By Peter MacCallum
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Documenting the collapsed Dundas Street buildings
For the most part, the buildings on the north side of Dundas Street West between Spadina and Bathurst are an architectural hodgepodge. The one exception...
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The urban photography of Arthur Goss, part 4: Toronto Water Works, 1910-1939
Unlike his Parks Series, which highlights the inclusiveness of the City’s recreational facilities, Goss’s Toronto Water Works Series documents what was at...
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The urban photography of Arthur Goss, Part 3: Parks and Recreation, 1913-1940
Following the appointment of Charles E. Chambers as Parks Commissioner in 1912, Toronto’s park system entered a period of continuous expansion, creating...
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The urban photography of Arthur Goss, Part 2: The housing series, 1936-1940
The Housing Series is the product of the last new project Arthur Goss undertook as the City’s Official Photographer. Between March, 1936 and January...
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The Urban Photography of Arthur Goss, Part 1: Career and technique
Anyone who delves into the visual records related to Toronto’s twentieth-century social history is likely to come across photographs taken between 1910...
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A Perfect Fit: KOPS Records at its original Queen West location
Between 1995 and 2020, Canada’s oldest independent record retailer, KOPS Records, occupied an aged storefront at 229 Queen Street West, between Simcoe and...