By Adam Bunch
-
Marcel Duchamp and John Cage play musical chess in Toronto
On a cold winter’s night in 1968, a phone rang in an apartment on Spadina Road. The man who answered it was Lowell Cross, an American student at the...
-
A Toronto statue from the graveyard of the British Empire
Our story ends in Toronto, but it starts nearly 12,000 kilometers away: in India, at a place called Coronation Park. It’s a grand, wide-open space...
-
Toronto’s rebel-fighting Freemason, William Jarvis
There’s a spot right in the middle of London, England, with a long-forgotten connection to the history of Toronto. It’s on the Strand, on the edge of the...
-
A Toronto historical map of London, England
Toronto has a deeper connection to London, England than it does to almost any other city in the world. After all, our entire country was essentially ruled...
-
Sir John A. Macdonald, drunk and in flames
It’s one of the best-known facts in all of Canadian history: our first Prime Minister drank. Like, a lot. Sir John A. Macdonald wasn’t just a...
-
The day the sun turned blue above Toronto
The first sign of the apocalypse came on a Saturday night in the early autumn of 1950. It was a little after 9 o’clock. That’s when a star was...
-
The giant prehistoric beavers of the Don Valley Brick Works
Meet the giant beaver. It’s one of the largest rodents to have ever walked the earth: as much as seven feet long and more than 200 pounds. So, like, the...
-
Two Toronto nurses and one of the most terrible nights of the First World War
One dark night in the summer of 1918, the HMHS Llandovery Castle was steaming through the waters of the North Atlantic. She was far off the southern tip...
-
The first (almost) Canadian President
There’s a small town on the very western edge of England, not far from the River Severn, which marks the border with Wales. It’s called Thornbury. It’s a...
-
A.Y. Jackson paints for his life
It was 1916. The First World War was in full swing. And while men were dying in the trenches all around him, A.Y. Jackson was about to save his own life...
-
William Lyon Mackenzie’s mission to London
It was 1832. William Lyon Mackenzie was fed up. He’d spent the last decade fighting for democratic reform in Upper Canada. He’d founded a...
-
Billy Bishop and the rich and famous
One spring day in 1916, Billy Bishop woke up in the hospital. He was in London, England. Today, the building overlooking Bryanston Square is a prep...