At Euclid Ave., looking east (Euclid Parkette)	At Palmerston Ave., looking west.

Oscar Ryan (1904-1988) and his wife Toby Gordon Ryan lived in an apartment at 42 Barton Street from 1940 to 1988. He was a playwright, theatre critic, and activist. He came to Toronto from Montreal in 1926 and wrote poetry and edited left-leaning periodicals such as the Daily Clarion for which he also wrote a theatrical news and reviews column. "(H)e was the driving force in 1931 behind the founding of the Progressive Arts Club, a group of primarily theatrical folk (but including, as well, Dorothy Livesay and Stanley Ryerson) dedicated to examining the Depression and possible solutions to its end." He is best remembered for his contribution as one of four authors, of the only play banned by police on orders from a Prime Minister, after one performance. Arguably the best example of agitprop in Canadian history, Eight Men Speak protested the Bennett Government's use of Section 98 of the Criminal Code outlawing any communist activity and the arrest of eight communist leaders including Tim Buck, general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada, for no other reason than for being Communists. Based on Ryan's articles about the trial, with Toby as Director and performing beside her husband, it opened December 3, 1933 at the Strand Theatre on Spadina. Eight Men Speak was an angry denunciation of government persecution of communists and its judicial inaction in the case of a Kingston Penitentiary guard's attempt to murder the incarcerated Tim Buck. In June 1936, William Lyon Mackenzie King repealed Section 98 and released the "Kingston 8".

Toronto: A Literary Guide; by Greg Gatenby, McArthur and Company, Toronto, 1999, pp. 341-342.

Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada; by Alan Filewood, Between the Lines Press, 2011. Chapter 4.

"In Anger and Hope, Oscar Ryan at the Canadian Tribune 1955-1988" by Mayte Gomez, in: Establishing our Boundaries: English Canadian Theatre Criticism, edited by Anton Wagner, University of Toronto Press, 2010.

See Also: https://editingmodernism.ca/2011/01/eight-men-silenced/

The suggested location is a lane that borders Palmerston Library which also contains a theatre and meeting hall. There is no street in Toronto named Ryan or Ryans'.