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Spacing

Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

By Peter MacCallum

  • Dufferin street studios, 2017-2018

    Give or take a few months, the productive life of the former industrial complex at 390-440 Dufferin Street spanned 115 years. What had been a single...

  • Photographing the Finch West LRT

    I am not a daily commuter, but as a documentary photographer of Toronto’s urban fabric, I depend on the TTC to get me to far-flung areas of the city where...

  • Gerrard Street East Part 2, 2023-2024

    The first part of this series focused on the section of Gerrard Street East between Broadview Avenue and the Carlaw-Pape development zone slated for a...

  • Gerrard Street East Part 1, 2023-2024

    In the spring of 2023, a friend who was familiar with my earlier documentary photography of the city’s main streets suggested that I consider doing a...

  • Ontario Stockyards, 1991

    The neighbourhood designation “Stockyards District” evokes indistinct memories of what for much of the twentieth century was one of Toronto’s most...

  • Disappearing Sunlight

    What has recently been dubbed the “Sunlight” mural hung on the facade of the spray-drying tower at the historic Lever Brothers* Don Valley plant for total...

  • The Last Survivor of a Historic Streetscape

    On a recent Saturday evening, while travelling westbound toward Parkdale on the 504 King streetcar, I noticed something was missing from the familiar...

  • Toronto, City of Gas, 1909-1936, Part 2

    The virtual exhibition that accompanied Part 1 of my article on Micklethwaite Studio’s photography for Consumers’ Gas included a wide range of...

  • Toronto, City of Gas, 1909-1936

    Once they had been declared functionally obsolete, most of the monumental industrial structures that figured on the skylines of North American cities...

  • For Metrolinx, Queen and Spadina is an idling-bylaw-free zone

    A project map circulated by Metrolinx shows that the Ontario Line subway’s Queen and Spadina station will be aligned with Queen Street and centred...

  • Old Gables and Pizza Slices: 648-656 Spadina Avenue

    As an architectural photographer, I am always keen to record surviving fragments of older streetscapes in areas of downtown Toronto that have been subject...

  • The Lives of 233–235 Spadina

    In the spring of 1984, the social historian and curator Rosemary Donegan commissioned me to take contemporary architectural photos and panoramic views of...