last two weeks of scribblings

On Torontoist:

• Vintage Toronto Ads about the Mothers of Invention and the Coles Canadiana Collection.
• Past Toronto city council rebellions - will there be more in the near future?
• New Year's day 2013. Ann Arbor. Leafs and Wings. NHL Winter Classic. Probably not a day to go to Zingerman's.
• The Sutton Place Hotel, slated to become condos, had an explosive beginning.
• After her Toronto debut in 1985, local music critics declared that Whitney Houston possessed "a voice that can scale mountains."
• A proposed conversion of a historic church in Deer Park to condos raises issues about heritage preservation and community input.

On OpenFile Toronto:

• Past Pieces of Toronto reads the news at the Telegram Building and takes a slow, gentle ride on the moving sidewalks of Spadina subway station.

last week's scribblings

On Torontoist:

• Gallery one: Casa Mendoza.
• In Vintage Toronto Ads, wanna buy some union-friendly garments?
• Gallery two: Ontario Place.
• Historicist examines a 1952 Saturday Evening Post article about Toronto. Conclusion? We like money.

On OpenFile Toronto

• Past Pieces of Toronto goes weekly, starting with a look at the Paradise Cinema.

vintage national geographic ads of the day

Anyone following the saga of Caterpillar's decisions to first ask its workers in London, Ontario to take a 50 percent pay cut, then close the plant may find dark humour in the ads we're spotlighting today. Back in the late 1970s, Caterpillar portrayed itself as a good corporate citizen interested in spurring debate on environmental and public infrastructure issues. A long series of ads in National Geographic explored topics ranging from road maintenance to water pollution. The tag line on all of them—"There are no simple solutions. Only intelligent choices"—probably sounds like a sick joke to those who lost their jobs in London.


There are a dozen more ads in this series on my Flickr feed.

Source: National Geographic, June 1977

last week's scribblings

On Torontoist:

• In Vintage Toronto Ads, the birth of Prime Time Sports.
• What was in the time capsule found at Maple Leaf Gardens?

On Heritage Toronto:

• The tale of the Toronto Toros.