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Ontario Travelogue from 1942

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSQEmgEm0gA[/youtube]

Here’s a lush Ontario-proud technicolor travelogue from the 1930s to warm up this first real day of 2009. It starts on the green farm of then Ontario Premier Mitchell Hepburn near St. Thomas and goes on to include a brief view of Toronto from the Island. Then a city of 850,000 it had “become a popular convention city, thereby justifying it’s Indian name Toronto, which means a place of meeting .” Then it’s off to the Rideau Canal and Ottawa. Like all pre-1960s shots of Toronto’s skyline, I’m struck by how dirty the city always looks (inevitably a factory or boat belching out black smoke). I think before the modern highrises came, starting with the TD Centre, the industrial waterfront dominated the view. It’s interesting (and logical) that Toronto’s evolution into a cultural hub of Canada parelleled it’s physical evolution from dirty provincial-looking city to the one we have today. I’m glad Redpath Sugar continues to operate down on Queens Quay to remind us of this period view (and that something physical is still manufactured in the downtown core).

Thanks to Jordan Hale for the link.

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17 comments

  1. Just a note about the Redpath Sugar on waterfront.

    Industries occupying (urban) waterfronts are a relic of the industrial revolution, 19th-beginning of 20th century urban use.
    In many places (urban) waterfronts are protected by law since the beginning of the 20th and gradual conversion to urban use happens since 1960`s by reusing the industrial build heritage.
    I guess the principle would be that an industrial activity occupying an exceptional urban site doesn’t make sense anymore in contemporary developed post-industrial city.

  2. Christian> I partially agree, but also disagree. Most fundamentally, Redpath — and all those workers inside — are not a relic, they operate everyday as they always have.

    I quite like that when I buy Redpath Sugar, it was manufactured just a few kilometers away (or across the street if you go to the Queens Quay Loblaws) and that the raw materials were brought in by boat rather than truck or air.

    I think as fuel prices increase we’ll see more mixing of industrial and residential — not less. Beautiful and functioning waterfronts may be places of leisure and residence, but also a place where people-make-things. Seems inevitable.

  3. Not sure why you titled the post as ‘1930s’ when the YouTube video itself is clearly labeled as 1942…

    Nifty to see the older Ottawa, particularly the canal banks when the railway was still there and the arts centre was not. Plus, spot the guy in the ‘war canoe’ with the Rocket Richard jersey.

  5. Hi, thank you for the reply.
    Sure, I am not talking about the workers but about the industries and their by-products, pollution, heavy truck-ship traffic, urban disconnection etc.

    Closely mixing industries and residential is, again, more an industrial revolution model. There is space around the city where industries be connected by railroad. Waterfronts can include very well service industries, tertiary activities. The (any) waterfront is an exceptional place and should be used by everybody.

    Most of the fuel consumption, I guess, is generated by the exclusive use of truck transportation and by the urban sprawl.

  7. Pretty awesome find, thanks.

    For those of us who grew up in the 80s or later, it’s easy to forget what a massive change happened over the past half century. The images in this film really reminded me of this. Most other big cities in this corner of the continent are fairly similar in size to what they were in the 1940s (Chicago, New York) or significantly smaller (Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore). Of course, virtually all growth since then in all cities has been in the surrounding burbs, which more than evens things out in places like Boston, but in terms of sheer urban densification Toronto was quite the boomtown of the postwar era relative to its peers. The city’s actual population (city limits) in 1941 was 667,457 (note- almost 30% smaller than Montreal), so the 850,000 figure mentioned in the film is probably the regional population that is now within the modern city limits, making for a growth of nearly 300% over those five decades. A city that was smaller than Pittsburgh and barely larger than Buffalo in 1942 now dwarfs those cities (pop ~300,000 in 2000) physically and hierarchically.

    And what a change in the skyline – from Redpath and Royal York and Commerce Bank to the sheer mass of not-supertall-but-plenty-of-them towers today. Look at Cleveland 1940s

    Toronto may have passed the boom label to Dubai and other places but it is still an impressive growth spurt to look back upon.

  8. Thanks for posting this. Loved the National Anthem at the end there eh.

  10. On the Redpath building, it looks like it’ll be here to stay for a while yet. They’re doing the massive East Bayfront development and part of it is Sugar Beach, which will be to the east of the Redpath facility

  11. This was the best thing of my day. I’m an Ottawa kid too, so the shots of homes along the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and the canoe racing at Britannia Bay really hit my nostalgia-bone. How many times can I wish that the National Capital Commission hadn’t forced the relocation of the railway station away from its perfect location downtown by the canal? At least Toronto Union Station remains where it ought to be.

  12. I’m struck by how dirty the city always looks (inevitably a factory or boat belching out black smoke).
    ———

    I remember how dirty the city was until the natural gas pipeline was pushed through to here in the late ’50s.

    When the natural gas pipeline came in from Sarnia, after its trip through the US, the gas company had a hard time to hire enough people to fill all the vacancies installing gas mains and connections to homes.

    I remember that when the gas company announced it was doing a street, you had 2 or 3 months to plan for the change and have it installed free or pay for
    installation at a later time.

    Central heating systems came in around that time and they went to natural gas–immeasurably cleaning up the air everywhere.

    Those were about the same years that the coal ash bins stopped being set out at curbside for pickup in the residential areas.

  13. CLARIFICATION

    In the above article I meant to say central heating plants. These are found on the U of T campus and on Walton St. near Bay. There is another central heating plant near Adelaide and Simcoe.

    These facilities replaced the coal-fired heating for individual buildings in their areas and that greatly cleaned up the air.

  14. What is interesting is that the movie plays “O Canada” whilst showing the federal parliament buildings from the Chà¢teau Laurier, even though it would not become the anthem until more than 20 years later.

    At the time, “O Canada” was seen as subversive, being only used by the french, because the official anthem was, of course, “God save the king/queen”…

  15. @Jean Naimard
    ———–

    I must disagree with you about O Canada. We sang
    it also in public and high school here in Toronto.
    This would have been in addition to God Save the
    Queen.

    My pulic and high school years were in the
    ’50s and very early ’60s.

    In fact, I remember learning both anthems while
    a student of the Royal Conservatory. It wasn’t
    mandatory but I learned both in case I would be
    tapped to play them elsewhere when requested.

  16. Just a note on Redpath and the port: Toronto Port still offers the best facility for moving bulk goods into and out of this city with minimal pollution. The only technology we have for moving goods essentially pollution-free depends on marine transport (i.e. the port). Toronto, as we know it, exists because the harbour exists. If we want to have a future, I believe we have to get over the dangerous idea that we can cancel environmental and economic considerations because some urban designer (such people, IMHO, do not rate the term planner, because planners by definition take functions as well as aesthetics into account) or developer labels some site or other “exceptional”.

  17. Have to say that more than various waterways, fields and smokestacks, it was the massive and omnipresent elm trees, both in the fringes of the fields and in the urban settings that caught my attention in this film.

    Thanks for posting it.