronto from afar in “old boys” and similar clubs. Whether or not your relatives “came home” in 1903, these records provide insight into migration patterns, communication methods, and the values that enticed the Home Comers to make their journeys. A snapshot of turn-of-the-century Toronto.
This post will explain a bit about the methodology behind my research. Oh, that does sound boring, but I hope it will be useful for similar projects. I have lots of stories about the Festival and the characters that attended—that I’ll save for the next post.
The Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the top floor of the Toronto Reference Library. Clearly set apart from the rest of the library, this reading room provides access to manuscripts and several other important collections.
The Research
A library is an unusual place to find manuscripts and other archival material. What is a manuscript? Manuscripts are original one-of-a-kind documents, like letters, legal papers, account books and registers—that would usually be found in an archives. Often handwritten or typed—but not one of multiple published copies like a book. The Toronto Reference Library’s manuscript collections date back to the 1880s. Thank goodness for the far sighted librarians who saw their value.
First step was some analysis of the two volumes.
- Volume 1 is a semi-alphabetical list of names. That means that all the surnames beginning with A (for example) are on the same pages, but in no particular order beyond that first initial.
- These are all people living elsewhere—potential Home Comers to Toronto.
- Columns: Name / street address / city / state or province / country / or employer
- There’s no indication about how the names were gathered but there are many groupings of people from the same city, perhaps gleaned from expats’ organizations.
- The volume contains about 180 pages or 4,000 names.
First page of Volume 1 showing potential Home Comers whose names start with A. The fourth column, “accepted” seems to have been rarely used.
- Volume 2 is a register or guest book.
- Written by many different hands.
- These are actual Home Comers (or their representatives) but definitely not all of them.
- Columns: Name / residence / address while in Toronto / place of birth. (Don’t forget that many will have immigrated to Toronto before moving on.)
- Much shorter—only about 34 pages or 820 names.
Two pages of Volume 2, showing Home Comers who signed in. Note that on these particular pages, no one seems to be staying in a major hotel. The addresses may be those of family members or Torontonians who answered the call for billets.
Before digging too deeply into the Home Comers’ volumes (or any other major project) it is wise to check what other material is around to complement what you’ve already found—both what was produced in 1903 and what people said about the Festival in more recent years.
First, at the Toronto Reference Library—there are several places to look:
- Online finding aid to manuscripts: a simple spreadsheet of manuscript titles. Some titles link to an inventory or description.
- Ephemera collection, organized on cards by year and subject, many items are available in the digitalarchiveontario.ca
- Library catalogue
- Card index to manuscripts (only in the Special Collections Centre)
These drawers of index cards are the main path into the ever-surprising manuscript collection. Note the labels indicate that there are two sets—one for subjects (on the left)—which indexes the principal names, places, and other references. Finding a “subject” reference leads you to the name of the main entry. The drawer on the right contains those main entries, with a bit more information about the records and their location. I requested the drawers that contained T for Toronto. Flanking those are the H drawers in case there were records under “Home.”
By checking these several “routes” into material at the Toronto Reference Library, I found some other advertising and souvenir items—all produced before or at the time of the Festival.
Other prominent possibilities: I also surveyed the holdings of the City of Toronto Archives, Library and Archives Canada, the Archives of Ontario, Canadiana/Heritage, and The Internet Archive. I found a few items, all concurrent with the 1903 Festival, with the exception of a short essay written by collector Larry Becker in 1990—who doesn’t seem to have known about the register volumes at the Toronto Reference Library. (The massive collection of Mr. Becker is now fonds 70 at the City of Toronto Archives.)
This preliminary step of searching for previous research and supporting material gave me confidence that I wasn’t duplicating the efforts of others. And maybe a little trepidation that it seemed to be up to me to tell the story.
My June 23 presentation on the Toronto Home Comers’ Festival was recorded and is available on the website of the Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society until about September 23, 2025. Click here to access it.