JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

The following offers supplementary material for a recent Torontoist post , which you should read first before diving into this post. Don River flood, looking south from Wilton Avenue (now Dundas Street) bridge, March 27, 1916. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 1170. Click on image for larger version. The City of Toronto Archives’ online treasure chest of images includes plenty of pictures of floods along the Don River between 1916 and 1920. A few stories about those shots, starting with the March 28, 1916 edition of the Globe : Swelling of the Don, Humber, and Credit Rivers by the heavy rain of yesterday put much land around Toronto beneath a tide of ice and rushing water, while the flooding of the Canadian Northern Railway yards at Rosedale to a depth of four feet suspended traffic to and from Toronto over their lines for some hours, the eastbound afternoon trains being cancelled…So far as the Don is concerned, this is the worst flood since 1897. One of the remarkabl...

While I've spent a good deal of time driving along 401, exploring its underside usually means waiting for a traffic light to change. I suspect the psychogeographers were overdue for a look underneath Toronto's busiest road, as we did during last week's trek along a northern stretch of the Don River. One of the first stops was a lonely Info-to-Go pillar near Auberge du Pommier. Seems like an odd location, unless there was high demand from those walking through the valley, motorists whose broken-down vehicles barely made it off the 401 or smokers looking for reading material on a dinner break. From here we wandered down into the Don Valley Golf Course , which sees more pawprints than tees during the winter. The official city rules on how to behave while playing golf. At least the shirt restriction isn't so narrow that only polo shirts are allowed, as has been the case on my few outings to the fairway. Walking through the course wasn't a problem, as previous...

This post was made possible by the lobbying efforts of former mayor Mel Lastman. Without his dogged perserverance to have the Sheppard subway line built after the provincial government cancelled plans to build an Eglinton line , this might have a post about a psychogeographic walk that started at Caledonia or York Centre stations. I doubt I've used the Sheppard line more than twice since "Mel's Folly" opened in 2002. Both were out of curiousity, since I usually require a car for most destinations along its length (hi IKEA!). According to the TTC's 2005-2006 statistics , Bessarion had the second-lowest ridership of all subway/RT stations, with an average of 2,130 passengers a day (the bottom was Ellesmere, with 1,960). Spending half-an-hour in the concourse on a weeknight while waiting for other intrepid psychogeographers lent credence to the numbers, with more passengers depicted on the walls than live human beings passing through. Definitely not enough ...

1,236: ONE FINE EVENING ABOVE THE BRICK WORKS When photos don't turn out so hot in their original form, it's Photoshop to the rescue...or at least a chance to play with images like a kid who's been unleashed with a box of crayons (though in my case, that usually meant scribbling indecipherable stories in my picture books). The lookout above the Don Valley Brick Works provides a great view of the city, especially at night. From the onetime top of a quarry , one can look over to the downtown skyline or traffic whizzing by on the Don Valley Parkway. Despite the latter's presence, it is a peaceful spot. Unlike the last time I was up there, we didn't have to escape via a private backyard . Note how the lights on Bayview, DVP and other area roads combine in the top picture to form a golden string of light that winds it way into downtown. It resembles an illuminated trail to carry people from the darkness into the distant city, even if the path is winding its ...

Tried to go with a slightly spooky theme on last week's walk. With a stroll alongside Mt. Pleasant Cemetery as the starting point, who knew what ghoulish sights and sounds awaited? Heath St is one of Toronto's most chopped-up streets, hacked off into three sections due to ravines. The busiest portion is the main branch, running from the Rosedale ravine to almost the back entrance to St. Clair West subway station (from there to Bathurst, it's Tichester) - I often use this portion as a car/bike alternative to St. Clair. We joined Heath at the end of its Moore Park branch, where it runs into a footbridge across the Moore Park ravine. The yellow light cast the right eerie note. Once across the bridge, we headed into the ravine. Our eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, the only light provided by the occasional house up top. The path followed Mud Creek, which was appropriate given that we wandered along a combination of mud and leaves, which created a spooky squishing...