More Lost Toronto in colour

[LowPolygon]

That stretch of Wellesley was generally interesting as maybe the last vestige of a "Gerrard Village" spirit, albeit some blocks north...

i think that's right, shame its so truncated a block--but that's Toronto. many of our older quaint and cool little strips are on the short side: For example, Baldwin St is great, its too bad its not 5 or 10x as big etc....

i can't for the life of me remember what used to be on the block between St. Nicholas and Bay, before that late 80's/early 90's condo was built....

 

[Mustapha]

The loss of Children's Village and other facilities at Ontario Place chokes me up.

A grand play area (remember the small "zipline"? Where else could a 3 foot tall child be allowed to zip 10 feet up in the air clutching as if its little life depended on it 'cause it did). A small scale water park - It's been cut back I think? Paddle boats for dating couples. Many high school proms were held in the restaurant over the water. Easy access by transit, but they need to make it easier. An extension of the Queen's Quay line would do the trick.

 

[the_yellow_dart]

"The Stable" today

gmaps

 

[JasonParis]

yes it is--the store Flying Down To Rio is a 1970's landmark in Toronto....
as was The Stable....

What kind of bar was The Stable?

 

[LowPolygon]

What kind of bar was The Stable?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

 

[LowPolygon]

Some cool colour images of Toronto late 60's-early 70's from the Flickr site of davidwilson1949:

http://www.flickr.com/people/davidwilson1949/

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

It doesn't look like we can embed YouTube videos, but here's a link to some great 1975 home movies of Ontario Place, specifically the Children's Village - rope slides, water area, etc...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj5x1vEmtQg

Yes we can Ed

8MM film of Ontario Place in the '70's, what a blast! My dad filmed dozens of hours with the family on 8MM then sound Super 8MM, we so treasure that stuff now. Notice how every single kid in that video is skinny? Quite a contrast to today.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Deepend: Those were 12 interesting pictures of Toronto posted from the David Wilson collection - in everything from the TTC equipment (streetcars,trolleybuses and diesel buses)to the classic cars noted like the couple sitting in a late 60s Pontiac Firebird (Remember the 1967-68-69 Chevrolet Camaro was very similar) and I noticed the Ford Fairlane or LTD yellow Toronto police car in another pic. The street scenes and infrastructure was quite interesting also-and easy to date noting those single year dated Ontario license plates visible in some of the pics...I tried to direct-quote these pics but that section does not stay steady to allow a reply post...LI MIKE

 

[adma]

I find it fascinating how Dundas in the Junction still had all the superficialities of a normal, vital traditional retail strip in the mid-to-late-60s, complete with the kinds of retail (Reitmans, for example) that's long since decamped for the malls and power centres...

 

[LowPolygon]

I find it fascinating how Dundas in the Junction still had all the superficialities of a normal, vital traditional retail strip in the mid-to-late-60s, complete with the kinds of retail (Reitmans, for example) that's long since decamped for the malls and power centres...

It is amazing...and it wasn't an insignificant size either. It was a pretty unbroken strip of thriving retail all the way to Runnymede. And it was dry! When i was growing up in Mount Dennis, going to the Junction was kind of like going to a version of downtown--one that was more like a small town main street, but a downtown all the same. It was also much more set apart, pretty much surrounded by industrial precincts on all sides save the neighbourhood to the south that led to High Park.

I wonder why it got so ossified in the 70's-90's? I guess we are back to blaming Yorkdale. I like Yorkdale but....

 

[adma]

And the irony is, the collapse of the Junction retail strip more or less coincided with Jane Jacobs' arrival in Toronto.

And considering how the familiar hack trope of "Jane Jacobs urbanism" lionizes local businesses, mom'n'pops, etc in extremis, leading to the likes of the Junction's present stop-Starbucks campaign, consider what helped define the strip and reinforce its vitality in the mid-to-late-60s: chains. Kresges, Woolworths, Reitmans, Morse Jewellers, Beneficial Finance, etc. Definitely worth pondering...

 

[LowPolygon]

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[LowPolygon]

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[thecharioteer]

Beautiful! What's also interesting about postcards is the subtext of the imagery for both the producer of the images and for the sender: these images are how Toronto wants to represent itself, combined with the fact that these images are what the visitor chooses to show the people back home about his travels.

 

[LowPolygon]

Beautiful! What's also interesting about postcards is the subtext of the imagery for both the producer of the images and for the sender: these images are how Toronto wants to represent itself, combined with the fact that these images are what the visitor chooses to show the people back home about his travels.

you're right...they are an interesting category of image, in that they were meant to be circulated outside the city and seen by people other than the people who live here. i suppose they are the first images of the city that are essentially touristic, of course the earliest of them predate the development of the tourist industry proper. i imagine most of them were sent home by immigrants who came here for a better life, rather than travellers passing through.

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