History
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PODCAST: Spacing Radio 054, Packaged Toronto
To celebrate Spacing‘s latest book, Packaged Toronto: a collection of the city’s historic design, we go deep into the history of early...
By Spacing Radio -
Research Road Redux
During the Second World War, my mother, Louise MacCallum, was among the 7,500 employees of Research Enterprises Limited (REL), a top-secret...
By Peter MacCallum -
PACKAGED TORONTO: The type of book for font lovers
Packaged Toronto is the newest book from Spacing — it focuses on the graphic design and packaging of products, pulled form the City of Toronto’s...
By Matthew Blackett -
How racism in Ontario schools today is connected to a history of segregation
Toronto’s Africentric Alternative School first opened in 2009 after years of advocacy and then months of heated public debates and criticism about the...
By Funké Aladejebi -
NEW SPACING BOOK: ‘Packaged Toronto’ and the emergence of the city’s design aesthetic
LINK: VISIT THE SPACING STORE TO BUY THIS BOOK Back in 2011, I was brainstorming ideas for future projects with local historian Stephen Otto. He was...
By Matthew Blackett -
EXCERPT FROM ‘UNCLE’: Aunt Jemima in Chicago
Excerpted with permission from Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty, published this month by Coach House Books. Thompson, a Ryerson...
By Cheryl Thompson -
The ‘bashment’ parties of my childhood are Black history
In 2002, reggae artist Sean Paul shot the video for his song ‘Get Busy/Like Glue,’ in Vaughan. Directed by Toronto’s own Director X, the video begins with...
By Cheryl Thompson -
OP-ED: Why we have to save the first parliament site
Recent reports that the Queen’s Park may expropriate the First Parliament site, at Parliament and Front Streets, for construction of the Metrolinx Ontario...
By Rollo Myers and Ron Williamson -
LORINC: Raising the stakes in the MZO wars
The judge who handed down a temporary injunction last week, halting the demolition of the historic Dominion Foundry in the West Donlands, was withering in...
By John Lorinc -
Sam Carr and Toronto’s Soviet spies
Sam Carr walked out of the Don Jail on a crisp autumn day in 1942. He had been living underground for two years, and detained for the previous month...
By Tyler Wentzell -
Weston Road as my main street
This selection of photographs by Peter MacCallum documenting Weston Road is published in conjunction with Spacing’s new issue themed around main...
By Peter MacCallum -
LORINC: Tall or small is a false choice between main streets and intensification
At its meeting Monday, the Toronto Preservation Board (TPB) voted to adopt a set of staff recommendations that seemed, to some observers as well as...
By John Lorinc