Browsing “Toronto Was Awesome Series”

Toronto was awesome examines Toronto’s past with stories illustrated with images from Toronto’s archives and historical records.

Turn of the century map of the area, itself located south of Queen St and on the west bank of the Don River.

As talk of the 2015 Pan-Am games circulates within the news, I thought I might take a look at the area which will house its Thunder Dome (or Athletes’ Village, as THEY like to call it), located in the former southern reaches of Corktown. This area is slated for redevelopement as the “West Don Lands”.

Once brimming with factories, furnaces, and pump houses, southern Corktown also housed a large community of workers. Long forgotten are the cottages, shacks, and general slum conditions of the area during the early half of the century. Looking at these images, one can imagine the poorly insulated houses, wood burning stoves, large families, and the overall cramped conditions which prevailed in the neighbourhood.

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Toronto was awesome examines Toronto’s past with stories illustrated with images from Toronto’s archives and historical records

So, I’ve just returned from being chased through a suburban mall parking lot by some angry people in a Westphalia van (armed with an RPG), craving the plutonium in my possession. That may actually be the plot to Back to the Future, and has absolutely nothing to do with old Toronto.

Or maybe it does? Having spent some time living in Etobicoke in high school, the only place to watch a movie was at the mall’s “Multiplex/Cineplex” etc… which over the years, seemed to gradually expand in proportion, lighting, and noise (though sadly, not in Deloreans).

*The Wurlitzer formerly belonging to Shea’s Hippodrome (Bay and Teraulay Streets) now resides at Casa Loma, and is still used for silent film screenings.

The experience leaves me overwhelmed now (perhaps due to my advanced age). The whole ordeal is a mess of fast food, coffee, cocktails, games, lights, teenage antics and SUPER AVX (cue head explosions). Being the “luddite” that I am, I yearn for simpler times; The Humber, The Westwood, and the Revue Cinema. During the silent era (and long after), the city boasted a plethora of inner city theatres.

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Toronto was awesome examines Toronto’s past with stories illustrated with images from Toronto’s archives and historical records.

It’s not that often that you get to glimpse history at night. Surely, if we’ve learned anything from history textbooks, it’s that the world existed in black and white (or occasionally sepia) and in perpetual daylight, until roughly about the mid 1950’s.

This would make perfect sense…if you were an imbecile.

But you aren’t, so to the past we travel once more. To take a look at nightlife in old Toronto and its amusement parks, theatres, baseball stadiums, and scenes of revelry. This was the era when billboards were alight with incandescent bulbs, everybody wore wool, and smoking calmed the nerves (though it allegedly “stunted” your growth as well, go fig).

Hanlan’s Point Stadium, 1928. It was here in 1914 that Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run, against the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club.

We were still a long way off from house-dwarfing LED television screens; able to blind a man at 1000 paces. Crosswalks, well… didn’t exist, let alone beep and click, and birds weren’t being killed by an ever menacing city loom. The city had not yet become one giant TV commercial and things were good (with the exception of those two world wars and the depression, of naturally).

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Toronto was awesome examines Toronto’s past with stories illustrated with images from Toronto’s archives and historical records.

This is the first time in two years that I haven’t ridden a motorcycle and it’s absolutely depressing. I’ve always loved most anything with an engine and wheels (up to and including vintage tractors), but motorcycling puts a mile-wide grin on my face.

Keeping it steady on the CNE dirt track, 1911.

It also left me with several patches of missing skin and a banged up leg. But who can resist the allure of the wide open road; wind and bugs in the face, the stink of gasoline, exhaust burnt shoes, and oil stained pants? Surely nobody sane.

What’s more is that I suffer from an unhealthy interest in old motorcycles – the older, the better. Even when my 40 year old bike broke down in the pouring rain and I was soaked to the bone, I still enjoyed the experience because it made me appreciate what it was like to ride a motorbike in the “early days”.

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Toronto was awesome examines Toronto’s past with stories illustrated with images from Toronto’s archives and historical records.

So, we’ve been in a heat wave these past few days…yes, one of those. The type of awful humidity, that if you live in an old and “cozy” apartment like mine, you will understand full well the tribulation involved. This means the day starts not unlike the opening to Apocalypse Now, replete with tighty-whiteys, a slowly oscilating fan, empty liquor bottles, and The Doors. But I digress. A quick fix these days would be through the use of the ubiquitous AC unit, whether wall mounted, central, or automotive; it’s nearly inescapable (nearly, but not completely).

However, a hundred years ago, whilst people fought bears with their bare hands, and walked through 10 feet of snow (okay, I only have pictures to prove the latter), luxuries were somewhat simpler. For the average turn of the century Torontonian, the easiest way to “beat the heat” (anyone remember Popsicle Pete?) was through swimming at one of the many beaches, amusement parks, or swimming holes across the city. The Don and Humber rivers were popular local destinations for those in the East and West ends respecitively, while ferries moved scores of people across the harbour to the islands.

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