Infrastructure
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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 -
LORINC: Tearing down Gardiner East is all in the numbers
Does the melodrama over the projected two- to ten-minute delay that may occur due to the removal of the lower portion of the Gardiner resemble a farce...
By John Lorinc -
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 -
Stairs to nowhere, trap streets, and other Toronto oddities
There’s a set of stairs on Greenwood Avenue that lead nowhere. At the top, a wooden fence at the end of someone’s back yard blocks any further...
By Chris Bateman -
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 -
Welcome to your private nuclear fallout shelter
In 1959, the builders of Regency Acres, a 700-home subdivision in Aurora, Ontario, offered something no other homebuilder in the country could: a private...
By Chris Bateman -
LORINC: Local communities to help build Metrolinx projects
Just two weeks after Metrolinx’s boring machines broke through the extraction shaft at Allen Road, the regional agency reached another major milestone...
By John Lorinc -
The new American streetcar: A visit to Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Tampa
Cross-posted from Marshall’s Musings, the author’s personal blog I recently went on a short vacation, driving down Highway 401 and Interstate...
By Sean Marshall -
The great Toronto bridge swap of 1928
The Canadian Pacific Railway had two 243-ton problems in early 1928. Its two newest and most powerful locomotives were due to be ready for the...
By Chris Bateman -
The horror of the Rupert Hotel fire still lingers
The fire had been burning out of control at the Rupert Hotel for 17 minutes before someone called 911. As flames and acrid smoke filled the corridors of...
By Chris Bateman -
REID: To press or not to press: a guide to pedestrian buttons
I’ve seen a few inquiries recently by people who noticed pedestrian signal push-buttons being installed at major intersections. They found it odd...
By Dylan Reid -
The slow and deadly evolution of Toronto’s crosswalks
Crossing the street in Toronto has been a potentially deadly challenge for almost a century. Until the 1950s, when the number of automobiles dramatically...
By Chris Bateman