Today I acted as per-diem duty counsel at Old City Hall – one of my favourite professional activities. The DC role gives me the opportunity to work with many clients throughout the day doing things like preparing and conducting bail hearings, set-dates and pleas. I’ll blog about the DC role another time.
According to this City of Toronto page, the building opened in 1899 and cost more than $2.5 million to build (it served as Toronto’s City Hall until 1965 until the new buildings opened at which point it became “Old City Hall”). The pricetag seems a bit odd for the time seeing how Maple Leaf Gardens, 32 years junior to OCH, cost $1.5 million to build. Ironically, OCH is still operational as a provincial court facility while MLG may one day be home to a Loblaws.
The building hosts unique characters each and every day but is also a unique character onto itself. There was a two-season, remarkably accurate, CBC television series about the place. The stories of what has occurred there over the years, both as a courthouse since 1965 and Toronto’s City Hall prior to that, are likely vast – some true and some likely myth.
Unlike other courthouses, OCH does not have a separate hallway for the judiciary, thus meaning Judges need to walk through the hallways, with lawyers and clients alike, to get to their courtrooms. The courtrooms are also unique in their own right. One day a trial could be in a former counsel chamber while the next a tiny room with an aging air conditioner making noise by the window.
OCH today serves adults charged with provincial offences in the pre-amalgamation City of Toronto (a duty shared with College Park) with the exception of in-custody females (who go to College Park) and youth (who go to 311 Jarvis) as well as all Toronto federal matters. The courthouse is an Ontario Court of Justice courthouse which is the level of court all cases will start in (some cases which begin at OCH eventually make their way over to the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Ave.).
One common phrase is “Only at Old City Hall”. Feel free to share such moments in the comment section.
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