JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

From 2012 to 2014 I contributed to The Grid . This article was originally published online on July 15, 2013. Given the ongoing debates over public transit in Scarborough, this piece will remain timely for a long time to come. You may also wish to read a piece I wrote for Torontoist several months later on the general history of public transit in Scarborough . Toronto Star , March 19, 1985. Click on image for larger version. Torontonians love arguing about the same proposed transit lines ad nauseum. Tuesday’s City Council debate—regarding which form the Scarborough RT‘s replacement will take—feels like a replay of past battles where a streetcar/LRT line was displaced in favour of a pricier, sexier option. Toronto Star , January 29, 1975. Among the priority studies recommended in January 1975—by a joint provincial/Metro Toronto task force on the region’s transportation needs for the next quarter-century—was a high-speed transit line linking the recently approved Kennedy s...

Toronto Sun , November 3, 1980. After a nine-month slog, the 2014 municipalelection campaign draws to a close today. Amid its stranger-than-fiction twists and turns, a sad truth has emerged: there is a segment of Torontonians who have discovered they can get away with boldly displaying small-minded attitudes we like to sweep under the carpet. As Ward 2 candidate Andray Domise observed in atweet this morning referring to a gawdawful Andy Donato cartoon of Olivia Chow published in the Sun, one of the campaign's big problems is "that we've given racists, sexists, xenophobes a platform of legitimacy in TO politics." From attacks on Chow's ethnicity to the mutilation of signs for Islamic candidates, it hasn't been pretty.

While back in A'burg over the weekend, I scanned a pile of material for future use on this site and elsewhere. While flipping through some of my father's old yearbooks, I couldn't resist using these finds. First up, an excerpt from the graduate section of Leaside High School's 56-57 Yearbook, Clan Call . Take a gander at the first name on the class list for 13D: Before anyone asks, my father was a minor niner in 56-57 and didn't know her. Yearbook pics #2 and 3 come from the 1964 edition of U of T's yearbook, Torontoensis . Interesting story behind this one: for years, my father only had the 1962 (his first year) and 1965 (his grad year) editions. He found the 1964 book, as he found many things, at a Windsor Public Library book sale. Why this book was sitting in Windsor may be explained by the law grad on the left. Even more interesting is the law grad on the right end of this row.   Before anyone asks, my father was an arts undergrad and knew neit...