JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Photo taken on Gordon Street, Toronto, December 3, 2009. From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile , which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. This is the final installment to be reprinted, one appropriate for today as it was originally posted on April 1, 2012.  That date is key, for the following is an April Fools joke, one I learned several lessons from. Prepare yourself for another lengthy preamble.

Source: the Mirror , December 13, 1972. Click on image for larger, readable version. Now that my apartment has more or less been cleaned up, time to sift through the mess of files on my computer. Buried in folders with titles like "Future Story Ideas," "Toronto Ads," and the vague "Misc.," are loose ends I've collected over years of research, waiting for their moment in the spotlight. Sometimes, the news cycle rewards the long waits these .jpg and .pdf files endure in the bowels of the Warehouse-o-matic 3000. Others are useless until the right time of the year rolls around. Take the story above, a 1972 profile of North York's finest Santas. I suspect that any jolly old St. Nick 40 years on who gently but firmly tells a kid they're a greedy brat would receive a warning at the minimum, an escort by the security guard elves at the maximum.

From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on April 8, 2012. Bata Headquarters, Don Mills, circa 1965-1969. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 217, Series 249, File 356, Item 023. Thomas Bata was proud that the Don Mills headquarters of his shoe empire was designed so that it couldn’t be expanded. He believed that the role of headquarters was not to dictate corporate policy, but to act as catalyst for stimulating new approaches to marketing and product development. “In outlining our specification to the architect,” he wrote in his autobiography Bata Shoemaker to the World , “we insisted that the building should be designed so that, if we were ever tempted to spawn a huge bureaucracy, we would be thwarted by the lack of space and immovable walls.” While Thomas Bata’s vision was fine as long as his company retained the p...