JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

  Windsor Record, October 5, 1899. Yes, it is ok to have happy thoughts. Especially when you have a functioning late 19th century beast of a stove that might not be the best on the market but will do you what you need it to do.  The model that was just ok may have been manufactured by Brantford-based William Buck Stove Company, who appear to have published several pamphlets about their "Happy Thought" line. This note to housewives appeared in an 1899 guide that is currently available on the Internet Archive .  This pamphlet provided some historical context, with its writer (credited as "the 'Happy Thought' Range Man") declared that "no better stove man ever lived" than William Buck, whose experience "taught him that there was a class of people in this country - a class by the way largely increased since his day - that wanted something better than the ordinary cooking apparatus, no matter how well made, that was at that time in vogue." In ...

Last night I went to Second City for the first time in ages. Little did I know the comedy wouldn't stop when I got home. The interwebs were abuzz with news of  2010 Toronto mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson jumping into this year's race. Said candidate decided to launch their campaign with a lengthy poem which provoked waves of derision, because that's what you automatically do when you have a platform which allows only 140 characters at a time (though in this case, it is a train wreck of verse). In my fatigued state, the following thought sprang into my head: The only offhand example I thought of was a piece of doggerel I encountered while researching the incorporation of Toronto in 1834 . Technically, William Lyon Mackenzie wasn't running for mayor when the following piece was written - the position didn't exist yet - but he'd be named our city's first chief exec soon enough. Context: Mackenzie, along with some other Reformers, opposed Upper Can...

This post offers supplementary material for a Torontoist post I recently wrote , which you should dive into before reading any further.  If you're interested in sampling Kit Coleman's writing, the best compilation is Ted Ferguson's Kit Coleman: Queen of Hearts , published in 1978. Ferguson organizes excerpts from Kit's columns by theme, generally choosing her funniest bits. One major drawback of this book: no footnotes indicating which editions of the Mail or Mail and Empire the pieces were drawn from. The last chapter offers a series of "words of wisdom" from Kit. Some of her advice seems quaint, some reveals her distrust of others, some only require slight tweaking to remain relevant: The arrogance of youth would be unbearable if it were not so amusing. Candor is a virtue for which women pay most dearly. It is no use attempting to converse with cranks. As soon as you discover their crankism, fly. Was there ever a friendship between...