JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

NOTE : This December, I'm challenging myself to prepare a post a day here. This is partly an attempt to use up materials I've hoarded lately, partly a writing exercise, partly a test of how disciplined I can be. The posts may be quick discoveries, writing experiments, scattered thoughts, or whatever else pops into my brain. Previous personal challenges like this have petered out quickly, so consider yourself warned! For the past few months, the Internet Archive has been my giant rabbit hole. I've spent many hours exploring its magazine collections, including random selections of major periodicals, titles I loved as a kid, and microfilms of trade journals that will be useful for future projects. It's been equally enlightening and head-scratching. Falling into the latter category is a run of The   American Legion magazine from the 1990s. Serving the largest veterans organization in the US, the magazine focused on sensationalistic right-wing content during this period. Hi...

Packing for a move inevitably causes glimpses of your past to resurface, especially when you have packrat tendencies. Sifting through a pile of papers atop my record shelf, I found a golden yellow folder cover in newsprint-smudged fingerprints. Inside were multiple copies of several stories I wrote for the University of Guelph's newspaper, the Ontarion , during my final year in academia. I suspect the articles in the folder were intended to be attached to job applications, which I sent plenty of as I tried to sort out my future and avoid a forced return to the Windsor area. Among the clips was this piece, my first feature-length foray into urban issues, published during the summer semester after I graduated. My work for the Ontarion had been almost exclusively arts-related or the weekly archival roundup, though I had started to slip in the odd news story (such as covering hearings for a student occupation which occurred while I had been abroad). When this article was publishe...

This installment of my "Retro T.O." column for The Grid was originally published on June 19, 2012. Globe and Mail , July 26, 1997. Click on image for larger version. Lovers of wild pants and saxophones rejoice! As of this week, the Spadina bus of 1980s musical fame has returned while platform reconstruction takes the streetcar right-of-way out of service for several months. And the return of bus service might reawaken arguments that stalled the construction of the Spadina streetcar line for years.

This installment of my "Retro T.O." column for The Grid was originally published on May 8, 2012. Shortly after becoming mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman was asked if he worried about his wife Marilyn’s verbal snafus. “All the time,” he said. “But I find it cute and if people don’t like it, too bad.” The same could be said of Mel’s odd outbursts, yet few found it cute when Lastman uttered a death threat against CBC reporter (and current city councillor) Adam Vaughan in May 1999. Thanks to a police leak, it was an open secret among City Hall reporters that Marilyn Lastman was caught shoplifting a $155 pair of designer pants at the Promenade Mall Eaton’s on April 19, 1999. According to the police report no charges were laid “due to her age as well as no outstanding offences on her record.” Sources close to Marilyn believed the pressures of Mel’s job had resulted in depression and prescription drug use. The incident was kept quiet until the satirical magazine Frank published a ...

This post offers supplementary material for a Torontoist post I wrote several months ago , which I am revisiting in light of the passing of Nelson Mandela. Front page, the Toronto Star , February 11, 1990. Click on image for larger version. Note that amid the history-making headlines about Mandela's release from prison, a Toronto buffoon made his way to the front page. In this case, it's Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard, who would pass away two months after this edition.  Advertisement, Now , May 29, 1986. The Toronto Arts Against Apartheid Festival proved controversial during its organizational stages. When the United Way announced the event in November 1985, it gained support from local business leaders. "Here's the time for this city to show where it stands," noted Xerox Canada president David McCamus. Yet there were criticisms that such an event over-politicized the United Way, stretching its mandate beyond distributing funding to organizations wi...

Toronto’s Fringe Festival is currently marking its 25 th year, which provides me with a good excuse to look at the first edition I attended, way back in 1999. At the time I was winding down my days in Guelph. Still recovering from the black comedy of working at the Ontarion , I was searching for work, hoping to avoid returning to Windsor. I had just moved into the cheapest place I ever lived in, the entire top floor of a house near Edinburgh and Paisley, a summer sublet which set me back $140/month. Looking for something to lift the gloom of job hunting, I decided a trip to Toronto was in order. I’d read about the Fringe for a few years, and its ticket prices fit my budget. I’d pick a show at random and hope for the best. Flipping through the program doesn’t reveal what I saw that year. No tickets slipped inside, no performances circled, no clippings. So I checked a journal from that time. Nada. Then I remembered I had an IKEA box full of clippings from my first few years ...

This post provides supplementary material for an article in The Grid regarding the time the army was called in to help Toronto cope with a major snowstorm in 1999 , which you should read before diving into the following text. Front page, Toronto Sun , January 15, 1999. Confession time: I’m drawing a blank as to what I did during the Snowmageddon of January 1999. I definitely experienced it—at the time I was living in Guelph, working at the campus paper. Given the regular dumpings Guelph received, the storm likely didn’t seem unusual. It was probably just another snowy day, albeit one with greater accumulation. My guess is that either I curled up with a pile of library books or headed over to the Ontarion office to work, surf the net, or play endless games of Civilization II . It was around this time that staff relations within the office settled into a permanent deep-freeze, sparked by deep disagreements about the cover of that week’s issue. The only story about the st...