Old Soul

After some introspection, I have realized that I have the soul of a 75 year old retired man. I Base this conclusion on the activities I like to do such as; drink gin, complain about how people dress, glare at noisy children on the subway, listen to oldies, go on walking tours, and attend public lectures on local history.

For those of you who share my love of old stuff, I thought I'd provide a reading list, or as I'd prefer to call it, a Gateway to Discovering Toronto's History! In addition to these blogs, you can also go on FREE walking tours of Toronto with the ROM, and also Heritage Toronto. Plus, don't forget to visit your local museums!

Photo from Toronto Before

http://torontodreamsproject.blogspot.ca/

http://torontoist.com/tag/historicist/

http://vintagetoronto.wordpress.com/

http://torontobefore.blogspot.ca/

http://www.heritagetoronto.org/discover-toronto/walk

ROM Walks

Architour

Today Oli and I totally architecture nerded-out. We did walk number 15 (Queen Street West) from Toronto Architecture- A City Guide by Patricia McHugh. This walk focuses on 20 different buildings around Spadina and Queen. It took us about 4+ hours but we stopped for a long and yummy lunch at Kensington Espresso Bar (we both had the ham, spinach and feta cheese crepe) and we also did a good share of window shopping including poking around the pet shop at the Dragon City Shopping Mall in China Town (they had albino frogs!)

I'll probably post more photos later but I wanted to post about this beautiful Victorian gem on 25 Augusta Avenue. The building has housed the Felician Sisters Convent since 1938, and the nuns have diligently preserved the building, and it is in much better shape than most of its pals downtown. The picturesque house features bonnet dormers, canopied windows, bracketed eaves, filigreed veranda and gabled tower. The house was constructed in 1876 for a Toronto manufacturer named Edward Leadlay.

Save our City

I was excited to see this week that the cover story of Now Magazine is

Disappearing Toronto

The real danger of undervaluing our historical architecture 

read the full feature here: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=185978

Beauty History

Beauty Contest, Toronto, 193-?

Have you ever wondered what ladies swim fashion in Toronto was in the 1930s? of course you have! Well, take inspiration from these local beauties. All of these images are from the City of Toronto Archives, which is an absolutely amazing source for vintage images of Toronto. You can access the archives online here: http://www.toronto.ca/archives/photographs/index.htm just hit scanned photographs only when you search. Another resource that is great for finding old photos is the Archives of Ontario http://ao.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/92/1/0?SEARCH&ERRMSG=[IMG_WEB]img_simNo.htm

More images after the jump!

Old Toronto

source: wikipedia

A little while ago I got to go to a really cool event for the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario at 10 Adelaide St. East. The building, constructed for the Canadian Birkbeck Investments and Savings Company, is now the headquarters for the Ontario Heritage Trust. It's always exciting to get a peak inside some of these old buildings downtown. We even got to take a ride in one of the last manually operated elevators in Toronto! (sidebar: Queen's alum- remember that weird Irish elevator operator at that old department store in downtown Kingston?)

If you're interested in heritage issues in Toronto and Ontario check out ACONextGen on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/ACO-NextGen/183725051715480 . I forgot to bring my camera but you can see pictures from the event on their page.

Also- recommended reading if you're interested in Toronto architecture:

http://www.amazon.ca/Toronto-Mean-City-Eric-Arthur/dp/0802065872

and

http://www.amazon.ca/Old-Toronto-Houses-Tom-Cruickshank/dp/1552977315