JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on February 12, 2012. Photo of the Telegram Building by Ellis Wiley, taken prior to 1966, City of Toronto Archives Fonds 124, File 1, Item 91. British press baron Lord Northcliffe referred to it as “the finest newspaper office I have ever visited.” Most people called it “the old lady of Melinda Street.” For over 60 years, the rambling collection of buildings at the southeast corner of Bay and Melinda Streets was home to the Telegram , the voice of the city’s conservative Protestant working class. By the late 1890s, the Telegram had outgrown its offices at King and Bay. While warned about staying on Bay Street, whose homes and businesses were regarded as being in seedy decline, publisher John Ross Robertson was drawn to the Crown Hotel a block south at Melinda Street. A...

Alas poor Detroit. A city teetering on the brink of receiving an emergency financial manager appointed by the state of Michigan run its affairs .A city that has become a poster child for ruin porn. A city Forbes magazine declared to be " America’s Most Miserable City ." Yep, Motown is going through a rough patch. How, when, or if it bounces back remains to be seen.

From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on February 5, 2012. Spadina moving walkway. Photo by Eva Amsen . With eyes closed, imagine yourself at an airport ready to embark on a jet-age journey to an exotic destination. As you and your backpack, briefcase, or luggage glide along the moving walkway, dreams of adventure or relaxation fill your head. The faint odour of rodents barely distracts you from your visions. Suddenly, there’s a lurch at the end of the walkway that jolts you back into the reality of standing at either end of the Spadina subway station. We may be exaggerating the experience one could have had using the moving walkways that carried TTC passengers between subway lines for 25 years. Whether you saw the moving walkway as a novelty item, a useful connector or, as a cranky early user told the Star,...

This post offers supplementary material for a recent "Ghost City" column in The Grid , which you should read first before diving into the following text. Among the neat things I found while looking through the city archive files on William Peyton Hubbard was a letter from 1907 stamped with Toronto's official civic seal. The document was an official notice from Mayor Emerson Coatsworth vouching for Hubbard while the latter toured Washington and other American cities. Given the racial attitudes of the time, I suspect there were numerous occasions this letter aided Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard is a highly esteemed citizen of Toronto. He is now and has been for many years a leading member of our City Council, during which time he has occupied a number of positions of prominence. He has been repeatedly elected to the Board of Control by the City at large, and has occupied the position of Vice-Chairman of the Board, a position second only in importance to that of Mayor...

Source: the Globe , December 20, 1893. To those celebrating Valentine's Day later this week, keep this in mind: a relationship can't be cemented unless there's high-quality shortening uniting you. According to Wikipedia , Cottolene was a beef tallow and cottonseed oil based shortening marketed from 1868 through the mid-20th century. Its advertising campaigns were directed at destroying North America's "lard habit." Please don't let this catch the eye of some Crisco executive, lest they get the brilliant idea to run a viral marketing campaign based around romance and their product. There are many, many roads that could go down, some of which aren't safe for work.

This post provides supplementary material for an article in The Grid regarding the time the army was called in to help Toronto cope with a major snowstorm in 1999 , which you should read before diving into the following text. Front page, Toronto Sun , January 15, 1999. Confession time: I’m drawing a blank as to what I did during the Snowmageddon of January 1999. I definitely experienced it—at the time I was living in Guelph, working at the campus paper. Given the regular dumpings Guelph received, the storm likely didn’t seem unusual. It was probably just another snowy day, albeit one with greater accumulation. My guess is that either I curled up with a pile of library books or headed over to the Ontarion office to work, surf the net, or play endless games of Civilization II . It was around this time that staff relations within the office settled into a permanent deep-freeze, sparked by deep disagreements about the cover of that week’s issue. The only story about the st...

From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on January 15, 2012. A scene from an evening at Palace Pier: during a dance sponsored by the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in January 1951, participants were officially greeted by Toronto Controller John Innes. As his speech neared its end, he noted that it would be nice if everyone in the hall knew how to do an old-fashioned waltz. “Having said his piece,” reported the Star ’s Alex Barris, “Controller Innes was leaving the stage when the band started playing—a waltz.” Innes grabbed Lisa Derny, an Arthur Murray employee who had introduced him to the audience earlier in the evening, “waltzed her around a couple of times, planted a kiss on her cheek and strutted off.” That anyone ever received a kiss at Palace Pier was a minor miracle given the venue’s checkered history. When...