JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Part of the fun of preparing historical columns is reading the other stories that share space with the subject of my research. These side items sometimes provide the seed for a future column. For example, while researching last weekend's Historicist column about the move of Campbell House , I found an odd Eaton's advertisement that I turned into a Vintage Toronto Ads post . I also discovered a number of stories about local landmarks that were celebrating their grand opening, mired in neighbourhood battles, or proposing actions that never happened. While I may be able to turn these into long essays someday, a couple of them were too good to leave alone. In short, welcome to a new feature on this blog. The material will mostly be from Toronto papers, but anything's fair game. Rather than drag out this introduction, let's dive right in... *** "Resident says 95% against turning rail line into park" Toronto Star, July 18, 1970 In early July 1970, The Tor...

I recently flipped through a long-abandoned index of mix tapes and stumbled upon a milestone that happened ten years ago today—the last weekday afternoon radio show that I hosted in Guelph. The excuse I need for a long entry on my broadcasting days... *** You might say I would wind up on the radio one way or another. As a kid I taped mock radio programs on my Fisher-Price cassette recorder, complete with fake ads and song intros. I imagined it would be fun to have a studio at my disposal, with an endless tower of records to play in a WKRP in Cincinnati setting. The radio station was always the same (CHJZ - no idea what the letters stood for), as was the advertiser ("Harrison, we're the quality people"), who sold ACME-like products with a gravelly-voiced pitchman named Doc. *** I first volunteered at CFRU early in my first year at U of G. I figured that organizing the scattered stacks of vinyl in the station's record library would give me a good idea of wha...

Watch out for that text about to crush your head! Since Chatelaine was a large-format magazine until the early 1970s, this was an ad I had to piece together like a puzzle—like most consumer scanners, mine is built for documents not much larger than 8-1/2 x 11, which makes dealing with old issues of Life , Look , Maclean's , etc. like playing with a jigsaw puzzle. Given the spacing of the text, this ad was easy to reassemble, though I resisted the temptation to play around with it in Photoshop so that the mountain of text posed a greater peril to the unsuspecting margarine consumer. Source: Chatelaine , July 1970 - JB

Taken at the Leslie Street Spit, August 22, 2009. Bottom photo altered by selecting "auto color" in Photoshop. - JB

CLOWNS! CLOWNS! AAAAHHHH! The boy in front is keeping his cool in the face of clowns preparing to promise him a balloon and floating paper ships , have him as the main course for dinner, or other nefarious deeds. Phobia of clowns wasn't a childhood problem, as encounters were few and far between. I even went out as one for an early Halloween outing, with emphasis on cute over scary—no grotesque face, just dabs of red on my cheeks. The only time I was disturbed by a clown-like figure occurred when I was barely school age. It happened on the lone trip Dad and I made to the CNE without the rest of the family, which also provided my first long distance train trip on the Windsor to Toronto run. Wendy's had a booth on the grounds with a woman dressed as the burger chain's mascot (the chain had been in Canada for a few years— its 500th store opened in Toronto in 1976 ). As we approached her, unease set in. Something about a girl with yarn for hair, an old-fashioned dress and ...

The view north from the tip of Point Pelee. The trek to the southern end of mainland Canada was longer than last year, though the tip's length is not back to the length it had years ago when it took a long hike to reach a long-gone viewing platform. (Speaking of things long gone at Point Pelee, does anyone know where one may find the cartoon featuring aliens curious about the formation of the tip that ran in the park's visitor centre for years?) For comparison, here's how the tip looked two years ago. The rocks in this picture are found at the edge of the forest in the top shot. Top photo taken August 3, 2009, bottom photo July 1, 2007 . *** PS : Several new posts on Torontoist, including two SummerWorks reviews ( Actionable and Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry ), a vintage ad celebrating the ninetieth birthday of the Music Hall theatre , and tasty finds on an edible tree tour . - JB

Alas, Wonderland Mall's bag was full for only two more decades. The shopping centre closed in 2004 and was demolished to make way for a big box centre with the more genteel moniker of Wonderland Village . I have never been to either incarnation—we never spent time in the western suburbs of Detroit when I was a kid, and Dad and I rarely ventured through Livonia during our exploratory drives around southeast Michigan. Since any stores or services were available in the suburbs we usually went to (Southgate, Taylor, Troy, anywhere with "Heights" in its name), there was little reason to go wandering through the west. Water Winter Wonderland has a lengthy piece on the birth and death of Wonderland . Also in the July 1985 issue of Monthly Detroit : * A cover story on longtime Detroit Free Press columnist Bob Talbert , the source of at least one quote I've used on this site ("outta my mind on a Monday moanin'"). * Interviews with author Elmore Leona...

My last day in California proved to be the only one during the trip where I made a major miscalculation in terms of distance. The goal was to drive from Ukiah to Coos Bay, Oregon, where I prebooked a room at a casino (it seemed the best option when scouting hotels online). All I had to do was drive back to the coast and be on my merry way northward. Miscalculation #1: the amount of time required to drive to the coast. The highways between Ukiah and Mendocino are scenic (see above for a shot from California 128), but their winding nature took longer than anticipated—just over an hour to the ocean. Once I arrived, I wandered into Mendocino, which was in the midst of Heritage Days . Despite hordes of people, I couldn’t resist the lure of the landscape, even as I couldn’t shake Talk to Me of Mendocino out of my head. It's always important to know where you won't find yogurt in an unfamiliar town. Mendocino was a magnet for unusual vehicles adornments that day... ...

Was a culinary curse at work while I spent a week back at the family homestead? You be the judge... Sunday : On the way back from a family daytrip to Toledo, we planned to eat dinner at Quatro's in Monroe. Not the cheapest place to dine, but it always had a good selection of meat dishes and special touches like an extensive Weight Watchers-friendly menu. We sensed something was amiss we approached the parking lot and failed to see a single vehicle. The worn exterior looked as if it hadn't welcomed diners since our last meal there. We didn't bother to pull in to see if there was a sign on the door indicating what had happened and drove on to another family favourite, Salvatore Scallopini in Southgate. A search of the web doesn't provide any answers as to what happened to Quatro's, other than hints a management change had caused a drop in quality. We guessed the economy of southeast Michigan may have helped do it in. Monday : After spending the day with Amy and...