History
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The “great monster of death” arrives in Toronto
Lenton Williams worked in the printing department at Eaton’s department store. On the evening of June 14, 1905, the 60-year-old was jogging south along...
By Chris Bateman -
When Haileybury burned, Toronto sent streetcars
The town of Haileybury sits on the shore of Lake Timiskaming, a serpentine body of water on the northern reaches of the Ottawa River that marks the border...
By Chris Bateman -
The curious origin of the original low-floor streetcar
Toronto is in the (unexpectedly slow) process of getting new low-floor streetcars. The goal of these new cars is accessibility — they can be used by...
By Dylan Reid -
Toronto’s Depression-era beauty queen baseball star
Women have been playing baseball for as long as anyone can remember. And for much of that time, they’ve been playing despite the men who’ve...
By Adam Bunch -
The half-built relics of nixed Toronto skyscrapers
In 1914, John Eaton, the third son of retail magnate Timothy Eaton, began preparing plans for a massive expansion of his family’s empire. Aged 38...
By Chris Bateman -
Fife and Drum: The day the fort was saved from streetcars
The latest edition of Fife and Drum, the quarterly newsletter produced by the Friends of Fort York, was recently released. As always it’s filled with...
By Shawn Micallef -
A history of developers and holdouts in Toronto
When the Imperial Oil company began assembling land for its new executive offices on St. Clair Ave. W. in 1952, it didn’t reckon on tangling with...
By Chris Bateman -
How Exhibition Place got the retro Dufferin Gate
You can tell a lot about a place by how it greets its visitors. The goofy lights at Honest Ed’s tell customers “there’s no place like...
By Chris Bateman -
The creation of Toronto’s first City Hall and market buildings
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was written in 1985 by Stephen Otto for a catalog that was never published to accompany the exhibit “Meeting Places...
By Stephen Otto -
The modernist Bloor-Danforth line at 50
The Bloor-Danforth line turned 50 today. Five decades ago, on February 25, 1966, the first section of Toronto’s first east-west subway opened...
By Chris Bateman -
The night Neil Young was conceived
It was the last winter of the Second World War. 1945. The first week of February. Far away in Europe, the Nazis were crumbling: the Soviets were closing...
By Adam Bunch -
The independent Toronto Republic of Rathnelly
To celebrate the Centennial, on Saturday, June 10, 1967, the roughly 400 residents of Rathnelly Ave. and several nearby streets decided to quit Toronto...
By Chris Bateman