There’s no denying Downsview’s incredibly rich musical heritage.
In the 1950s, future stars from the worlds of rock and roll, rockabilly, and R&B like Roy Orbison and Ike and Tina Turner, played the Crang Plaza Auditorium at Jane and Wilson. Not far from there, legends such as Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington packed the 700 seat Hook and Ladder Club at the Beverley Hills Motor Hotel. And of course, over the past few decades, Downsview has been at the centre of Toronto’s world renowned hip hop and urban music scene. We've detailed it here.
But if you want to learn about where Downsview’s extraordinary musical history began, you need to set the time machine all the way back to the early 1880s, and the birth of the Downsview Brass Band.
