JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

This installment of my "Ghost City" column for The Grid was originally published on January 8, 2013. Toronto Star , March 22, 1981. When East York rejected physician Charles Trow’s offer to sell his 25-acre wooded property south of Leaside to the municipality for use as parkland circa 1950, little did political officials realize the headaches that would ensue over the next half-century. Instead, the property—which offered a beautiful view of the Don Valley—was sold by Trow’s widow in 1953 to developers Hampton Park Company Ltd. Legal problems arose almost immediately as Hampton Park proprietors Harry Freedman and Harry Frimerman beat a foreclosure attempt when they were slow to pay the mortgage. The site was approved for apartment development in East York’s first official plan in 1957, but the document was scrapped when the township planner was fired for consulting with tower builders on the side.

From 2012 to 2014 I contributed to The Grid . This article was originally published online on July 15, 2013. Given the ongoing debates over public transit in Scarborough, this piece will remain timely for a long time to come. You may also wish to read a piece I wrote for Torontoist several months later on the general history of public transit in Scarborough . Toronto Star , March 19, 1985. Click on image for larger version. Torontonians love arguing about the same proposed transit lines ad nauseum. Tuesday’s City Council debate—regarding which form the Scarborough RT‘s replacement will take—feels like a replay of past battles where a streetcar/LRT line was displaced in favour of a pricier, sexier option. Toronto Star , January 29, 1975. Among the priority studies recommended in January 1975—by a joint provincial/Metro Toronto task force on the region’s transportation needs for the next quarter-century—was a high-speed transit line linking the recently approved Kennedy s...

This story has moved to Tales of Toronto .

This post offers supplementary material for an article I wrote for Torontoist , which you should read before diving into this piece. Toronto Star , January 1, 1977. The Star ’s initial coverage of New Year’s Eve celebrations put a positive spin on the evening. A full page of its January 1, 1977 edition was devoted to scenes across Metro Toronto, from revellers downtown to skating clowns in Scarborough. Those who ventured out endured temperatures which dropped to -13°C. On Yonge Street, the new year swept over the strip “like a new disco melody.” Among those mildly disappointed by the scene along Yonge that night was Chuck Ross, a 22-year old marketing analyst from North York. “Most of our friends have girlfriends now, so we figured we’d see if we could find some girls tonight by ourselves,” he observed. “I guess we haven’t tried very hard.” Spurned by the ladies, Ross and a friend wound up dining at an unidentified burger joint, staring at the mirror lining the counter.

Saturday Night , December 1976. With tonight being New Year's Eve, the time seems right to post a pile of booze ads with drink suggestions which were tucked away in a mid-1970s edition of Saturday Night magazine. Don't fret if you don't have a magnifying glass, as you can click on any of the images for a larger version. Feel free to substitute your favourite brand, which may be unavoidable for long-gone labels.

Saturday Night , November 1977. Sometimes, while looking for material around the home office for upcoming articles, I stumble upon items I forgot I had which would have been useful at a particular time. Such was the case last night as I was prepping for this week’s installment of my " Vintage Toronto Ads " column for Torontoist . Flipping through a stack of 1970s Saturday Night magazines next to my desk, I discovered the cover shown above.

It’s not so much that the former World’s Biggest Bookstore is being knocked down that bugs me. Nor that the site may become a parking lot (Toronto’s favourite temporary solution to demolitions during the 1960s/70s) while the property’s owner abandons plans for a “ restaurant row ” in favour of a rezoning application. No, it’s the fact that Indigo didn’t remove the store’s shelving before the wrecking ball made its first punch. 

This summer, I had the opportunity to be interviewed for an online bonus feature for Murdoch Mysteries. After quickly slipping back in time to tour the show’s sets, the camera rolled. Here’s the result – I show up around the 1:55 mark to discuss the state of automobiles in Toronto during the early Edwardian era. Between this, giving a talk to a local historical society a few weeks ago, and leading a heritage walking tour this summer, my confidence in my public speaking ability has skyrocketed. It’s a sideline worthy of further exploration as a sideline to my freelance activities. Fingers crossed that I can tap into more opportunities like these. 

Toronto Sun , November 3, 1980. After a nine-month slog, the 2014 municipalelection campaign draws to a close today. Amid its stranger-than-fiction twists and turns, a sad truth has emerged: there is a segment of Torontonians who have discovered they can get away with boldly displaying small-minded attitudes we like to sweep under the carpet. As Ward 2 candidate Andray Domise observed in atweet this morning referring to a gawdawful Andy Donato cartoon of Olivia Chow published in the Sun, one of the campaign's big problems is "that we've given racists, sexists, xenophobes a platform of legitimacy in TO politics." From attacks on Chow's ethnicity to the mutilation of signs for Islamic candidates, it hasn't been pretty.

The Telegram , December 28, 1923. Does being the first name atop a ballot help one's political career? Likely not; otherwise, Said Aly would be among the critical contenders in this year's Toronto mayoral race (though thankfully his name sits just ahead of our city's perennial racist candidate). It didn't aid Magnus Austin Brillinger (1882-1939) in the 1924 race for the two trustee positions up for grabs in Ward 6. When the votes were tallied on New Year's Day, he finished third behind future TTC chair W.C. McBrien and veteran board member Dr. John Hunter. Better luck next year for the St. Clair Avenue West pharmacist, right?

