Neighbourhood
January 7th, 2010
23 Jason Road, Thistletown’s first house, built around 1802
Thistletown, perhaps Toronto’s best-hidden historic neighbourhood, is located at the intersection of Albion Road and Islington Avenue. The village, which was never incorporated, was established in the 1840s, servicing the important Albion Road. The settlement got its name from a prominent local family.
Albion Road was surveyed as early as 1799, predating the grid-based concession farm plot and road system, as an extension of Weston Road. Albion passed through other lost villages such as Clairville (at Steeles) to Albion Township (later amalgamated into the Town of Caledon). The road’s diagonal path made the route ideal for farmers to bring their produce and livestock to market in the larger town of Weston, or all the way into Toronto, particularly before the railways were built. At its height, Thistletown had a population of several hundred, a community hall, an inn and tavern, and several shops at the corner of Albion and Islington.
October 26th, 2009
Business groups come in various flavours and their messages run the gamut from insightful to irritating. My least favourite is the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, which represents 100,000 members across Canada.
Its chief mouthpiece is Catherine Swift, whose message that has been astonishingly consistent over the years: that almost everything governments do undermines small business.
If one took what the CFIB says at face value, you’d have to conclude — all evidence to the contrary — that small business is a vanishing species, done in by idiot bureaucrats, conniving politicians and rapacious banks.
Last week, Swift came out with a report that concluded the City of Toronto is the worst place in the country to do business. One aggravating factor, according to her chorus of sirens: excessive regulation. (You’re glad you were sitting, no?)
It’s hard to know how to respond to that kind of torque, except to note the glaring selectiveness in the analysis. If Toronto’s dead last, why’s the financial industry still here? Why is TTC ridership — an extremely reliable economic indicator — at an all time high? What about all those cars clogging up downtown streets - just driving around for the hell of it? And the cranes — what to make of the cranes?
October 13th, 2009
Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent September 30 - October 3 in Niagara Falls at a joint conference held by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He is sharing some of the lessons he learned there and reflecting on their implications on public space, livability, and sustainability in cities.
The first session I attended at the OPPI / CIP conference was called LEED-ing by Design. The purpose of this workshop was to educate planners about Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Neighbourhood Development (LEED ND), which, according to the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), aims to “integrate the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design.†Knowing a bit about LEED Building certification (as well as some of its critiques), I was curious to see what design elements would apply at the neighbourhood scale.
September 11th, 2009
Editor’s note: At Afterword, the wake held for pages books on Tuesday night, a number of folks came up to say what the store meant to them. As Matt Blackett pointed out, the store was crucial to magazines like Spacing and other indie presses. Others talked about what a place like Pages meant to the city at large: functioning as a “cultural centre” as Johnny Dovercourt wrote two issues ago in Spacing. One of the speakers that night was Andrew James Paterson, an artist and writer that has been working in and around Queen Street since the late 1970s (poke around his website if interested, you’ll find some good stuff from this era up to the present day). The following is the text of his eulogy:
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I think of Pages - that home away from home - and I think of so many things. I think of the bookstore’s size - not too big but not too small. That just about perfect size was, I think, crucial to why Pages was a great store and a great environment. It was large enough - there was enough room - for people to feel loose and relaxed - for people to have their private spaces. It was small enough for people to cross the floor.
In that sense, browsing shopping and yes buying in Pages was rather like surfing the net. It was rhizomatic. I could be in the Visual Art Section, and suddenly I would feel an urge to cross-reference something in the Film Section or the Music or Cultural Theory sections or other sections perhaps. I could do this quickly - none of the sections were at any great distance from each other while remaining distinct. One could say that Pages was a rhizomatic bookstore - it was a tree and it was the branches and it was all about connecting dots.
September 9th, 2009
Pages owner Marc Glassman and Pages staff throughout the ages
Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate 30 years of Pages Books and Magazines at the Gladstone Hotel last night. The …
August 20th, 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JJ7vv3QCfs[/youtube]
On my way home after work last Saturday night, I walked by the corner of Brunswick and Bloor where a three-man rock combo was playing out of a U-Haul parked in front of By The Way Cafe. Named the Dildoniks, they’d outfitted their U-Haul with flood lights, a drum kit and amps running through their rented truck’s battery with a banner on both sides announcing their band’s name. They drew a pretty substantial crowd, with the audience spilling off the sidewalk and onto the road (without, however, blocking traffic on either Brunswick or Bloor).
A relatively new band, Dildoniks member Kire Paputts told me in an email that part of what led them to do the half-hour show in a U-Haul was that it would be entirely “on our terms,” as Kire put it. Now obviously the idea of an impromptu concert amplified from inside a rented truck at eleven on a Saturday night provokes a lot of questions. Add this to the fact that they played at the Brunswick/Bloor intersection, the case in point of recent debates both locally and in the press on how the neighbourhood is changing. With the closing of Dooney’s Cafe and Mel’s Montreal Delicatessen, and the two freak shootings that have taken place in the last two summers, many have been quick to conclude that the Annex is in a steep decline, where beligerant and occasionally violent partiers are setting the terms rather than long-time residents and middle-aged community members.
