WILSON, Abraham (Abe) (1900-1970) was born in the village of Cross Roads-with-Lees, West Yorkshire, England on 3 February 1900 and arrived in Canada with his family in 1906. They settled in Toronto, and Wilson later graduated from Central Technical School in 1919, but he did not obtain a formal university education in architecture. Instead, he chose to serve an apprenticeship and to train under the prominent Toronto architect Charles S. Cobb from 1919 to 1923. When Cobb closed his Toronto office and moved to California in 1924, Wilson took the opportunity to continue his education in Buffalo, N.Y. at the local School of Architectural Design which was then operated under the direction of the Beaux-Arts Society of New York City. By 1931 he had returned to Toronto and the following year he was listed as a draftsman for G. Roper Gouinlock. He commenced practise in Toronto under his own name in 1933 and continued to operate his own office until 1941. One of his first commissions was the design of the Blue Mountain Summer Camp complex for the Ontario Society for Crippled Children (1937), and his work on this project would eventually lead to his appointment as Provincial Architect for the Society. Wilson was then employed by the Wartime Housing Commission in 1941-44, and assisted in the office of Douglas Kertland in 1945-46.
In early 1947 he formed a partnership with Leo H. Stanford (see list of works under Stanford & Wilson). Much of the design work in that office was handled by Wilson, including major commissions for the Ontario Crippled Children's Centre on Rumsey Road in Toronto (1961-62), as well as several projects for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind located in Ottawa (built 1949), in Kitchener (built 1950-51), and the largest, situated on Bayview Avenue in Toronto (built 1954-56). Wilson died at Toronto on 21 April 1970 (death notice in the Globe & Mail [Toronto], 22 April 1970, 43; inf. Susan Wilson, Toronto).
COLLINGWOOD, ONT., Blue Mountain Camp for Crippled Children, 1937 (Globe & Mail [Toronto], 5 July 1937, 4)
BRULE GARDENS APARTMENTS, Bloor Street West near Traymore Avenue, 1937 (C.R., vol. 50, 22 Sept. 1937, 31)
BRULE PARK APARTMENTS, Bloor Street West at Brule Terrace, 1937-38 (C.R., vol. 50, 24 Nov. 1937, 31)
ARDWOLD GATE, near Spadina Road, residence for Dr. Ernest A. McCulloch, 1938 (Toronto Daily Star, 20 May 1938, 10, illus. & descrip.)
GORMLEY, ONT., residence for Gordon C. Leitch, 1938 (C.H.G., xv, May 1938, 22-4, illus.; Dec. 1944, 29-31, illus.)
PORT CREDIT, ONT., residence for G. Clinton Snell, Stavebank Road, 1945 (C.H.G., xxii, Sept. 1945, 16, illus.)