History
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Toronto’s first hanging — and how it went wrong
In 1798, John Sullivan and Michael Flannery got drunk. They were drinking whisky at one of the very first taverns ever built in Toronto. The city was only...
By Adam Bunch -
The story of Jackie Burroughs, a Yorkville laundromat, and two of the biggest drug-addled bands of the 1960s
Twenty years before she played Aunt Hetty on Road To Avonlea, Jackie Burroughs met Zal Yanovsky while he was living in a dryer in a laundromat at Dupont...
By Adam Bunch -
Toronto’s first great Antarctic explorer
; This photo of Antarctica was taken more than 100 years ago — back in the days when most of the icy continent had yet to be seen by human eyes. It’s...
By Adam Bunch -
Richard Serra’s King City Shift revisited — sunrise to sunset
This past fall I revisited the Richard Serra Shift sculpture, found up in King City, and wrote about it in my Toronto Star column. The Ontario Heritage...
By Shawn Micallef -
The infamous, bloody 1817 duel at the corner of Yonge & College
In 1781, William Jarvis got shot. They say it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to him. Before that he was just an ordinary soldier...
By Adam Bunch -
NO MEAN CITY: A killing, “the projects,” and the new Regent Park
Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex’s personal blog on architecture Terrible news in Regent Park last weekend: the killing of a teenager...
By Alex Bozikovic -
Elizabeth Taylor’s 1960s “love nest” at the King Edward Hotel
Cleopatra was a BIG movie. It had lavish sets. Elaborate costumes. Thousands of extras. It ran more than four hours long. At the time, it was the most...
By Adam Bunch -
Is a grid the most efficient street layout?
Is a grid system the most economically efficient way to lay out a downtown? Last week, I attended a talk by Prof. Robert Ellickson of Yale Law in which he...
By Dylan Reid -
Toronto’s streetcar network in 1926
Sample of Roman Fomin’s 1926 map of streetcar and interurban map available on Transit Toronto Transit Toronto is a great website dedicated to, well...
By Sean Marshall -
William Gibson and the Summer of Love — the author’s drug-fuelled days in Yorkville
It’s the summer of 1967. The Summer of Love. Hippie culture is at its height and Yorkville has become one of the biggest hubs for sex, drugs and...
By Adam Bunch -
New Fife & Drum out, the jam-packed newsletter issued by the Friends of Fort York — subscribe for free today
The Friends of Fort York, the volunteer advocacy organization that has helped look after the interests of City of Toronto’s premier museum site...
By Shawn Micallef -
The story of Toronto’s first housecat
We don’t know much about Toronto’s first cat, but what we do know seems to suggest that he arrived on a July morning in 1793. Toronto was just...
By Adam Bunch