By Chris Bateman
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Computer love: Toronto’s first electronic dates
Bill McNeil and Judy Perry were among the first people ever fixed up by a computer. In 1957, three decades before the first dating websites and 55 years...
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A million Canadian post-war homes
The Camisso family never expected a parade when they bought their first house, a little suburban bungalow in the new Wishing Well Acres subdivision near...
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The parking garage of the future!
In the 1950s and 60s, Toronto, like cities all over the world, struggled with challenges delivered by the rise of the private automobile. For the first...
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The first Modern apartment complex in Toronto
The three towers of the City Park co-op apartments on Wood Street behind Maple Leaf Gardens don’t really stand out among the numerous high rises of...
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The story of the Toronto Island’s modern architecture
When the flood water on the Toronto Island eventually recedes it will reveal a damaged and possibly forever altered landscape. For the first time in...
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The short, mysterious life of the Beard Building
The Beard Building is a historical enigma. Toronto’s first skyscraper, the 7-storey building was constructed in 1895 to designs by E. J. Lennox, one...
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The oddities of the Dundas Street Extension
In December 1954, the railway tracks near Logan Avenue presented the final obstacle in one of Toronto’s first major post-war road building...
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The lost streets of South Parkdale
No Toronto neighbourhood paid for the Gardiner Expressway quite like Parkdale. Before construction of the lakefront highway in 1958, the land south of...
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The demise of the first “air rights” project in Toronto
When Toronto’s first subway line opened in 1954, much of track north of Bloor Street was located in a shallow, open trench. The money-saving open cut...
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The Shell Oil Tower is a lost 1950s masterpiece
A little over 30 years ago this winter, one of Toronto’s earliest Modern buildings was pulled to the ground. When the Shell Oil Tower at Exhibition...
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The rise and fall and rise of St. Lawrence Hall
In 1966, Toronto’s St. Lawrence Hall was in terrible shape. The venerable old neoclassical building at the southwest corner of King and Jarvis...
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The story behind the first computer in Canada
In 1949, a team of professors and graduate students at the University of Toronto began building a machine no-one in Canada, and few in the world, had ever...