Toronto Star , December 5, 1960. Click on image for larger version I suspect there are devoted municipal election junkies, especially among Twitterati, who'd love a sheet like this at their fingertips on October 27. Adjustments would be required for the present day: five minute increments on the chart would suit the rapid pace of the internet age (or two-and-a-half if your handwriting is as small as mine is). The suburban mayoral races of 1960 would be replaced with either key council battles or, for the truly dedicated, all 44 wards.

This post offers supplementary material for an article I wrote for Torontoist , which you should read before diving into this piece. Source: The Telegram , Dec 6, 1966. While researching this piece, I was struck at several parallels between Dennison and Rob Ford, namely what we'd now call "retail politics" and campaigning on being mindful of taxpayer dollars. (There were major differences: Dennison was a teetotaller, displayed leftist tendencies during his early political career, and didn't make a public spectacle of himself). Several months before the 1966 municipal election, Toronto Star city hall columnist Ron Haggart looked at Dennison's chances, using language that could have been adapted by his successors in 2010: But Dennison can by no means be written off. He has helped literally thousands of ordinary persons during his years as an alderman and controller at City Hall. He efficiently keeps in touch at election time with those whose problems have c...

Cartoon by Sid Barron, the Toronto Star , November 23, 1962. Click on image for larger version. Adjust the dates to match this year's election (October 27, for the record), and you could easily recycle this cartoon. Some voters may feel as if the world ended long ago during the current drawn-out, fiction-writers-couldn't-make-this-stuff-up narrative.

This post offers supplementary material for an article I wrote for Torontoist , which you should read before diving into this piece. If your appetite has been whetted, here are a pair of Hans Fread recipes I encountered during my research. First up, his take on chicken liver pate. Source: Globe and Mail , November 16, 1957. Note steer behind Hans's head. Second, from Fread's George Brown College course on "Cooking for the Budget Minded," a recipe printed in the September 12, 1969 edition of the Toronto Star . Budget braised beef 1 piece beef fat, size of small potato 4-5 pounds beef, crossribs, or bottom round juice of 1/2 lemon 1 garlic clove, minced 3/4 tsp celery salt 1 tbsp crystallized ginger, diced 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp pepper 1/2 unpeeled lemon, thinly sliced 8 small potatoes, peeled 4-5 carrots, quartered 8 medium onions Dice and melt the fat in a dutch over or pot. Brown the meat slowly on all sides, until it has a good-looking brown co...

This post offers supplementary material for an article I wrote for Torontoist , which you should read before diving into this piece. If only more mayors kept scrapbooks as extensively as Allan Lamport did. To say the dozens of brittle, flaking volumes sitting in the City of Toronto Archives were a valuable resource in preparing this profile is an understatement. Throughout his political career, Lamport clipped every article mentioning his name and pasted them into the type of scrapbook you can easily pick up at Staples or Wal-Mart. During his mayoralty, volumes are organized by newspaper, which is especially helpful in the case of the yet-to-be-digitized Telegram . Warning: due to the condition of the scrapbooks, you’ll need to brush the flakes off yourself after viewing them.

As Toronto's police magistrate between 1877 and 1921, George Taylor Denison III  passed judgement on thousands of people in his court. The press dutifully covered the proceedings daily, leaving historians with a record alternatively amusing, enraging, and heartbreaking. Over the years, I've saved several police court reports, usually topped with a catchy headline like this one. Who doesn't want to know the sordid details surrounding "John the Hugger" that caused him to be hauled in front of Denison? Let's dive into the details of John, the Stone family, the "saucy mendicant,"  and the other cases included in the News 's court roundup on November 22, 1909...

Source: Toronto Star , September 29, 1967. While this story is presented in a charming manner, complete with victim who apparently shook off being grabbed and dunked in a tub of water, it's hard to deny that the hippie-washers were out to commit acts meriting assault charges if attempted now. This wasn't an "attempt to do something constructive," this was a bunch of yahoos looking to stir shit up. Note the look on the victim's face. His expression screams "Seriously? Are you kidding me? Riiight..." Not everyone at U of T felt the same way about cleaning up Yorkville. A story in the Globe and Mail the following day noted that in a 78-56 vote, the Graduate Students Union endorsed financial aid for draft dodgers and for people arrested at a Yorkville sit-in the previous month.

Click on image for larger version. The 1970s. You have a pantry full of Campbell's Vegetable Soup. You can't decide what kind of sandwich will taste best while playing spelling games with the alphabet pasta. Who do you turn to! Toronto Maple Leafs hockey star Dave Keon , of course!

Click on image for larger version In the midst of recent housecleaning, this pamphlet fell out of a decaying cookbook I was about to toss out. Much screams 1970s: the layout, the nod to Canadian nationalism, and the heavy use of tinned food. Perhaps somebody worked very hard in Aylmer's test kitchen to devise these nautical-inspired dishes...or perhaps they were handed a list of products and told "do something with these!" Note the absence of "edible" in that sentence. Brave enough to enjoy a taste of "Nautical 'n Nice?" Continue on...

Source: Eye , May 3, 2001. While researching a recent Torontoist post regarding the demise of Eye/Eye Weekly/The Grid , I dug through a box of material meant to be scrapbooked over a decade ago. Besides finding a couple of fully intact issues focusing on the 2001 Toronto Fringe Festival, I unearthed this clipping of a long-shuttered Windsor pizzeria whose slowly-decaying sign provided years of mirth for my sister and I. Over time, Star Pizza's sign lost more letters. By the mid-2000s you could buy a "lie" for 99 cents, which is a bargain when you're looking to hoodwink somebody.