JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Book plates are little devices created especially for you; embodying your individual tastes or coat of arms. One pasted inside the front of your book not only ornaments the volume, but to the borrower with a defective memory, is a constant reminder of your ownership. - artist C. Valentine Kirby, 1911.  Sometimes, when browsing used books, you'll find a decoratively illustrated imprint or sticker indicating whose library the title once belonged too. It tells you a little about its former owner, who either cared enough to individually mark their books with illustrations that reflected their personal style, such as a sense of humour or a flair for the romantic, a tribute to family history, or betray an inflated ego. Inspired by an exhibit in Salem, Massachusetts, The Buffalo Sunday News placed a spotlight on book plates in its October 29, 1911 edition, focusing on the work and thoughts of artist  Clarence Valentine Kirby (1875-1947). In the years following this piece, Kirby ser...

Toronto Star, October 19, 1918. Wyeth's Sage and Sulphur Compound may have worked too well in restoring Mother's vitality, given Junior's longing look. We can't blame the sage, since this product didn't contain any . *** Two years to the day after the last post on this site was published, the Warehouse is back in business. How long this revival lasts, I can't predict, or what form it will take beyond non-GTA centric material and old ads. I suspect most posts will be quickies I crank out while starting or ending my day, or while suffering from writer's block in the middle of a paid assignment. One thing you will notice if you go back through the archive is that some posts will vanish, as I'm moving Toronto-centric material, especially my Grid pieces, over to Tales of Toronto over the next few months. As with my Torontoist pieces, these posts will contain plenty of additional material where appropriate, or merged with other content.

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...