Strawberry Box

by

Brigid Cami

THERE IS A HOUSING SHORTAGE. We are encouraged to consume Canadian produce. And the federal government is contemplating modular housing. The year is 1941.

Since Canada entered the war two years prior, a lot of changes have taken place at home. Factories producing war equipment have popped up in city suburbs across the country. Thousands of people have moved into these suburbs, leaving behind the farms and fields of rural life, to work in the new war industry. Often in out-of-the-way areas, these factories were not only hard to get to, but offered little in terms of nearby accommodation. This lack of housing for the workers and their families put wartime manufacturing at risk.

It was at this time that the federal government took an unusual step. In 1941, the Wartime Housing Limited agency was created – a public entity had entered the private world of real estate. This decision initiated a series of events that would eventually lead to the emergence of one of Canada’s most ubiquitous houses – the strawberry box – and along with it, the birth of the Canadian suburb.

Figure 1. The three original house plans developed by Wartime Housing Limited.

Housing the Workers (Temporarily)

In Toronto, the war industry workers flocked to factories such as the GECO munitions plant in Scarborough, and the Small Arms Limited weapons manufacturer in Etobicoke, both opened in 1940. They did not have it easy. A 1943 documentary produced by the National Film Board (NFB) paints a wretched picture of their living conditions. If they weren’t living in the “unhealthy slums” (more on those later), they were living in their cars. “They have a place to work,” the narrator says – “what they need is a place to live.”

Figure 2. With the men overseas, many factories were staffed primarily by women. Small Arms Limited weapon manufacturer, Etobicoke (1944).[i]
Figure 3. Stills from the National Film Board documentary, Wartime Housing.[ii] Left: “Unhealthy slums.” Right: War industry workers waking up in their vehicles.

The answer provided by the federal government was Wartime Housing Limited or WHL. WHL joined the housing market in essentially the same way as any developer. Its purpose was “to decide as to where houses are required and in what numbers, acquire property, provide where necessary water supply, sewage disposal, roads, sidewalks, schools, amusements and other social amenities, and all this to be accomplished as economically as possible and with careful consideration of salvage value.”[iii]

The reusability of the building materials was key because the houses would be temporary. The WHL planned to tear them down after the war, since they “would no doubt become vacant as soon as hostilities would cease.”[iv]

The new agency kicked off the project by forming a committee of architects to collect information on available plans and available materials (that is, materials that were not essential to war needs). The result was a set of three simple and inexpensive single-family home plans (Figure 1).[v]

The plans ranged in foundation size from 24 x 24 feet to 24.5 x 28 feet. But being cute and square wasn’t their selling feature – the homes could be constructed in as little as one day. By utilizing simple designs and prefabricated components in sizes convenient for transportation, WHL was able to minimize the amount of on-site work. A 1941 Globe and Mail article describes the spectacle:

“A recent demonstration at Ottawa, witnessed by Government officials, fulfilled all expectations and may be the answer to the wartime housing problem. The first sections of a three-room bungalow were delivered to the demonstration site at 8 o’clock in the morning, and builders immediately went to work. By 6 o’clock that evening the building was completed and ready for occupation.”[vi]

In a matter of months, subdivisions began rising up across the country. The little cottage-like houses, sometimes referred to as Cape-Cod-style, were constructed in quaint formations, often along curved streets, that seemed to be the picture of wholesomeness. In the NFB documentary, a husband is shown greeting his wife and baby on the walkway to the house, alongside a small picket fence.

Figure 4. WHL creates seemingly idyllic 1940s subdivision. Left: A still from the NFB documentary, Wartime Housing.[vii] Right: A sketch of a typical subdivision.[viii]

Victor Goggin, general manager of Wartime Housing, described the houses as follows in a 1941 Globe and Mail article:

“They are good houses. Collections of them cannot ever become slums as long as they are maintained. They are well designed. . . . Each development is planned to avoid those things which everybody conceives to be inevitable in mass housing. We have endeavoured to avoid sameness and straight lines by using four different styles of exterior finish, by making three different types of houses, and by employing a variety of colours. We avoid, in other words, the pillbox in a field effect. . . . The development is made to fit into the natural contours.”[ix]

Seems like a lot of work for temporary structures – so what about them is temporary exactly? As Goggin put it:

“This wartime housing is called temporary housing. It may be temporary, but if the Government desires to keep the houses they will last as long as any houses of wood properly built and properly maintained. They are demountable, and a large percentage of the materials can be used elsewhere. . . . These houses differ from ordinary city construction because there is not a basement under each. But a basement can be put under, and in that case they come up to city specifications.”[x]

The only “temporary” thing about these houses was the lack of basement. In all other respects, they formed subdivisions like any other.

