JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

The Telegram , November 15, 1954. Click on image for larger version.  November 15, 1954: the day Torontonians began enjoying two long-running comic strips, courtesy of the Telegram. Peanuts  ( whose local debut I wrote about for Torontoist ) had been gaining popularity across North America since its debut four years earlier, while Marmaduke began causing mischief that year. Both strips migrated to the Toronto Star when the Tely folded in 1971. Peanuts is regarded as a comic strip classic; Marmaduke is admired for its longevity (creator Brad Anderson is still alive at age 90). The Great Dane's monotony has led papers to try and drop the strip--an act they don't always succeed in carrying out. When the Star attempted to dump it in 1999 , readers revolted. When people like, as the Star put it, the same two jokes told over and over again ("Marmaduke is a dog with some human qualities, and Marmaduke is gargantuan"), it's comfort food they will fight tenac...

August 14, 1947 was a busy day on the global history front. British rule in India ended, as the subcontinent anxiously prepared to split into the new nations of India and Pakistan. In Germany, 22 former attendants at the Buchenwald concentration camp were sentenced to hang ("22 NAZIS TO DIE FOR ATROCITIES" screamed the Star 's main headline). In Tel Aviv, violence between Arabs and Jews escalated, leading to fears, according to the Globe and Mail, of "the worst racial conflict in the Holy Land since 1939." At home, Torontonians endured a week-long heat wave which was blamed for causing two deaths that day: a 60-year-old man who suffered heat prostration and was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Mike's Hospital, and another man who died at his home on Lauder Avenue. Temperatures hovered between 90 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit around the province, and were accompanied by high humidity. The heat caused factories to close early. In Ottawa, government offices clos...

The Telegram , December 3, 1952. Click on image for larger version. If you do the math, "Millionaire Sam" was only four years younger than the Tely itself. I wonder if he found the night watchman job he desired for his final years (unless it's a joke). Unless they opened convenience stores or expanded their hawking into a storefront newsstand, it's unlikely any of the younger men entering the newsboy field in 1952 enjoyed careers as long as Mr. Samuels.

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...

Awhile back, I posted some browning profiles of prominent Canadian newspaper editors. Here's the last of the Toronto-related pieces, featuring long-time Telegram editor John "Black Jack" Robinson. As historian Jesse Edgar Middleton once noted, Robinson spared no mercy for municipal politicians "who showed signs of ‘wobbling’ or seemed unduly eager for self-aggrandisement." According to Telegram chronicler Ron Poulton, the best description of Robinson was provided by longtime Mail and Empire / Globe and Mail columnist J.V. McAree, "who envisioned him hurrying through the streets with a gait like an Indian on the trail, eyes down, pockets stuffed with newspapers, coat everlastingly flapping. He sometimes passed his own daughters without seeing them. Friends who haled him were grabbed in passing and coaxed to keep up. McAree thought that Robinson was colour-blind to all shades between black and white. 'Either a thing was something to thank God for ...