I’ve always had a fascination with parking lots, especially in the Downtown core where you can bet that long before the automobile was invented there was something much more interesting there. For example on the southeast corner of Richmond and ...
Read More »Belching gas sustained a glorious architecture—Bruce Bell
The Consumers Gas Building at 19 Toronto St, (now home to the exclusive Rosewater Supper Club) is a perfect example of how Toronto wanted to present itself in the late 19th century; elegant, sophisticated and powerful. Built by the team ...
Read More »Our Market taught Elizabeth Arden the art of the deal
One of my favorite legends surrounding St. Lawrence Market is the one about a very determined 5-year-old girl with the unlikely name of Florence Nightingale Graham who would help her father a local farmer from Woodbridge Ont. sell his goods ...
Read More »Red-hot ‘Cup Cakes’ baked TO’s prudish blue-laws
Bruce Bell — Toronto changed forever on Sunday May 28, 1961. The earth-shattering event that took place that day will be remembered as the watershed moment when Toronto, with its stuffy, professed Victorian morality, started to shift. For it was ...
Read More »Ex-grand hotel, flophouse, seafood resto to live again
I am so happy to see that the façade of the former Old Fish Market restaurant (Market Street just south of Front) has been totally refurbished, making it appear almost like it did when it first opened back in 1858 ...
Read More »Do St. James’ Park protesters know what’s beneath them?
They might think twice about pitching tents if they realize one of the deadliest-disease burial grounds lies beneath them By Bruce Bell – One of the biggest mysteries in Toronto started when James Lesslie, a respected druggist and in later ...
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