JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

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 ...

Source: The Enterprise , September 8, 1965 . Just one of the odd little stories that catch my eye during a marathon research session, which in this case was conducted in the comfy confines of the top floor of North York Central Library. In terms of newspaper research, I prefer working at NYCL because it tends to be a little quieter than Toronto Reference (the exceptions being teenagers who decide it's the perfect spot to release their raging hormones and one frequent researcher unfortunately endowed with distracting verbal/physical tics) and certain older papers are not kept under lock and key. It also has a large selection of community papers from the north half of the city stretching from Don Mills to Weston, which have been valuable when researching suburban stories I didn't look far enough in the future to see what the feedback on this sign was. I can't imagine a slogan like "progess with economy" excited too many residents. The "city with heart...

Source: a disintegrating copy of The Daily Mirror (overseas edition), April 7, 1953.

The cover caught my eye as it sat in a bin at Goodwill Buy the Pound in Scarborough: a large, blonde-haired bully about to give the beats to a bespectacled pencil-neck geek whose dog is afraid of what might unfold. There was something familiar about the bully, though it took a second to kick in. Sweet jeezus, it's Rob Ford! Flipping through the book, the resemblance grew with each page. I figured it was worth making a fifty-cent investment, since who knew when it might come in handy for a mayoral fiasco. That opportunity is now. Wednesday night, there was a confrontation next to Ford's home between the mayor and Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale . Details are still emerging, but Ford's actions toward the media in the wake of the incident (such as refusing to talk to any City Hall reporters unless Dale is removed from the beat) reinforce his image as a bully to those who don't support him. Which brings us back to Let's Talk About Being Bullied . Let's ...

Source: Captain Britain #28, April 20, 1977. Sort this one out: a game page written and drawn by a Canadian for an American publisher who placed it in a comic book designed for the British market. You follow? The game itself is pretty simple. If you're feeling bored, print out the full-sized version , grab the nearest die, and play a round or three. Owen McCarron was an advertising director and cartoonist with the Halifax Chronicle-Herald whose feature Fun and Games was syndicated across Canada. A comic book fan, McCarron produced various giveaways that, according to John Bell's guide to Canadian comic book history Invaders From The North (Toronto: Dundurn, 2006), were "mostly full-colour comics that were distinguished by bold, engaging artwork and reasonably solid storylines." For  Marvel, McCarron produced Fun and Games pages like the one above and a series that ran 13 issues in 1979-80 with covers advising readers that "all you need is a pencil....

  The journalism school that Toronto's morning conservative paper barely conceals its disdain for evolved into the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (though I agree that one doesn't have to sit in a classroom to learn the essentials of reporting). Seventy-nine budding scribes made up the opening class on September 30, 1912. Within five years, the school handed out its first Pulitzer Prize, which makes me wonder if the Mail and Empire later pooh-poohed the concept of journalism awards. Source: the Mail and Empire , April 19, 1912.

One series of paperbacks I've picked up at fundraising book sales over the years is Penguin's food handbooks.  Small, rarely more than 50 cents a copy, and ranging in subjects from haute cuisine to proper freezing techniques, they're food guides designed for reading instead of gawking. Aimed at a British audience, there are occasional nods to North America, such as a brief look at our fermented grape industry in Allan Sichel's 1965 guide The Penguin Book of Wines .

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

At first I laughed at the absurdity of this ad’s claims: turning into a misanthropic wretch because of an ill-fitting shirt. Then I remembered I’ve been guilty of yelling in anger or cursing my physical shape whenever a shirt that fit well on its first wearing shrank after being washed. This is especially true if the shirt cost more than my usual apparel budget. There have been times where I’ve been ultra-paranoid about purchasing clothes out of fear they would shrink by 50% or, if it was a type of garment I knew was prone to a water-induced diet, remain in an enlarged state suitable for a clown costume. In other words, the man in the ad deserves his moment of cheerfulness. Source: the Toronto Daily Mail , January 23, 1892

How to turn a nice sketch of a turn-of-the-century gentleman into a depiction of a hideous victim of venereal disease: assign the printer to randomly drop ink over a second copy and switch his fancy tie into a bow tie. The victim in today's ad looks not so much like a tragic sufferer of syphilis, but more like an Edwardian conception of a zombie or a gentleman whose portrait was painted by Basil Hallward .  Source: the Toronto World , May 21, 1902.

There once was an ad Whose opening was mad And celebrated poetry so bad It made us kinda sad But not as much as Vlad Who tried to write a poem about plaid While sprawled in his pad Next to his sleeping dad For a recent literature grad He did not think his prose was so rad. Source: Now , March 30, 1989.

