Hi friend,

One of the things I enjoy most about researching local history is discovering the people behind the neighbourhoods we know today. A street, a house, or an entire community can look completely ordinary until you learn who was there before it was built and the decisions they made that helped shape what came next.

While researching Mimico on the Etobicoke Historical Society website, I came across the story of a man named Joseph Rush.

Rush arrived in Canada from England in the 1860s as a young farm labourer. Within a few years, he had acquired his own farm, established a successful market garden, accumulated additional land, and eventually recognized that the future value of some of that land was no longer in farming but in housing.

His story is, in many ways, a story about recognizing when the season is changing.

From Farm Labourer to Landowner

Joseph Rush was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1849 and emigrated to Canada in 1868.

He came to Mimico as a young man and initially worked as a farm labourer. Within only a few years (in the winter of 1870 to 1871), he purchased an 11½ acre farm on what was then called Range Road for $400 and established a market garden.

That decision made sense because Mimico and the surrounding Humber Bay area were still largely agricultural, but Toronto was growing, and growing cities need food. Rush positioned himself close enough to the city to serve that demand while operating in an area where land was still available at agricultural prices.

And Rush did not stop at farming. He began acquiring additional parcels of land. In 1882, he purchased another 18 acres for $1,900. He subsequently sold much of that property for approximately twice what he had originally paid for the entire parcel. He later acquired additional land, including a 37 acre parcel purchased through a distressed mortgage sale for $2,750.

By 1900, he had built a substantial brick home for his family at what is now the northwest corner of Park Lawn Road and Queensway. The house still stands.

Recognizing the Next Use

For approximately forty years, Rush farmed.

Then, in 1911, at the age of sixty, he retired from farming and began subdividing part of his land.

The Etobicoke Historical Society describes this as what appears to have been one of the earliest housing developments among the market gardens in what is now the Park Lawn area.

The same land that had once been valuable because it could produce food was becoming valuable because it could accommodate people.

Rush recognized the change. He did not simply continue doing what had worked for him for decades. He recognized that the community around him was changing, and with it, the potential use and value of the land he had accumulated.

The Lesson: Know When the Season Is Changing

There is a temptation in business to confuse loyalty with stubbornness.

We build something that works, and because it worked, we assume it should continue working indefinitely.

But markets change. Customer behaviour changes. Technology changes. Demographics change. Neighbourhoods change. Capital sources and how it makes sense to structure it change.

And sometimes the greatest opportunity is not found by working harder at the thing that made you successful in the first place. It is, instead, found by recognizing that the environment has changed and asking whether your assets, skills and resources should now be deployed differently.

Joseph Rush spent decades producing value from land as a market gardener. Then he recognized that the highest and best use of some of that land was changing. The principle applies far beyond real estate.

A business owner may spend twenty years building a company around one product and eventually discover that the real value is in its customer relationships, intellectual property, or distribution network.

An investor may discover that an asset has become more valuable because of what is happening around it rather than because of what it currently produces.

A leader may spend years building an organization around one operating model and eventually recognize that the institution needs to evolve if its mission is going to endure.

The question is not whether we should change. The better question is whether we can recognize the right time to change.
​

There Is Another Side to Rush's Story

Researching historical figures can make it tempting to turn their lives into neat entrepreneurial success stories. Real life is rarely that neat.

Joseph Rush's family marker at Christ Church, Mimico Burying Ground records that his wife Caroline died in 1913, four years before Joseph, and that two of their children, Percy and Edgar, died as young children, Percy in 1876 and Edgar in 1881.

Those names are easy to overlook when reading a story about land transactions and development.

But they remind us that behind every property, business and balance sheet there are people.

Wealth is a tool, not the measure of a life.

The goal shouldn't be to simply accumulate; it can be to steward what has been entrusted to us wisely.

Rush's story is therefore not simply about buying land cheaply and selling it for more.

It's about recognizing opportunity, building productive assets, adapting when circumstances changed, and ultimately understanding that the things we build are part of a much larger story than ourselves.

What is changing around you that will eventually change the value of what you are building?

Sometimes the difference between preserving the past and building the future is simply knowing when the season is changing.

Thank you for taking the time to read and reflect.

Until next time,​
​Alex Rășcanu​

P.S. If you'd like to read the past e-newsletters focused on life lessons, you can find them here.

P.P.S. See you at one of the upcoming monthly ExperienceTO historical tours, such as the Mimico one on Saturday, September 19th.