We can picture the subdivisions now, made up of three different types of houses with four different types of finishes, lines of them following the natural curves of the landscape. With their big sloping roofs, they are reminiscent of houses you may have drawn as a child.

Another distinct feature was the small footprint of each house relative to the large lot size – and that ample lot was meant to be put to good use. With each wartime house or “victory house,” as they were also called, was expected a “victory garden” – in other words a vegetable garden. The war effort demanded vast amounts of supplies from back home – be it ammunition or food. As with World War I, in World War II a campaign was underway to encourage people to grow their own produce. Not only did this reduce the pressure on the food supply needed overseas, but it also boosted morale, turning gardening into a patriotic task.[xi]

The temporary houses built by WHL were owned by the federal government and rented out to the workers. By using prefabricated materials and minimizing on-site work, WHL was able to build the houses very cheaply, and could in turn rent them out cheaply to the workers and their families. Across the country, rental costs ranged from $22 to $30 per month.[xii] Today, that’s about $410 to $560.

WHL continued to construct temporary houses until 1945, building a total of 16,869 across Canada over four years.[xiii]

Housing Shortage and Slums

Shortly after the formation of WHL, it became evident that the housing shortage was not an epidemic specific to wartime industry workers in out-of-the-way areas.

Slums had been around for a long time in Canada. In the 50s and 60s the country would undergo a nationwide slum clearance initiative, but during the war years, they were ubiquitous. A typical slum is made up of deteriorating buildings where low-income workers are forced to live in close quarters. One of the primary considerations of WHL was to create structures and neighbourhoods that could not revert into slums.

In Toronto, two especially notorious slums were “The Ward,” centred around where Nathan Philips Square is today, and Moss Park. A 1943 Globe and Mail article details the conditions in Moss Park:

“As the housing shortage becomes more acute in this city, a greater number of low-income workers are driven to live in slums or semi-slum conditions. . . . Here are some comparative figures, based on the year 1941: In Yorkville the death rate per 100,000 from tuberculosis was 22. In Moss Park it was 42.1. The death rate per 1,000 living births was 32.6 in Yorkville. Moss Park’s death rate was 61.3. Six times as many mothers died in childbirth in Moss Park as in Yorkville. . . . The Advisory Committee on Housing found from evidence last summer that in certain areas men, women and children are existing in basements designed for vegetables or for other storage.”[xiv]

(Incidentally, despite efforts to rehabilitate the neighbourhood in the 60s, a recent analysis by The Local found that even today, Moss Park has the lowest life expectancy in Toronto at seventy-five years. That’s six years below the city average of eighty-one, and almost twelve years lower than that of the neighbourhood with the highest life expectancy, Yonge- Doris.[xv])

Slums were a serious problem, exacerbated by a housing crisis that worsened as more and more people moved from rural areas into cities. But as the end of the war approached another migration was on the horizon – an influx of veterans.

“Injected into Toronto’s housing shortage, which authorities say is serious, the increasing numbers of servicemen returning to their families are creating a new situation which is making the problem more acute than ever. . . . Nearly 100,000 war workers, it was estimated, had moved into Toronto, but . . . the great number of men who had gone on service had left ‘family groups’ who had been forced by housing shortage into doubling up with others. . . . The situation is being made more complex by having the father arrive home, often badly injured or crippled.” – Globe and Mail, Sept 1944[xvi]

By 1944, the city put out a public notice – there was simply no housing left (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Public notice put out by the city of Toronto in 1944 (City of Toronto Archives).

Strawberry Box Houses

In the midst of this great housing crisis, WHL had been putting up inexpensive – albeit temporary – homes in as little as a day. It didn’t take long for people to ask: why don’t they just put up permanent ones?

“The fact is that the housing situation in Canada was critical prior to the war and it is expected that it will become worse after the war. . . . Now is the time to lay plans for the expansion of government housing services.” – Toronto Daily Star, Oct 1941[xvii]

“The decision of the government to permit Wartime Housing Ltd. to erect a type of building of a more permanent nature than hitherto will meet with very general approval.” – Toronto Daily Star, July 1942[xviii]

In 1942, the minister responsible for WHL, C.D. Howe, announced the shift to construction of permanent housing. The announcement received a mixed reception. Generally speaking, the people were all for the government stepping in to solve the ever-worsening housing crisis. The Department of Finance and the municipalities, however, were outraged by the move. They were troubled by the prospect of a public entity undercutting the private housing market by offering cheaper rent. As historian Jill Wade put it, “behind the concerns . . . lay a very real fear of socialism.”[xix]

But WHL pressed on, negotiating agreements with each municipality. Before long, permanent subdivisions started to pop up across the country. They were almost identical to the temporary ones – except these ones included basements. The prevalent design was similar to temporary model H12, shown in Figure 1 – a one-and-a-half storey house, typically containing three bedrooms.

