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Toronto Life covers

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Toronto Life just celebrated its 40th anniversary. That’s a huge accomplishment for a Canadian magazine, and even more remarkable since their readership is geographically limited.

The magazine has produced an archive of covers (1966-2006) which nicely document the evolution of Toronto Life and the city itself. While most of the covers during the 1980s make me cringe, I enjoy the art direction of the 60s and 70s (it seemed to bounce back by the mid-90s).

The only disappointing thing is how little politics, city issues, and the mythology/myth-making of Toronto made the cover. In fact, it wasn’t until the October 1997 edition when a mayor graced the cover (and it was the Lastman vs. Hall, “Him or Her?” shown above, a month and a half before megacity election). I would’ve thought the reign of David Crombie was sexy enough for a 1970s cover spot. Oddly, other politicians like John Turner, Ed Broadbent, and each of the Ontario premiers going back to David Peterson graced the cover before a mayor ever did.

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13 comments

  3. A small caricature of David Crombie appears on the October 1975 issue. Doesn’t it seem a bit telling that every few years there’s a cover story on divorce / marital strife / relationship perils? I shouldn’t to make sweeping generalizations on Toronto Life’s target audience but…

  4. it’s also dissapointing to see how the quality of the magazine has declined since they were bought by st. joseph’s. the monthly “survey” that graces the back page is just one example of the editors seem to catering to the lowest common denominator.

  5. Crombie was also the cover boy in January ’73 for a cover story on his election into office, complete with a down-on-one-knee-holding-a-cane-old-time-showman pose.

    The ’72 mayoral campaign garnered a couple of covers, including one with the candidates as cut-out paper dolls (which was also one of the last issues with the original logo) – unfortunately, it falls into the ’69-’72 gap on the TL archive.

  6. I stand corrected.

    Though, there does seem to be a long gap between the Crombie covers and another mayor (25 years).

  10. Dave

    That was a great issue. The various plans that they presented for the waterfront were inspirational.

    My favourite was the one that suggested the Don River *not* be naturalized but rather Urbanized. Treat it like an urban park or like the Seine in Paris. Celebrate the ugliness of the part where the Gardiner spans the river and increase the number of buildings on the perimeter looking down into the valley (i.e. tax revenue from much sought after real estate).

    The other ideas (like connecting High Park to the waterfront and creating a little Venice in the East Donlands) were quite interesting too.

  11. ^Yes, treat the Don Valley like Central Park. All those apt buildings on Broadview will be like Central Park West. I sometimes repeated the notion to people, excitedly, and they would make me leave the party.

  13. Yeah exactly, we’d just need to shoot a famous movie there (Rosemary’s Baby) and somebody like Lennon would need to get shot in front of it to give it the same myth.

    But even those sorta banal slabs to the north of the Danforth would become Dakota-ish. Would be neat if there was a hard urban line then the park, which i love around the edges of Central Park.

    Parkside Drive along High Park is like this. City city city then thick park immediately.

    I’m playing urban-devils-advocate here, but the Don is nice n’all, but as nature goes it’s sort of halfass. Why not scrap the attempt, and let our landscape designers go Frederick-Law-Olmstead crazy down there.