JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

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...

  The journalism school that Toronto's morning conservative paper barely conceals its disdain for evolved into the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (though I agree that one doesn't have to sit in a classroom to learn the essentials of reporting). Seventy-nine budding scribes made up the opening class on September 30, 1912. Within five years, the school handed out its first Pulitzer Prize, which makes me wonder if the Mail and Empire later pooh-poohed the concept of journalism awards. Source: the Mail and Empire , April 19, 1912.

H.H. Wiltshire, aka The Flaneur, was one of the first columnists to appear in Toronto newspapers. According to historian Paul Rutherford in his book A Victorian Authority: the daily press in late nineteenth century Canada , Wiltshire's Saturday morning musings in the Mail and Mail and Empire "might roam over the woeful condition of France or Ireland, the arts world, Toronto civic politics, displaying a Conservative bias but not in any strident fashion." As Wiltshire's nom de plume implies, his columns read like the thoughts of a man carefully observing his surroundings as he wanders the city and wire reports. Wiltshire readily interacted with his readers, answering their general questions or debating their opinions. Here's how Wiltshire greeted his readers during his holiday column a century ago: To all my happy readers I wish a Happy Christmas and a good New Year. For them, "may good digestion wait on appetite and health on both," as the familia...