As the war came to an end and soldiers returned home, what had been called “wartime houses” or “victory houses” began to also be known as “veterans’ houses.”

Wartime Housing Limited closed shop in January 1947, becoming a branch of the recently formed Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) which consolidated and centralized various federal housing programs. In its brief six-year existence, it is estimated that WHL constructed 25,771 victory houses (16,869 temporary and 8,902 permanent) across the country. The type of efficient, practically over-night construction they employed is something we are not used to seeing in North America today. And history looks favourably on the agency – not only did it use the money it was allotted efficiently, but it actually made a profit. Not bad for a government agency. CMHC continued the construction of victory houses until 1949 – between WHL and CMHC, about 46,000 houses were built across the country over eight years.[xx]

It was around this time that the victory houses began to be referred to as “strawberry box houses,” due to their square shape, which was similar to the containers strawberries were sold in. Eric Arthur, a professor of architecture at University of Toronto, is credited with having coined the term.[xxi]

In 1947, CMHC began to sell both the temporary and permanent houses to their tenants. By 1952, they had sold off almost 30,000 of the original 46,000. And those temporary houses? Thousands of them exist to this day, generally having been improved via the addition of basements.[xxii]

Figure 6. 1949 image depicting squat and square strawberry boxes on a New Brunswick farm.[xxiii]

However, not all strawberry box houses are found in idyllic 40s subdivisions on the edges of town. Many stand alone in neighbourhoods made up of a heterogeneous mix of house styles. The reason for this is 67 Homes for Canadians, a book of house plans published by the CMHC in 1947. Among the sixty-seven plans were many iterations of the one-and-a-half storey strawberry box house. One of the most influential house plan books after the war, 67 Homes is said to have shaped house designs over the next two decades.[xxiv] You can browse through a few pages of this book in the Time Capsule section at the back of this issue.

Legacy

The strawberry box’s legacy is far bigger than its modest footprint.

For starters, WHL revolutionized house construction. As put in a recent Bloomberg article: “The humble design forever changed the way homes were built in Canada, creating a benchmark for wood frame construction and establishing the first common standards for materials.”[xxv]

But more notably, the strawberry boxes defined suburbs as we know them today. As architect Catherine Nasmith put it: “It’s the first mass-produced idea of the . . . little house, on a little lot, with a little garden. It’s a pretty big idea.”[xxvi]

What WHL created has seeped into our subconscious and, whether or not it aligns with our own experiences, is inextricably linked with ideas of childhood, family, a home. When you hear the word “suburb,” you might picture a line of houses with green lawns, a running sprinkler, a stifling Sunday afternoon, the sounds of a distant lawnmower. Love it or hate it, in Canada, all of that was born with the strawberry box.

After the dust from the war had settled, the victory houses, like all contemporary constructions, were not exactly celebrated. A 1950 Globe and Mail article titled “Architects Plan Drive to Put an End to Houses like Strawberry Boxes,” describes them as “ugly, regimented units, devoid of sound design.”[xxvii]

Today however, the strawberry box seems to be having its day in the sun. A Google search yields dozens of Reddit posts, of all things, praising its practicality and compact design. And for years now, the federal government has been contemplating dusting off the Wartime Housing Limited model and applying it to today’s housing crisis.

Figure 7. Strawberry boxes in Toronto, May 2025. Left: Queensway and Royal York. Right: Jane and Lawrence.

Wherever you may live in the country, chances are you’ve come across a strawberry box. In Toronto, there are three notable subdivisions constructed by WHL: 1) northwest of Queensway and Royal York in Etobicoke, 2) southeast of Jane and Lawrence in North York, and 3) northwest of Victoria Park and St. Clair in East York.[xxviii] Walking through them today, you’ll notice that many strawberry boxes have been replaced by bigger houses. But the majority seem to have survived, and there are still long curved stretches of road with endless rows of the little guys that haven’t changed all that much over the past eighty years. Today, they must look awfully similar to the way they did to the wartime workers, the veterans, and the generations of families they’ve housed since.

The historical significance of the humble strawberry box was honoured with a dedicated stamp in 1998.

Figure 8. 1998 Canada Post stamp depicting veteran’s housing.[xxix]

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