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“They just happened to be in the street. They were just there,” said Ingelevics. “That’s what fascinated us.”

Other photos show smiling children fetching (possibly filching) coal for their parents in wagons, rolling bicycle tire rims down the sidewalk, shooting the breeze outside a movie theatre, playing jacks in the middle of the streetcar tracks or wrestling with stacks of newspapers to deliver. (Reform efforts included banning paper boys and bootblacks under the age of eight.) Today, when an unaccompanied nine-year-old on the subway might get double-takes, the sight of a happy filthy child just a few generations ago certainly provokes mixed emotions.

Of course, the lifestyle made perfect sense for the time, said Chambon. The Ward was teeming, as the exhibit neatly demonstrates with a three-shot panorama of Elizabeth Street that cross-references the addresses with the city’s tax roll, a replica of which is on display. In 1912, 44 Elizabeth St. was officially home to 11 people; unofficially, quite likely many more. It was 1,320 square feet.

So what else are you going to do with your kids? “You just let them out,” Chambon chuckled.

What makes sense for our times? The precipitous heights and hard surfaces of the playgrounds social reformers designed to get kids off the street, to save them from moral ruin, to create good solid citizens, would horrify safety-conscious modern parents. Yet so many parents today claim to want their children to be freer, and seem to struggle to effect even the most basic steps, like walking or cycling to school. Ingelevics staged a photo of kids just hanging out on Elizabeth Street today, which finishes the exhibit — kids on scooters, on their way from A to B or just minding their business.

“We wanted to bring (kids) into the same environment exactly, put them on the street today, and then ask people: how amazing would it be to see children wandering the streets of Toronto without their parents?” he said.

It’s a point that’s difficult to miss when looking back at what childhood was in inner city Toronto not so long ago. Some of the children in these photos would have lived to see the 21st century, and wonder how we possibly could have made life so complicated.

• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley