When Douglas Harrison and Angela Bobowsky married in 1946 they moved into a one bedroom apartment at 747 Pape Avenue just north of The Danforth. The apartment building, owned by builder Harry Lucas, contained five apartments and a shop on two stories and had a small back yard. To the south the property abutted a “street car loop”, or terminus for TTC street cars.
The building had a coal-fired, hot-water boiler for heating and Doug would put pans of water on the radiator for humidification. The building had running water and 50 cycle electric power. A horse-drawn ice-wagon would deliver ice once a week for the “ice box.” Coal and milk were delivered the same way.
Other tenants in the apartment building included the owner Harry Lucas, Jack Gray, a milkman whose daughter was a friend of Doug’s sister Audrey, and and Fred Rieser who operated Fred’s Delicatessen located in the shop at the front of the building.
Doug and Angela’s son was born while they were living at 747 Pape. When their daughter, Susan, was born the one bedroom flat was too small to accomodate the enlarged family and they moved to a two bedroom apartment in the same building with an entrance at 743 Pape Avenue. The family lived there until March1956 when they moved to Ranee Avenue in North York.
The apartment building was demolished in the early 1960s to make way for the Pape Avenue subway station on the new Bloor-Danforth subway line. Today the address “743 Pape Avenue” is a Tim Horton’s located inside the subway station.