Note: This is an early and very colourfully written article about what would become a city institution, Kensington Market. It is described as being in “the Ward,” but technically it lies outside of the Ward’s unofficial western boundary of University Avenue or McCaul Street; what the author really meant to say was that it was…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 Emphatically the right man in the right place is Dr. George H. Locke as Toronto’s chief librarian. Possibly he does not look quite look the part, for there is a notable absence of “mustiness” about him. And “mustiness,” to many people’s minds, should be the lot of…
Note: The following article, which appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly of January 28, 1911, describes a so-called “gipsy” encampment of a century ago in the woods to the east of the Toronto neighbourhood of Davisville and Eglinton. The people then commonly described as “gypsies” are today referred to as “Roma.” * * * A…
◊ The following newspaper stories tell of young Joseph Gurofsky’s rise from assessment clerk to bank manager in Toronto’s “Ward” neighbourhood where mostly “foreigners” reside — and how, one fall day, he was drawn into a violent street fight with some Italian ruffians that led to his trial and short imprisonment. Somewhat grandiosely and inaccurately, the…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, March 25, 1911 EVOLUTION OF TORONTO’S MANY SHACKTOWNS — PIONEERS HAVE MADE GOOD WITH A VENGEANCE Between life in The Ward or in the locality of Eastern avenue and life in the poorest district in the outskirts there is an immense difference. In the Eastern slum people are living in…
From the Globe and Mail, February 2002 As a Trotskyite and leader of the Revolutionary Workers Party, Ross Dowson might have been expected to tarry on the fringes of Canadian political life forever, so it came as a considerable shock to many Torontonians when he drew twenty per cent of the vote in a mayor’s…
Exclusive Report, February 3, 2013 Former Toronto Mayor David Crombie easily charmed a full-house audience at a January 30th meeting of the North Toronto Historical Society in Northern District Library. Although Crombie’s advertised topic was “North Toronto 1912, Then and Now,” references to North Toronto were few and far between. But it didn’t seem to…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 1913 ◊ Note: This article describes the very diligent efforts that went into producing Toronto’s city directories of a century ago. This is good news for genealogists because it assures us of the reliability of the directory information. However, individuals of Chinese, Macedonian and other “foreign” ancestry were not always…
From the Toronto Star, April 29, 1931 Jews and Gentiles will have their automobile insurance risks underwritten on exactly the same terms by 85 per cent of the automobile insurance companies in Ontario, it was announced last night by E. Fred Singer, K.C., M.P.P. (St Andrews). The information came as a result of a questionnaire…
From Tales of North Toronto II, ca 1950 by Lyman B. Jackes North Toronto is, geologically speaking, very different from the remainder of the city. Some eight or nine thousand years ago, what is now North Toronto was the beach land of a great lake. The level of the water is clearly marked today in…
