JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Before reading this post, check out the original article on Torontoist . "Far be it for anyone to contradict the Pope's chef—but John Lickiewicz did just that." So began an article on the chef of the Sir Nicholas that appeared in the January 27, 1979 edition of the Globe and Mail . The article was prompted by a claim by Tadeusz Podbereski, the proprietor of the only Polish restaurant in Mexico, that it took three days and eight kinds of meat to prepare a batch of bigos (hunter’s stew) for Pope John Paul II the night before. Lickiewicz felt that Podbereski had put too much effort into the Pope’s meal (“I don’t know why it took him three days to cook. What for?”), as bigos could easily be made in a few hours. Here is Lickiewicz’s recipe for bigos, intended to feed six: Chop up 3 pounds of fresh cabbage and place in a four-inch baking dish. Cover and put in the over for 40 minutes at 300 degrees. Remove from the oven and mix with 1½ pounds of sauerkraut, 1½ pound...

Before reading this post, check out this week's Historicist piece on the Princess Theatre . From the week the Princess reopened in October 1917, an early musical from Jerome Kern ( Show Boat ) and P.G. Wodehouse (the "Jeeves and Wooster" novels) while both were involved in creating small-scale shows for the Princess Theatre in New York. Eighty-seven years passed before Have a Heart saw its next New York production . After that came a return to the Princess by Henry Miller (the actor, not the controversial author ), who had starred in the production that ran when fire destroyed the original building in 1915, Daddy Long-Legs . A random ad pulled from 1929, just over a year before the Princess closed for good, featuring two productions from England. The Jade God ran just under 100 performances on Broadway that year, while this version of Humpty Dumpty premiered a year earlier in the UK. Sources: The Toronto Daily Star , October 6, 1917 and August 31, 1929 

With Toronto in the swing of Bike Month, it seemed appropriate to focus on two-wheeled transport in my Vintage Toronto Ads column on Torontoist . This week, a bike modestly promoted by its manufacturer . You can also catch my most recent Historicist column, covering the sole fatality of the Great Toronto Fire of 1904 . *** Last week, I headed down to the Bloor to catch a fundraiser for the Toronto Cyclists Union , a Rocky Horror-style presentation of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure . A valet lot for bicycles was set up in front of the theatre (alas, I took the subway down - I intended to finally get my bike on the road this weekend, but the weather gods had other ideas). I was surprised to find out how many people I knew in the audience who, like me, had never seen the movie. Can't say I was a big Pee Wee fan at the height of his popularity, nor were most of my peers - it was that age where you (temporarily, as it turned out) reject things that seem childish in nature, even...

If you've read my post this week on Torontoist , consider this the DVD bonus feature. Background: I spent Saturday bouncing back and forth between home and downtown (details soon). During a window between two engagements in the core, I had enough time to slip over to the Toronto Reference Library to do some prep work for this week's Vintage Ads column, which marked the recent death of Ed Mirvish. I went with a nice, round number and zeroed in on newspapers from 40 years ago this week...this way, I could work in the long-defunct Toronto Telegram . I narrowed down the suitable candidates to three ads. Two had great headline banners, but only one wouldn't require hours of Photoshop to remove the years of wear, tear and mediocre microfilm printing. Since the ad I chose lacked a funny-ha-ha headline, I cropped the banners from the runners-up and used them in the article. But, if you're curious to see what the full versions look like... Runner-up #1 was printed exactl...