Sam (Samuel) McBride (July 13, 1866 – November 14, 1936) was a two-time

Mayor of Toronto The mayor of Toronto is the head of Toronto City Council and chief executive officer of the municipal government. The mayor is elected alongside city council every four years on the fourth Monday of October; there are no term limits. While in ...

serving his first term from 1928 to 1929 and his second term in 1936 which ended prematurely due to his death. He was also a member of the

Orange Order in Canada The Grand Orange Lodge of British America, more commonly known as the Grand Orange Lodge of Canada or simply Orange Order in Canada, is the Canadian branch of the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization that began in County Armagh in Ire ...

Politics

He was born in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

to an Irish

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

family (his grandfather came from

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population ...

) and was a committed Orangeman. He made his fortune in the

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...

industry. He became an

alderman An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members ...

in 1905 and served on

Toronto City Council Toronto City Council is the governing body of the municipal government of Toronto, Ontario. Meeting at Toronto City Hall, it comprises 25 city councillors and the mayor of Toronto. The current term began on November 15, 2022. Structure The c ...

for 30 years. He lived at 351 Palmerston Boulevard and on the

Toronto Island The Toronto Islands are a chain of 15 small islands in Lake Ontario, south of mainland Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Comprising the only group of islands in the western part of Lake Ontario, the Toronto Islands are located just offshore from the ...

. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor three times before being elected in the 1928 election, defeating incumbent Thomas Foster. He was then defeated by Bert Wemp in the 1930 election. He returned to the mayor's office in the 1936 election defeating incumbent James Simpson. Among his accomplishments are helping to create the

Toronto Transit Commission The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the public transport agency that operates bus, subway, streetcar, and paratransit services in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, some of which run into the Peel Region and York Region. It is the oldest and larges ...

, building the Coliseum at the

Canadian National Exhibition The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual event that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Canadian Labour Day ...

and overseeing early development of the city's waterfront. He was considered a candidate of the workers and was supported by the left-leaning ''

Toronto Daily Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and par ...

'' and opposed by the more conservative ''

Toronto Telegram ''The Toronto Evening Telegram'' was a conservative, broadsheet afternoon newspaper published in Toronto from 1876 to 1971. It had a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party at the federal and the provincial levels. The paper competed w ...

'' during his time in politics. On city council he was one of the main proponents of an eight-hour work day and giving women the vote. He served for many years on the city's

police The police are a Law enforcement organization, constituted body of Law enforcement officer, persons empowered by a State (polity), state, with the aim to law enforcement, enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citize ...

commission. Professor Michiel Horn of

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and sta ...

attributes the Commission's decision to ban all public meetings held in languages other than English to McBride and his concern about Jewish

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

and

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

organizers holding meetings in

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

in Toronto's Garment District. "Like all mayors at that time", says Horn, "McBride was strongly pro-British and

anti-communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

Harness racing

McBride was also a

harness racing Harness racing is a form of horse racing in which the horses race at a specific gait (a trot or a pace). They usually pull a two-wheeled cart called a sulky, or spider, or chariot occupied by a driver. In Europe, and less frequently in Austral ...

enthusiast and was a founding member and charter director of the Canadian Standardbred Horse Society in 1909 and served as the society's president in 1919 and 1920. He was also a founding director of the Canadian National Trotting and Pacing Harness Horse Association. In 1907, McBride drove his King Bryson to a world record of 2:19½ for trotters over a half-mile track on ice at

Plattsburgh, New York Plattsburgh ( moh, Tsi ietsénhtha) is a city in, and the seat of, Clinton County, New York, United States, situated on the north-western shore of Lake Champlain. The population was 19,841 at the 2020 census. The population of the surroundin ...

Toronto Island

McBride had a cottage on the

and represented the Island as its Alderman. Nathan Phillips recalled that as an alderman, McBride had a terrible temper. He once got into a fist fight with a fellow alderman and once threw a can of beans at alderman Joe Beamish, missing Beamish, but leaving a dent in the panelling of the council chamber. In 1935, he was instrumental in stopping the building of a tunnel to the Toronto Island that was intended to facilitate an Island Airport. After his death, the City built the Island Airport, without a tunnel, served by ferries until a pedestrian tunnel was opened in 2015. In recognition of his service to the Toronto Island community, one of the

ferries A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water tax ...

operating from downtown Toronto to the Toronto Island was named after him in 1939, and is still in service as of 2013.

Death

McBride died on 14 Nov 1936, the first Toronto mayor to die in office. McBride's body was placed at the base of the staircase at

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

for visitations. He is buried in

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto Mount Pleasant Cemetery is a cemetery located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and is part of the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries. It was opened in November 1876 and is located north of Moore Park, a neighbourhood of Toronto. The cemetery has k ...

. He was 70 years old.

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:McBride, Sam 1866 births 1936 deaths Businesspeople from Toronto Canadian Protestants Mayors of Toronto Canadian people of Ulster-Scottish descent