Toronto City Life

Posts Tagged ‘ history ’

Sunday on Saturday (spring in winter edition)

Posted on February 14th, 2026 – Comments Off

We seem to be approaching the 6-month mark since the previous installment so, ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu I bring you a bespoke version of the most elegant:

Toronto Sunday World, 21st of May, 1922

Despite its obvious advances in everything from fashion to medicine, one may perhaps be tempted to dismiss the Toronto of over a hundred years ago as an inconsequential anachronism in the context of the modern metropolis. For example, one may point to the seemingly ubiquitous springtime intestinal troubles experienced by locals, as evidenced by the apparent popularity of certain products that appeared in advertisements of the period.

Pish posh, I say! Can one honestly claim that we don’t have to deal with different types of shit in Toronto every season?

Besides, perhaps their physical ailments were related to the introduction of inferior arsenic and strychnine into various products, or perhaps the complete absence of such healthifying ingredients in fake products (shame on the flim-flammers!), but I’m certainly no doctor so we can just go ahead and file that under “speculation”. Moreover, such an analysis fails to take into consideration the countering health benefits provided by certain yeasty tablets which, along with vitamins A, B, C, and calcium, contained only the finest and most refined naturally occurring strychnine.

There are, it must be said, many traditional concepts that we should like to dispense with but that have held through to the modern era due to their enduring aptness. Is it for me to say that they’re wrong?

Why, even non-scientific, which is to say artistic, endeavours from bygone years have stood the test of time. Should I claim that my tastes in decorative motifs are the sole and correct ones?

It’s precisely for these reasons that one should occasionally glance to the past and say, “Gee whiz, that sure was something.”

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

Sunday on Sunday (summer in summer edition)

Posted on August 3rd, 2025 – Comments Off

In keeping with recent trends, it’s been a while. As a refresher, remember this?

Now that we’re about in the middle of the season I’d like to take a moment to reflect on how one would have stayed cool in the heat of a Toronto summer without our modern accoutrements.

A dip in the lake might’ve been an option but I suspect that it would have been about as clean as it is today. You can more fully appreciate the meaning of that comparison if you hang out by the water during low tide on hot, humid days. Yum.

Cool drinks, paper fans, and refreshing mist might’ve been helpful but if we’re being honest there’s nothing that compares to a classy ride through Toronto in a horse-drawn carriage, amirite?

If you’re feeling the heat then let’s get our rides on, bitchez!

^{Pages from the Dominion Livery pamphlet, “Hand Book of Toronto”, 1907.}
^{To the best of my knowledge these images are copyright-free.}

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

How hidden, really?

Posted on July 3rd, 2025 – Comments Off

For example … ye ole’ Rob Ford coke story. TCL broke that shit 15 months before it was ever mentioned in the mainstream:

Is this true….?

Also there was the “lost” statue at University of Toronto, except that TCL managed to somehow capture Vickie a full 7 years before an official from Buckingham Palace even noticed that she’d gone “missing”:

“The Three Easy Steps to Ultimate Success” (abridged version), pt.5

Sure was a long time ago. Wonder what else has been “uncovered” since then … 😎

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

131 129

Posted on June 16th, 2025 – Comments Off

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Bathurst near Adelaide}

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

Sunday on Saturday (summer in winter edition)

Posted on March 1st, 2025 – Comments Off

It’s still a bit too chilly out there for aquatic hijinks but I’m sure I’ll soon be complaining about the heat and humidity, something that I suspect is (at least) a century-old Toronto tradition.

In the meantime, there’s plenty more of the following sort of thing over at archive.org

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

oa leaf ST AM BATHS

Posted on September 19th, 2017 – Comments Off

[goo.gl/maps/UEnA1Ks1WBD2]

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

Ghosts

Posted on May 12th, 2016 – Comments Off

https://goo.gl/maps/noHQEF8BUPU2

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

“If you do something against the law in the RCMP … they change the law”

Posted on May 14th, 2015 – Comments Off

ENLIST TODAY

“I find this provision almost Orwellian,” said Fred Vallance-Jones, an associate professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax and an expert in access to information law.

“It seeks to rewrite history, to say that lawful access to records that existed before didn’t actually exist after all, and that if you exercised your quasi-constitutional right of access to those records, well too bad, you’re out of luck.”

The government is setting a precedent to move retroactively on any record it doesn’t want exposed, Vallance-Jones said.

“That to me is the deeper concern.”

Michel Drapeau, a lawyer, former military colonel and access-to-information author, noted there has never been a charge laid under the Access to Information Act, let alone a conviction.

He said the rationale of moving retroactively to prevent a possible prosecution is “a dangerous and unwelcome precedent” that should be as unwelcome to the RCMP and the administration of justice as to freedom-of-information wonks.

“The optics of it are not good: ‘Oh, so that’s the way it works now?’ If you do something against the law in the RCMP, you’ve got your friends in high places, they change the law,” said Drapeau.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/budget-bill-c-59-rewrites-access-law-to-protect-rcmp-on-gun-registry-cp-1.3072548

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

Stuff for your walls

Posted on May 3rd, 2013 – Comments Off

Just a few high-def old maps I pilfered from around the web.

Download the whole pack here (caution, it’s 122 MB): http://www.torontocitylife.com/downloads/Toronto_Historic_Maps_HD.zip

Coltons West or Upper Canada - 1889 Toronto 1898 - Rand McNally Toronto Industrial 1898 - Rand McNally Crams Standard American Atlas - Toronto - 1889

Filed under: Patrick Bay, Pictures

Getting around

Posted on February 11th, 2013 – 2 Comments

With the recent dumping of snow that fell on Toronto I thought it’d be a neat idea to once again revisit the City of Toronto Archives to see how we, with all of our modern technology, fared against Torontonians of the past.

Sadly, the people of the the old Toronto dealt with the snow way better than we did. For starters, they didn’t always depend on rubber tires or internal combustion engines for getting around … check out the four-wheeled, woman-powered infant conveyance here:

Apparently, this method of transport was so safe that no one, including the children in the drivers’ seats, gave a second thought to wandering out onto Lake Ontario in it. I suppose it was definitely safer walking on the lake during the winter than in the summer — lot fewer big ships to watch out for:

The lake also offered natural relief to traffic congestion. Road packed? …

…why, just toss your best gal in the sidecar and hit the waters:

Apparently the compact “gravity-powered man car” was also quite popular, being able to go off road and being so easy to navigate that even young children could drive it. But the inability to go on level surfaces or uphill proved to be this form of transport’s undoing:

But, of course, some inventions of the era were so effective that they endured well into the modern day. Take the common “foot-car”, for example:

We can certainly learn a lost from the past, especially when modern technology fails us. Like they saying goes, don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater … unless, of course, it’s out on the lake, the safest place for newborns to be.

Filed under: B Sides, Patrick Bay, Pictures