JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Add "participating in a panel discussion" next to "getting engaged" and "eating a grapefruit without grimacing" to the list of things I've done for the first time this year. Each of the participants was given a question to discuss for five minutes at the start of the session, before the audience asked questions. Mine was "What lessons from the 1970s have been lost?" After making a disclaimer about my personal experience of the city during that decade (restricted to tagging along with my Dad along Queen West), I launched into the following... Among the lessons we should revisit are appreciating architectural styles which fall out of public favour, which aggravates the spectre of doom looming over modernist buildings we’ve discussed in this series; and mobilizing greater public support for threatened sites. Outside of heritage activists and some community groups, think of the preservation campaigns you hear about most in the media—it’s ...

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.

Source: the Telegram , April 7, 1911. Two adjacent sketches make up today's post. Did the artist try to suggest bags under each crook's eyes to illustrate their depravity in holding up one of the city's most prominent jewelers? Or did John Lester naturally look that weary? Also, were they trying to pass along their stolen diamonds to unsuspecting tourists in Niagara Falls? A possible sales pitch under that scenario: WILLIAMS (since he shows promise as the smooth talker of the pair): Hello there young lovers. Are you here to celebrate your honeymoon? GROOM : We are. Just arrived on the train. Been looking forward to this for three years. Do you know if anyone's going over the falls in a barrel today? WILLIAMS : Wouldn't know. Not as common as you'd think. By the way, I notice your rings are not diamonds. BRIDE : He couldn't afford them on his clerk's salary. But our love is priceless. WILLIAMS : That may be true, but it would be nice to hav...