History
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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 -
Toronto’s most deadly disaster: the nightmare on the SS Noronic
It was late. The Noronic was quiet. The ship was docked at the foot of Yonge Street, gently rocking in the dark waves. Almost everyone on board was...
By Adam Bunch -
Pour one out for the Toronto Coach Terminal
The Toronto Coach Terminal is a sorry sight. Marooned a significant distance from the city’s main railway station, disconnected from other forms of...
By Chris Bateman -
Toronto’s history in two buildings
Back in May and June of 2015, the Guardian newspaper ran an intriguing series on its Cities page entitled “A history of cities in 50 buildings.” The list...
By Sean Marshall -
Emma Goldman in Toronto — one last victory for The Most Dangerous Woman in the World
The Most Dangerous Woman in the World was playing a quiet game of cards. It was a snowy Toronto evening in the winter of 1940, that first terrible winter...
By Adam Bunch -
The great Stanley Cup thefts of 1970
The last person to lift the Stanley Cup in Toronto was an unknown thief who swiped the trophy from the Sports Hall of Fame in December, 1970. Though...
By Chris Bateman -
The Beaver Wars & Toronto in the 1600s
1687. A year of war and famine on the shores of Lake Ontario. That summer, on a night in early July, an army camped near the mouth of the Rouge River, at...
By Adam Bunch -
Remembering the ill-fated CN Turbo train
On December 10, 1968, a sleek new locomotive glided out from the sooty train shed at Toronto’s Union Station. Streamlined and silver with a bright...
By Chris Bateman -
How the TTC lost and found its subway style
Not many people could have known that behind the advertising billboards on the platform of College station was something no-one had seen for more than...
By Chris Bateman -
Special Edition of Fife & Drum: all the new urban things at Fort York
A special edition of Fife and Drum, the newsletter produced by the Friends of Fort York, was just released to capture the incredible amount of urban...
By Shawn Micallef -
When terror strikes urban geographies of hope
Guest post by Paul Cohen, a professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto and an occasional contributor to Spacing. I first learned...
By Paul Cohen