On this site stood the University Avenue Armouries, the home of famous Toronto Regiments of the Canadian Army and the centre of Militia activities in Toronto from 1891 until it was demolished in 1963. A spacious rising school and gun park, erected shortly after the main structure, made it the largest armoury building in Canada. Here many thousands of volunteers were enrolled in times of national crisis, and from the Armouries they marched out to fight their country's battles in South Africa, the First World War, the Second World War, and Korea.