last week's scribblings

On Torontoist:

• Jack Layton's city council career
• Vintage Toronto Ads spotlights the shower soldiers dreamed of during World War II
• Besides Jack Layton, who else has lay in state at City Hall?

renowned editors of canadian newspapers: george mccullagh

Discovered deep in the stacks of the University of Guelph's library: a pamphlet published by the Thomson newspaper chain circa 1959 spotlighting major editors of the past.

This particular profile glosses over the darker edges of George McCullagh's life: depression, an early battle with the bottle, the political naivete demonstrated in his radio broadcasts, the misadventure of the Leadership League, a thirst for power, and the exact nature of his death (heart attack or suicide?). Whatever your verdict of him is, McCullagh packed an awful lot into 47 years before flaming out.

LINK: An old Historicist piece surveying McCullagh's life.

last week's scribblings

On Torontoist:

• In Vintage Toronto Ads, a 1950s housewife gets too excited about Nescafé
• From 1967, suggestions on how to improve the CNE
• Tweeting Toronto's history, plaque by plaque
• In Historicist, the short saga of the Lord Simcoe Hotel

renowned editors of canadian daily newspapers: george brown

Discovered deep in the stacks of the University of Guelph's library: a pamphlet published by the Thomson newspaper chain circa 1959 spotlighting major editors of the past.

1959 was a key year for scholars of George Brown, as the first half of J.M.S. Careless's biography Brown of the Globe was published (volume two followed four years later). During the 1960s the founding publisher of the Globe was honoured with a postage stamp to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth and a new college that still bears his name.

LINK: An old Historicist piece about the circumstances of Brown's demise.

renowned editors of canadian daily newspapers: j.e. atkinson

Discovered deep in the stacks of the University of Guelph's library: a pamphlet published by the Thomson newspaper chain circa 1959 spotlighting major editors of the past. The selection of honorees covers Canada from coast to coast throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, from the pre-Confederation career of Joseph Howe to several figures who died during the early 1950s. This series of Toronto-related excerpts begins with a profile of Joseph "Holy Joe" Atkinson, the crusading editor who shaped the Star.

this week's scribblings

On Torontoist:

• Visiting Mies van der Rohe-designed apartments and townhouses in Detroit's Lafayette Park neighbourhood
• In Vintage Toronto Ads, a monastic-themed restaurant? Oh brother...
• A look back at the Yonge Street Riot of 1992
• How did Torontonians react when the stock market crashed in 1929?