There’s no denying that with Mel’s and Dooney’s Cafe gone, the old character of the Annex has suffered a significant blow. Yet rather than seeing their departure as the canary in the coalmine, much still remains of the old Annex, but more importantly, much has changed and will continue to change as the neighbourhood evolves with the times and the people who inhabit its spaces.
Take the bookstores, for example. On Bloor St. between Spadina and Bathurst plus one block south on either side, there are a total of eight book stores currently open (not to mention the man often seen selling used books on the sidewalk at Madison or Brunswick), making the Annex still the most concentrated hub of independent booksellers in the city. Book City and the BMV are flanked by three used book stores who’ve been open since who knows when; Ten Editions Bookstore on Spadina, Seekers Books at Borden St., and Willow Books over at Bathurst. As more alternative literature goes, there’s A Different Booklist also on Bathurst, plus the Labyrinth Comic Book store across from the BMV. With at least five more on nearby Harbord St, for booklovers, the Annex is alive and well.
The Annex Billiards Club, Sonic Boom and Lee’s Palace also remain as active as ever. Meanwhile, despite declining attendance, the Bloor Cinema still puts on a wide variety of films, for better or for worse. As food goes, George’s BBQ and Country Style still remain to represent the old guard, while tasty new places like One Love Vegetarian on Bathurst and Burrito Banditos on Walmer definitely inject some well-needed diversity into the neighbourhood’s sushi-saturated array of restuarants.
August 18th, 2009
This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class was about). This post was researched, photographed and written by Mary-Ellen Simko. More information on the psychogeographic map above at the end of the article.
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History of the Area
Both Alderwood and Long Branch, adjacent neighbourhoods in the southwest corner of Etobicoke, were a part of Colonel Samuel Smith’s land and many of the streets in Alderwood are named after the farmers in the area. The Alderwood name became official in 1933 and was derived from the First nations word “Etobicoke,” meaning “the place were the alders grow.” Long Branch was named after a resort in New Jersey and ferry boats brought thousands of Toronto vacationers each summer to use the cottages, hotels, the boardwalk and amusement rides including a Coney Island Carousel. It became a more accessible community in 1916 when Lake Shore Boulevard was paved and turned Long Branch into a year-round community.
Stats for Ward 6
Alderwood and Long Branch are home to 56,620 people that comprise 26,240 households located in an area approximately 18 square kilometres in size. In 2006 56% of the occupied private dwellings (31% were single-detached houses) were owned while 44% were rented spaces. 72% of these south Etobicoke residents drive to their jobs while 79% took non-work related trips by car. Most of the new immigration to the area has been from Eastern Europe (primarily Poland) with the highest percentage arriving between 1991 - 2000. Ward 6 has an average household income of 69,500 which is lower than the city of Toronto however 20% report having an income over 100,000. The population demographic has increased between the ages 45-64 but decreased for the age group 5-9 however 60% of households have children. (more info here - pdf)
Transit and how to get there
Both communities are serviced by the Lakeshore east/west Go transit line that stops at Long Branch Go Station while north/south Browns Line has an off-ramp from the QEW and 427 highways. TTC tracks have existed along this southern edge of the city since 1912 and the all-night 501 Streetcar connects the western Long Branch loop to the eastern edge of Toronto at the Neville Park loop. Bus routes on Browns Line and Kipling join the neighbourhoods with the Kipling Subway station.
July 14th, 2009
Occasionally on this blog, I’ve talked with pride of my 24th-floor balcony view in the deep south of Parkdale. Mostly I brag about watching storms roll in from the …
July 14th, 2009
This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class was about). This Main Square post was researched and written by Michael Caton and C. Pete.
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Main Square is located at the TTC hub of Main and Danforth. It is a 3 min walk from Main Subway station and the Danforth GO station, and has several bus and streetcar stops within a short hop. Main Square was built in 1972 as a partnership between CMHC (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp.), a government entity, and a private company. It was envisioned to be integrated housing similar to the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood. CMHC manages the renowned Granville Island in British Columbia as well as many other neighbourhood enterprises that encourage integrated and creative communities, supporting artists and diverse incomes.
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Currently, streetcars and buses run up and down Main St. In 1923, streetcars also ran East and West along Danforth.
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The corner of Main and Danforth, viewed from within Main Square. This intersection is a TTC hub, with various bus routes, and the Main St. subway station just a few steps up Main St.
In 1998 CMHC sold out their share in Main Square and the buildings were bought buy Talisker Corporation, a private enterprise. It appears that CMHC may have pulled out due to the quality of the buildings, perhaps due to the incredibly high power needs that may exceed normal conditions. Apparently the sale went with a mandate that a certain percentage of subsidized units must be available. Unfortunately, most of the relevant documents are housed in Ottawa.
July 9th, 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLV0FIxCRps[/youtube]
This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class …