Do not go gentle down that good road... Photo taken on Royal Oak Road, west of Little Britain, September 14, 2011.

With the backlog of material sitting here, it takes a while before I get around to thoroughly browsing magazines I've picked up on a whim because they could be useful for future research or a tossed-off blog post.  When I finally get around to reading them, the notes previous readers left behind jump out at me. Such is the case with today's feature presentation, taken from an early 1950s issue of Better Homes & Gardens I purchased in Herkimer, NY during a roadtrip to Boston last spring.  I was walking off lunch from a nearby diner (a massive Denver omelette, accompanied by biscuits served with gravy that didn't resemble wallpaper paste) along the town's definitely-seen-better-days main street when I stopped in a quirky antique shop. Unlike similar establishments, the prices weren't going to break the bank — the magazine was one of several items I purchased for a buck apiece. Took a quick flip, saw its potential, tossed it in the trunk, and rediscovered it ...

Construction continues on the ground level of the Toronto Reference Library . Coming during 2012: a new browsery, expanded gallery space, and a branch of Balzac's . Also coming in 2012: a return to regular posting on this site.  Photo taken December 28, 2011 .

Dear readers: may you have better luck finding what you wanted under the Christmas tree than these people did a century ago ( I already have ). Unlike Bobby, little Jamie would have been happier receiving a well-illustrated "Lives of Great Men" (or "Lives of Great Hockey Players" or "Lives of Great B-Movie Character Actors") than a pair of skates that might kill my ankles. Source: the Globe , December 25, 1911

H.H. Wiltshire, aka The Flaneur, was one of the first columnists to appear in Toronto newspapers. According to historian Paul Rutherford in his book A Victorian Authority: the daily press in late nineteenth century Canada , Wiltshire's Saturday morning musings in the Mail and Mail and Empire "might roam over the woeful condition of France or Ireland, the arts world, Toronto civic politics, displaying a Conservative bias but not in any strident fashion." As Wiltshire's nom de plume implies, his columns read like the thoughts of a man carefully observing his surroundings as he wanders the city and wire reports. Wiltshire readily interacted with his readers, answering their general questions or debating their opinions. Here's how Wiltshire greeted his readers during his holiday column a century ago: To all my happy readers I wish a Happy Christmas and a good New Year. For them, "may good digestion wait on appetite and health on both," as the familia...

An all-too-familiar pattern of settling into a fine day of work. More about Gluyas Williams in an American Heritage profile . Source: The Telegram , May 28, 1928

"Flee." - Dave Marsh, summarizing the discography of Chase in the 1979 edition of The Rolling Stone Record Guide .  All three of  Chase's records were bestowed with the guide's lowest rating on a five star scale, which wasn't a star but a square, defined as "worthless: records that need never (or should never) have been created. Reserved for the most bathetic bathwater." Was Chase's style of jazz-rock fusion deserving of snarky scorn? A YouTube search came up with a ltelevision performance that lives up to their horny billing. The group's career was cut short when leader Bill Chase and three other members were killed in a plane crash in 1974. Source: National Lampoon , May 1972 

Peter Lorre at dinner , between 1955 and 1964. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 3429 (Alexandra Studio). One of the joys of digging through the treasure chest of photos uploaded by the City of Toronto Archives  is finding unusual pictures that end up distracting me from what I’m supposed to be searching for. Take the shot above, found while seeking "dinner" photos. The scene: a nice restaurant, somewhere in Toronto during the late 1950s or early 1960s (any historic culinary experts good at identifying it?). Actor Peter Lorre is being interviewed by writer Frank Rasky. Lorre holds a sausage, which resembles the breakfast variety despite the picture being taken at dinner, in his fork. He gives it an odd glance. Is Lorre: Pondering his next answer? Discovering there's something wrong with the sausage? Illustrating a point to amuse the interviewer?  Demonstrating a dining technique director Fritz Lang left on the cutting room floor after sho...

While there will be a lot of happy faces at today's Santa Claus Parade today in Toronto, I suspect they may not match the joy expressed along the procession route in 1918. That year's parade rounded out a week that began with the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. Despite the other celebrations and parades that week, Torontonians weren't too pooped to watch Santa make his journey through the city. And a journey it was: back then, the route began at Yonge and Eglinton and made its way south until it reached Eaton's Toyland at the corner of Albert and James (an intersection that survived the construction of the Eaton Centre).