History
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Remembering the Great Toronto Fire of 1904
It was a miserably cold night, with bitter gusts of wind and a light snow even though it was the middle of April. And about an hour after sunset, things...
By Adam Bunch -
Good Reads: Spring 2015 Edition of Fort York’s newsletter Fife & Drum
The spring edition of the Friends of Fort York’s quarterly newsletter, Fife and Drum was released recently. Loads of maps and pictures in this issue, and...
By Shawn Micallef -
The true story of Toronto’s island ghost
They say that on some dark nights, as an eerie mist creeps over the Toronto islands, you can still hear him moaning somewhere in the distance. On others...
By Adam Bunch -
How Toronto learned to love the patio
For all the time Torontonians will spend sipping lager and pinot on patios this summer, it would be easy to conclude that the people of this city have...
By Chris Bateman -
How Toronto invented the PC, then forgot about it
The Royal York Hotel, September 25, 1973. Computer experts Mers Kutt, Gordon Ramer, Ted Edwards, and Reg Rea are standing around a small machine about the...
By Chris Bateman -
An illustrated history of baseball in Toronto
No one knows exactly when baseball was born. There’s a story about an American war hero, Abner Doubleday, inventing the game in the 1830s, but...
By Adam Bunch -
Stadia mania: Toronto’s six-decade quest for a civic stadium
The Stadocentre, Metrodome, Astrodome, and Tower Dome: Toronto historically has had no lack of imagination when it comes to dreaming up gleaming...
By Chris Bateman -
The bloody Burlington Races and the war for Lake Ontario
They appeared out of the darkness, looming above the waves. Ten warships sailing across Lake Ontario, far out in the water south of Toronto. They were...
By Adam Bunch -
A tour of Toronto’s skyline in the summer of 1930
The summer of 1930. It was the beginning of a difficult decade for Toronto, along with much of the rest of the world. The Great Depression had just begun...
By Adam Bunch -
“Fun and frolic” at a Toronto double hanging
“The morning broke dark and gloomy, and with the first faint streaks of early dawn the workmen were industriously employed in making ready the...
By Chris Bateman -
Marcel Duchamp and John Cage play musical chess in Toronto
On a cold winter’s night in 1968, a phone rang in an apartment on Spadina Road. The man who answered it was Lowell Cross, an American student at the...
By Adam Bunch -
The transformer next door
The lights are on but there’s no-one home at 640 Millwood Rd. The two-storey suburban home near Bayview and Eglinton doesn’t exactly stand out among its...
By Chris Bateman