We are a housing co-op that has provided affordable housing in the Frankel-Lambert neighbourhood of Toronto since 1980.

Our five low-rise buildings are near Christie and Dupont Streets. We have 72 units in stacked townhouses and six-plexes. Our neighbourhood has a mix of privately owned homes and social housing, including TCHC and three other co-ops to the north.

Fred Dowling Co-operative Inc. was funded under the Section 61 Program. We were initially formed in 1977 by Canadian Food & Allied Workers Local 114 (now United Food & Commercial Workers) at Canada Packers, where Fred Dowling was a leader in organizing workers in the packinghouse industry. The project was organized and supervised by the Labour Council Development Foundation and was the ninth Labour Council Co-op in Toronto.

The original part of Fred Dowling Co-op is on a parcel of land leased from the City of Toronto for 99 years, starting on October 5, 1979. Phase 1 consists of two six-plexes and two rows of stacked townhouses, which mirror each other on Wychcrest Avenue and Melita Crescent. The buildings were completed for move-in on July 1 and August 1, 1980. There are 52 units in Phase 1.

Around 1980-82, the company developing the “Lambert Terrace” townhouse block on Melita Crescent went bankrupt. The co-op arranged to purchase this property. This section of the co-op was funded under the Section 95 Program. Phase 2 provides housing for 20 households.

For more about our history, check out “Fred Dowling Co-op – How It Began,” a storytelling project undertaken by one of our members to collect and record memories from our early residents about our co-op and its community, that culminated in a pamphlet produced in Fall 2022.

We acknowledge this sacred land on which Fred Dowling Co-operative is located. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River.

The territory is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on this territory. We are also mindful of broken covenants and the need to strive to make right with all our relations.