BRUCE BELL'S BOOKS ARE ONLINE FOR DOWNLOADING TO ALL E-BOOK FORMATS
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Old Town Toronto's famed historian Bruce Bell has for 13 years been writing a brilliant monthly history column in The Bulletin, Toronto's Downtown Newspaper. It is the most-read feature in the newspaper.Now those fabulous works are being assembled into E-Books for all to download at a nominal price....
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About Bruce Bell
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Bruce Bell has been the popular monthly local history columnist for The Bulletin, Canada’s largest-circulation community newspaper, since 1999. In 2002 he was named by the City of Toronto the Official Historian of St. Lawrence Hall and St. Lawrence Market. In November 2003 Bruce was asked by the Ont...
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G20 ‘riots’ tame compared to others in TO
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As I sat watching the TV coverage of the G20 “riots,” I kept hearing various newscasters telling us in between images of burning police cars and people being corralled in the rain that this is the largest riot Toronto has ever witnessed. Well, sadly, it wasn’t and whatever the reasons that caused ho...
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New festival to celebrate Downtown trees
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Environmental
artist Talia Erlich wants Downtown residents to branch out at the inaugural
Toronto Tree Festival on June 12.
The day-long
event will take place near the Franklin Children’s Garden on Toronto Island,
which is accessible by the Centre Island ferry.
The festival
will include m...
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Hors d’oeuvres on naked women, nude students gambol
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The three small
buildings at 107, 109 and 111 King St. E. have been silent spectators to almost
every major event that has happened in this city since they were first built
back in 1834.
They were onlookers
in 1837 as soldiers marched past their doorways on their way to crush
Mackenzie’s reb...
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Vaudeville ruled North America for 50 years
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Vaudeville from the French expression voix de ville, or “voice of the city,” was to become the preeminent form of entertainment in North America for almost 50 years during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Vaudeville was born on Oct. 24, 1881 when New York-based theatre impresario Tony Pastor,...
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Black’s #10 Toronto St. fortress opens to light
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By the mid 19th century Toronto had grown from a windswept British colonial outpost to great metropolis in a mere 50 years and as the city grew our public buildings began to take on a more monumental look.
One of those buildings, the seventh post office at 10 Toronto St., built by architect...
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Is this building our mini Chateau of Versailles?
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The first time I saw the Chateau of Versailles built in 1682 for King Louis XIV on the outskirts of Paris I said to myself, “That looks like our Osgoode Hall! A slight overstatement of course, as Versailles is 10 times as big and completely over-the-top. But boy, it sure does come close. However all...
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Hats off, smoking OK in ‘new’ TD Centre elevator
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If you are a fan of AMC’s Mad Men like I am, then the Toronto-Dominion Centre at King and Bay has dapper protagonist Don Draper written all over it.Even through it’s the last word in modernity the TD Centre was built in a time when men wore hats to office, the majority of women were relegated to sec...
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The Big Apple and TO share a lot in common
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Last August after 30 years I made a return visit to New York City which back then was a very different place; but then so was Toronto.Toronto in the 1970s was just coming into its own, still experimenting with multiculturalism, outdoor cafés, art, drama, all the things that New York in spite of all ...
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Big Daddy, what the hell are you thinking?
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I sometimes wish I could go back in time to 1953 just as Chairman Frederick “Big Daddy” Gardiner and his newly formed Metro council buddies were drawing up the Urban Renewal plans for Toronto and say to them, “What the hell are you thinking!!”Of course the other wish would have to be that I would ha...
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Empire Loyalists viewed Americans as anarchists
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There is a very interesting historical plaque inside St James’ Cathedral on King Street that I love to point out to our American cousins who take my tours. The plaque honours Col. Stephen Jarvis UEL one of Toronto’s early citizens and according to the plaque fought gallantly in the Revolutionary War...
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Me, Uncle Bert, Oronhyatekha and the Temple Building
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I had an uncle in Sudbury who not only was a member of the Masons, he was also, an Elk, a Toastmaster and an IOF (Independent Order of the Foresters). My mom used to say Uncle Bert belonged to so many men’s groups so he’d have an excuse to get out of the house every night of the week. These often be...
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Old Town Toronto lost stunning buildings to ‘progress’
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Toronto has had some remarkable buildings that would be venerated today had they survived the onslaught of post-WWII Urban Renewal.Among the lost treasures was the dramatic Board of Trade Building at Front and Yonge; a perfect bookend complement for the still standing Flatiron Building. And Chorley ...
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Superman’s Metropolis started at King & Yonge
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O ne of my earliest memories while visiting Toronto from Sudbury in the early 1960s is standing on the corner of King and Yonge with my dad and staring up at the forbidding-looking skyscrapers, feeling overwhelmed yet fascinated at their looming immenseness.Those same buildings—now completely ov...
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Landmark Flatiron Building is free at last!
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For the past two years the iconic Gooderham (aka Flatiron) Building at the apex of Church, Wellington and Front has been shrouded in renovation scaffolding completely masking what is arguably the most photographed structure in Toronto.But now at long last the scaffolding was removed and the commandi...
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Brutal slaughter quelled Mackenzie uprising
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On Monday Dec. 4, 1837, William Lyon Mackenzie and about 500 rebels started to gather at Montgomery’s Tavern near the corner of Eglinton and Yonge streets for a proposed march down Yonge to seize arms and ammunition stored in Toronto’s then city hall (now the site of St. Lawrence Hall on King Street...
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Wondrous Panorama spectacle ends in grease and grime
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At one time Toronto had a fantastic-looking 16-sided domed structure called the Cyclorama Building which exhibited massive cylindrical paintings known as Panoramas. In its day Cyclorama was the ROM, AGO and IMAX theatres all rolled into one.Built in 1887 on the south side of Front St. just west of U...
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You can take the boy out of Sudbury
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My hometown of Sudbury (population 158,000) after years of a massive reforestation project has emerged out its gloomy and dismal dark ages to become one of the most beautiful cites in Ontario.
Conversely I was born and raised during the bleakest of times when after decades of unmanaged foresting an...
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Bruce Bell shows Lt. Gov. Onley Queen's Park
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The Bulletin's history columnist gave a 'command' performance for the Ontario Lt. Gov. David Onley. Bruce Bell was requested to take Onley on a guided tour of the statues and monuments that grace the grounds of the Legislature at Queen's Park.
Bruce was more than glad to squire the Lt. Gov. ...
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