Curiosities
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REID: Do you have a personal rule for appreciating Toronto as you travel?
A couple of weeks ago I was travelling on the subway between the east side and downtown when, as I always do, I looked up and out over the Don Valley as...
By Dylan Reid -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
EVENT: Toronto’s Psychogeography, Spaces, and Places Discussion – Sat Nov 4th
Editor: This is a guest post by Parker Kay WHAT: Pumice Raft Art Talk #2 – Toronto’s Psychogeography, Spaces, and Places – Free entry WHEN...
By Spacing -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
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...
By Chris Bateman -
The space age Parkway Plaza, Toronto’s first heritage supermarket
It was only a shopping mall, but when the Parkway Plaza opened at Ellesmere Road and Victoria Park Avenue in 1958, it signalled the arrival of space age...
By Chris Bateman