Posts Tagged ‘ historic ’
The edges of tedium
Posted on March 29th, 2010 – 2 CommentsThat romp I took through the Toronto Archives the other day didn’t end there, dear reader. It went on for hours as I pored maps and stories of the city dating back to 1834, when Toronto first became Toronto. Okay, possibly the second time, but this time the King himself signed off on it. York it weren’t no more anyhow.
It all started with innocently enough. I usually just close the window after flipping through the photos but this time, just for fun, I decided to click on the Archives logo in the corner. Sometimes their web exhibits are suuuuuuper boring. But this time, for Toronto’s 175th, they did a series on the city in 1834.
And now I can say that I know where the original city extended to — it’s been something of a bug on my itchy brain for a while now.
I checked the maps against current street names and locations and the boundary points I came up with seem to agree with the maps going back to 1834. Unfortunately these points disagree with the Archives’ analysis, but I don’t care.
According to me, the north-eastern edge of 1834 Toronto is the intersection of Queen Street and River Street:
At that time Queen Street was called Lot Street because it led to a bunch of allotted land — lots. Also, there was no queen. Clever.
The photos, by the way, are looking into the old city from the four corners. Some of those corners haven’t seen much action since the old city, as you can see above. Others, like the south-eastern Gooderham’s mill and later Worted boozery, have been since been gussied up:
But if full-on historical effacement is your thing (it’s okay to admit you like modern), the south-western edge on Front Street doesn’t get any more devastating. Not only is the intersecting Peter Street discarded for Blue Jays Way (organized ball leagues weren’t really a priority in 1834), but there is literally nothing left of the original city except Front Street:
Marvels of the modern era
Posted on March 25th, 2010 – 18 CommentsNo doubt about it, I’m going to copyright hell. Yes, I’ve once again raided the Toronto Archives (I highly recommend a search or two; lotsa fun stuff), and emerged with some gleaming gems. Should the Archives ever decide to sue my blatancy, I’ll no doubt be forced to hand over much of TCL’s total monetary earnings to date: $3.67. If I made them cry, emotional damages too. But I just can’t help it; they have way too much great stuff to hide behind a stuffy web interface.
This time around I went back to the mid-sixties in search of the very beginnings of computing in Toronto. Okay, yeah, I’ve been spending a lot of time online making sweet sweet love to the blogosphere. And programming. But the digital miracles I’m pulling out of my ass (and many of us are), these days would’ve been unimaginable forty-five years ago. In fact, even though I’m more closely familiar with most of the gizmos in these photos than the average person, even I’m at a loss to put name or function to everything there. But I’ll try.
Okay, so from my understanding, this is what computing looked like at the University of Toronto circa 1965ish:
Can you imagine what it would’ve taken to slap together a basic web page at that time? Like, look at the fellow in the photo above; picking out a frozen pizza because he knows he’s going to be a while. It’s nice that they provided slushie machines for the programmers:
I guess he’s picking his flavour.
Oh, yeah, of course I’d be hideously remiss if I didn’t mention the sideburns. That was the requisite look in those days, from my understanding. For when you’d fall asleep on your desk on account of the speed of the computers. Sop up your drool ‘n all. (I know, gross, but hey, practical.)
So here’s Mr. Burns actually earning a living:
A bunch of stuff I found on the sidewalk
Posted on March 20th, 2010 – 6 CommentsIf, during the next few days, you come at just the right time of the evening, dear reader, you may notice that TCL suddenly looks completely different. Perhaps considerably worse. Perhaps better. Perhaps exactly the same. That’s because I’m playing around with new themes. Sure, they look nice in their boxes, but I have to take ‘em out for a spin – and I only have one blog. I’d like to add a TwitPic feed in there too.
If you look at the top of the sidebar you’ll notice the flipping Twitter feed and, occasionally, some of those updates link to TwitPic photos. These are taken by a spunky Samsung BlackJack the Second in the battlefield. Or the mall. Wherever the phone happens to be. Unfortunately, the quality could be better. Much better. But it’s a camera phone so all I can do is my best.
Besides, the TwitPic feed is meant as filler for, and sometimes preview of, the next post; not as a replacement. Something to look at while the blog takes a nap. I mean, if I don’t have that, I end up with posts bearing titles like, “A bunch of stuff I found on the sidewalk”, on a Saturday on which it’s obvious I’m just trying to fill up the hole in the pavement that is my blog.
Poor metaphors as well.
Oh, and I know it’s impossible to read the map (subpar photography too), but it has Church Street at it’s center with Yonge to the left and Jarvis the right. The northern city limit in 1858 was Bloor Street. It’s definitely not anymore.
Yorkville just seems like it’s been around forever. It’s probably that whole set-in-stone thing. It makes anything seem dignified.
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer
