The Military Legacy at Guild Park

With Remembrance Day approaching, November is an ideal opportunity to recognize Guild Park's military connection.

This posting was prepared in 2025 to delve into this important, yet often overlooked, aspect of this historic site along the Scarborough Bluffs.

The story goes back more than a century, predating the 1932 launch of the Guild of All Arts, and the later opening of the original Guild Inn.

The Guild Inn: Connecting Art, Service and Remembrance

Today's Guild Park & Gardens, once home to the historic Guild Inn, is celebrated for its sculpture gardens and artistic heritage. Yet the site also carries a proud military past — from its origins under a soldier-builder, through its role in the Second World War, to the living memorials that grow there today.

Colonel Bickford and the Birth of the Estate

An early photo of the Bickford Estate, which later operated as the Guild Inn. The white stucco building was magnificently restored and reopened in 2017 as a private events facility.

The white stucco mansion still standing at Guild Park was built in 1914 for the family of Colonel Harold Child Bickford, a decorated calvary officer who served in the Boer War and the First World War. His name can be seen today over the building's front entrance.

Harold Child Bickford, an officer in the calvary regiment of the Canadian Army. He used a cane due to an injury after falling from a horse. Image from early 1900s.

Bickford's record of service and rank earned him recognition in Toronto society, and his grand home overlooking the Scarborough Bluffs reflected a life tied to leadership and duty.

His love of horses helped shape the front grounds that park visitors enjoy today. Bickford, who rose to be a Brigadier-General, cleared the front property of his estate to create a polo field. That area now displays art and architectural artifacts, remnants saved from notable - and now demolished - Toronto buildings.

Wartime Service: From Artists’ Colony, to Naval Base, to Military Hospital

When Rosa and Spencer Clark acquired Bickford's former estate in 1932, they transformed it into the Guild of All Arts, a community for artisans, which evolved into the Guild Inn, a destination for tourists. But the Second World War brought an entirely new role to the property.

WRENs at the Guild

In 1943, the Canadian government requisitioned the site for the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS, or “WRENs”), who trained in radio-telegraphy on the property. The Guild was formally commissioned as a naval base, serving as HMCS Bytown II, a satellite operation of the Royal Canadian Navy’s headquarters.

The lakeside naval centre was actually affiliated with the Allies top secret project - the code-breaking activities known as Enigma. At the Guild, Canadian WRENs learned basics in wireless communications. They went on to become skilled at intercepting German radio messages from Nazi U-boats patrolling waters along the Atlantic coast and into the St. Lawrence River. Enigma's success at deciphering - thanks in part to the WRENs who trained at the Guild - turned the tide of WWII in favour of the Allies.

The "Jenny Wren" sculpture (1972) by artist Frances Gage, a former WREN who trained at the Guild during WWII. Gage later worked on the site during the Guild of All Arts era.

The WREN experience at the Guild was groundbreaking. It was here that women, whose initial role in uniform was limited and undefined, succeeded at skills crucial to winning the war. The service of each female reservist, collectively nicknamed "Jenny Wren," left a lasting imprint on Canada. It was at the Guild where women from across the country took on major new responsibilities in wartime. This would lead to a shift in traditional roles that continues in 21st century society.

A Place for Vets

In 1944, as the war in Europe was winding down, the military base on the Guild's ground was repurposed into Scarborough Hall, a veterans’ hospital specializing in rehabilitation and convalescence for servicemen returning from overseas.

At the time, no military hospital existed in Toronto. Scarborough Hall at the Guild operated until 1947, just before the opening of the Sunnybrook Military Hospital (now Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre).

The Clarks then converted their property back to hosting tourists and artists. The Guild Inn and Guild of All Arts continued operating under the Clarks for the next 30 years. In 1978, the couple sold their property to what is now the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority.

This sequence of uses reflected the Guild’s adaptability — from nurturing artists during the Great Depression, to training women naval reservists in WWII, to helping heal Canada's veterans, to being a tourist and cultural destination.

The Vimy Oaks: A Living Memorial

In 2018, Guild Park became home to a pair of Vimy Oaks, trees grown to commemorate Canada's pivotal First World War battle at Vimy Ridge. That campaign in France marked the first time Canadian troops fought under Canadian command. The opportunity came after both French and British troops failed to overcome the German position.

Winning the strategic high ground came at a terrible cost to Canada - nearly 11,000 of its soldiers were killed or wounded in the four-day battle. As the clouds of war lifted, a Canadian signalman named Leslie Miller collected a batch of acorns from the Vimy's bloody and barren battlefield. Those acorns were eventually planted on the Miller farm in north Scarborough and grew into a grove of European oaks.

More than a century after Vimy Ridge, Canadians continue to remember.

• France permanently ceded the Vimy battlefield to Canada, where the Canadian National Vimy Memorial is today operated by Veterans Affairs Canada.

• 

  That monumental memorial, created by Canadian artist Walter Allward, is depicted on our $20-dollar bill.

• Vimy also lives on in the European oaks propagated from the acorns collected by Lieutenant Miller from the Vimy battlefield.

In 2018, two cuttings from those original Vimy Oaks were planted in the grounds of Guild Park. These slow-growing saplings are a lasting way to connect the 88-acre park with Canada’s military legacy. A small plaque on-site identifies the oaks and their significance.

Where Military Memories Meet Art and Nature

Guild Park is part of Canada’s military history that includes

• Harold Bickford’s career in a cavalry regiment

• the WRENs’ training at HMCS Bytown II,

• the temporary hospital that cared for veterans, and

• the Vimy Oaks growing on-site.

Visitors who walk the park's peaceful grounds are easily inspired by the site's artistic and natural features. Remembrance Day reminds us that Guild Park is also a place that commemorates the services and sacrifices made in the name of Canada.

For those who'd like to see Guild Park's military legacy before Remembrance Day, don't miss the special guided tour Sun. Nov. 9.

The 90-minute walking tour includes welcoming back the 1922 "War Horse" bronze sculpture by artist Emanuel Hahn. Tour starts at 1:30 by the park's flagpole. Free for Friends of Guild Park members; $15 for others. Event details at https://www.facebook.com/events/1170320631677841

Special thanks to Friends of Guild Park directors Audrea Porter, Isaiah Thomas and Carl Doose for collaborating on this post.