SHAW, John

John Shaw was Mayor of Toronto from August 1897 until January 1900, elected to the office by city council and then by the voters in the two elections that followed. He presided over the completion of Edward James Lennox’s new City Hall at Queen and Bay — the Romanesque Revival building that now serves as Old City Hall — and opened it formally in September 1899.

Early life and law

Born in Toronto in 1837, Shaw took his early education at Upper Canada College and his university at Victoria College. He read law in the Toronto office of Patterson and Harris and took his call to the Upper Canada bar in 1870. His practice and his residence were both in Yorkville, the village along Bloor Street West that was then independent of the City of Toronto.

Orange Order

Shaw’s lodge affiliation was with McKinley L.O.L. No. 275 — the Toronto lodge that also carried the names of Francis Henry Medcalf (earlier) and Charles Philip Fenwick (later).

Yorkville annexation and city council

Yorkville was annexed by Toronto in 1883. In the first post-annexation municipal election that December, Shaw won the aldermanic seat for St. Paul’s Ward, the new ward that covered the former village. He held it through the ward-boundary redrawing of 1891, after which he continued on council as alderman for Ward 3 until 1895.

Mayor of Toronto

Shaw first stood for mayor in 1896. Robert J. Fleming defeated him. When Fleming resigned in August 1897 to take up the city’s assessment commissioner post, council elected Shaw to finish the term. The voters returned him directly in the January 1898 and January 1899 elections, both times against Ernest Albert Macdonald.

The defining event of Shaw’s tenure was the formal opening of the new City Hall on 18 September 1899. Lennox — himself a Toronto Orangeman — had been working on the Romanesque Revival building since 1889. Shaw and his wife were lifted in a workman’s cradle to the top of the clock tower during the opening ceremonies. Under Shaw’s administration, the city also created the Toronto and Hudson’s Bay Railway Commission to examine a northern rail extension that was not, in the end, built.

Return to council, then the Legislature

Shaw stepped out of politics after his third mayoral term ended at the start of 1900. He returned to Toronto City Hall four years later when he was elected to the Board of Control for 1904; he was returned again in 1905. In the 1908 Ontario general election he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for Toronto North as a Conservative. He did not seek re-election in 1911.

Death

Shaw died in Toronto on 7 November 1917.