History
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50 Objects that Define Toronto: Footprints under Toronto Bay
Spacing teamed up with FIBE TV1 last year to create a series based on our first book 50 Objects That Define Toronto. Once a week we will be posting a new...
By Spacing -
WATCH: Amazing archival videos of Toronto Pride 1988-1995
Between 1988 and 1995 (save for 1991 when he did not have a camera) Toronto editor and filmmaker James Leahy documented Toronto Pride, both the street...
By Shawn Micallef -
Making places for Toronto’s Queer history
By Ed Jackson In June, 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama proclaimed the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City, as an American...
By Spacing -
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 -
READ: Spring 2017 edition of Fife and Drum
The latest edition of Fife and Drum, the quarterly journal produced by the Friends of Fort York, was just released. Here’s some of what you’ll find...
By Shawn Micallef -
Yonge Street Mall: The fun and failure of pedestrianizing Toronto’s iconic strip during the 1970s
On June 3, 1971, there was a party on downtown Yonge Street. Around 8pm, following the news that Ontario Premier Bill Davis had cancelled the Spadina...
By Daniel Ross -
Sex on Yonge: Examining the decade when Yonge Street was the city’s sin strip
“I take a walk down Yonge Street, where good times are bought and sold.” When folk music great Ian Tyson penned those lines in 1970, he knew his audience...
By Daniel Ross -
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 -
Campaign to name new school after Jean Earle Geeson: teacher, artist, journalist and early champion of Fort York
Last year Spacing published an audit report that found 292 Toronto parks were named after men, with just 82 after women. Coupled with streets, monuments...
By Shawn Micallef -
PODCAST: Spacing Radio 008, Booming!
In this episode, we talk about the changing face of the city, about what we preserve, and what gets left behind. We talk to Kaitlin Wainwright, director...
By Spacing Radio -
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