Was It Worth the Drive to Acton?

It was during a conversation with a friend when I mentioned going to a new Ontario town for the first time.

“Was it worth the drive to Acton?” my friend asked.

I remember staring blankly at them. So many things didn’t add up. What is an Acton? I thought before they realized I was, once again, oblivious to a local joke. “You know, it’s like saying ‘Was it worth it?’. Because of that leather store in Acton that everyone used to go to . . . you know, the commercials?”

No. I did not know the commercials. But apparently, they all end with the slogan “It’s worth the drive to Acton.”

Acton is a small town of approximately 9,000 people west of Toronto, famous for primarily one thing: The Olde Hide House. The building itself began as a shipping and receiving warehouse for Acton’s Beardmore and Co. in 1899, but the history of the business is even older.

In 1829, three brothers came up from New York State to purchase farmland: Rufus, Zenas and Ezra Adams. They acquired 500 acres, and over time they decided to convert their farmland into town lots, calling the settlement Adamsville. In 1844 with the arrival of a post office, it became Acton.

In 1856, a businessman named George L. Beardmore purchased a small tannery that had been operating in the town since 1844. The location of Acton was attractive for tanneries, as the many hemlock spruce trees of the area provided tannin for high quality leather. The buildings for the new Beardmore and Company had the latest modern machinery, and it quickly became the main industry in Acton. One of its warehouses, built in 1899 beside the railway, was known as the Hide House, since they stored hides in the space.

George Beardmore, although owning a successful business in Acton, built a 35-room house in Toronto in 1872 and called it Chudleigh. It can be seen across from the AGO on Beverly and Dundas West streets. It stayed in the family until 1934.

The Olde Hide House as we know it today opened in the old hide house (get it?) warehouse in 1980, and since then has claimed in its commercials that it is, indeed, worth the drive to Acton. But all of this I didn’t learn until much later. Two years ago, it was just a place with a leather store to me and some vague saying attached to it.

This saying became a bit of a joke with us, and we went on to have a brief conversation on the strange local sayings in pockets of Ontario and Toronto, as well as other places across Canada: different provinces, different backgrounds, and different experiences and histories lead us to sayings and words that have since become normal and inconsequential, except to an out-of-towner like myself.

Some examples of how this saying might work:

Me: I had a great new ice cream yesterday. It was from Ed’s Real Scoop.
You: Was it worth the drive to Acton?

Or

You: I went to a pretty lame concert last night.
Me: Too bad. Not worth the drive to Acton, huh?
You: Yup.

This saying could join the likes of “Hit the hay” and “Break a leg”. You do not actually have to go to Acton for this to make sense. Over time, this saying has become less about Acton and its leather history and its commercials, and more about what it means now. An evolution of language, right in front of me.

I was researching a Heritage Property Plaque for an 1889 home in Toronto—the year the home was built, the first resident or owner, the architect, and sometimes other small details about the house. This is one of my favourite tasks: the names become real people, the jobs real experiences, and the buildings real homes as I dig deeper.

While researching this plaque, I found the first residents of the home: William Wiles and his wife, Nancy Wiles. Great names, I thought. Then, I looked up his job: porter at a warehouse called Beardmore and Company (a reminder: I didn’t yet know the history I shared above). A few Google searches led me to realize that Beardmore was a leather manufacturing company with a warehouse in Toronto. If you walk down Front Street just west of the Gooderham Building, you can still see the sign of the Beardmore warehouse on one of the buildings, where our William Wiles worked.

I remember sharing the strange Acton story at this point with my boss, also not from Ontario, and we chuckled a bit. I grew interested in William Wiles and Beardmore. What happened to them? Did William Wiles ever drive to Acton?

I looked him up on Ancestry.ca, just to see if I could find out more about him. I don’t do this with every first resident, but there was something about this one man that made me wonder: could I connect Acton and this man, and this company, somehow? Surely the ties of Toronto to the surrounding area are always worth a historic perusal. There must have been more than one leather manufacturing company in Ontario. What were the chances that a funny saying I’d heard years ago might have related historic roots to my current job?

I found him. I also found out that he moved to the village of Acton in 1901. No way. Beardmore was beginning to sound more and more like the Olde Hide House. I looked up what Wiles did in Acton: he continued to work for Beardmore and Company until he passed away in 1919 at the age of 65. One search to see what happened to Beardmore and Co. and there we had it! The company had become the Olde Hide House—the same business from the very same town and industry that this intriguing Ontario saying came from.

I felt like a detective that had just solved a mystery—maybe one that only history or language nerds would care about, but still. Most people would probably think, yea, okay, so he worked at the biggest leather company in the British Empire, are you that surprised? But for me, it connected the past to the present in a way many people will not think twice about: through language. Sayings are so ingrained in our day-to-day that the magic of them is often lost.

Does everyone who knows Acton’s Olde Hide House also know its origins in 1844, or that there was a warehouse in Toronto, or that some employees from Toronto made a big drive to Acton to move there and work? That the business was so successful that the owner was able to build what looks like a small castle in downtown Toronto?

Maybe it’s just me. Hopefully it’s you, too.

Niche, localized jokes and sayings that become so rote people don’t think twice about them are my favourite way to learn about a new place. We have them in Northern Alberta, just as they have them in Newfoundland, Yukon, Saskatchewan, and here. I hope to keep learning about more local sayings and their historical origins.

Toronto’s history is not solely in its own streets and buildings. It is also tied to the industries, personalities, and towns that dot its border. I think it is important—and interesting—to see the intricate ways in which these stories intersect over time, sometimes even centuries.

And lastly, dear readers, a question: do you have a favorite place to visit in Toronto that, as some might say… is worth the drive to Acton?