BEARD, Joshua George

When the Toronto Board of Public School Trustees ran short of construction money for the city’s first common school, Joshua George Beard personally guaranteed a nine-thousand-pound promissory note so the building could be finished. That was the kind of civic weight he carried. He had taken his seat on Toronto’s first council the day the city was incorporated in March 1834, held St. Lawrence Ward for twenty consecutive years, served as mayor in 1854, and chaired the Board of Trustees through twelve of the years in which tax-supported public schooling was being built from scratch in Canada West.

Early life and business

Beard was born in England in 1797. He emigrated to Upper Canada as a young man and set up in the coal trade at York. His firm, J. G. Beard and Sons, operated from a yard at the foot of Jarvis Street on the Toronto lakefront. The holdings included a large wharf and a grain elevator, and by the 1840s the firm was the largest coal merchant in the town. Beard also served for a period as secretary of the town of York before the city’s incorporation.

Toronto’s first city council

When York became the City of Toronto under the Act of Incorporation of 6 March 1834, Beard was elected as the councillor for St. Lawrence Ward. He held the ward seat through the 1830s and 1840s, across twenty years of council service, under six different mayors.

Mayor of Toronto, 1854

In January 1854 Toronto’s council elected Beard as the tenth mayor of the city. He was a compromise choice: the council wanted a man whose personal financial standing and reputation for probity would blunt the succession of patronage and licensing controversies that had plagued earlier administrations. The appointment was unanimous.

Beard fell seriously ill within days of taking office. John Beverley Robinson — later the lieutenant governor of Ontario — acted as mayor through the early spring. Beard returned to the chair in April and served the rest of the year without further incident. He did not stand for re-election in January 1855.

Toronto Board of Public School Trustees

Beard had joined the Board of Trustees for the Toronto public schools at its formation in 1850. He was elected chairman of the Board in 1852 and held the office for twelve years, until 1864. He was an early and consistent advocate for free, tax-supported public education, at a time when that position was contested in Canada West.

When the Board’s first common school ran short of construction money, Beard personally guaranteed a nine-thousand-pound promissory note — a substantial sum in mid-19th-century Toronto — so the building could be completed. By the time he stepped down in 1864, the Board operated nine schools and served nearly six thousand pupils.

Death

Beard died in Toronto on 9 November 1866, at the age of sixty-nine.