Carleton Street, 1967

Ryerson Students – 1956.

From Toronto Archives.

8 Maps That Show City Stereotypes.

Toronto is pretty accurate.

See the rest here.

Love this.

Toronto in the 1970’s.

Yonge and Bloor 1974.

The interior of the Empire Diner. I used to frequent this place quite a bit.It was very close to the Morningstar clothing store on Yonge.

The Empire Diner.

Hanging out on Yonge Street 1970.

Master John 1974.

Miss Sweden. I remember her as a fixture on Yonge Street when I was a kid.

Remember these guys? Long, long gone.

St Charles Tavern. I used to frequent Stages on the second floor.
Loved the gay bars back in the day.

The Gasworks. I was only ever there once.

The Uptown…and behind it on Balmudo was The Backstage.

1970.

1974.

Yonge and Dundas 1972.

Hitch hiking. Would you even dream of doing that now?

Yonge Street Mall. They really ought to start doing that again.

Yonge Street.

The Daffodil used to be a tea reading room.

Carlos Osorio – Toronto Star Photographer.

He’s really good.

See more of his work here.

35 of America’s Vintage Signs.

I love this Sam the Record Man’s sign.

I know that it’s in storage somewhere, and I hope that someone will put it back up somewhere in this city.

This article is very accurate.

Click to enlarge and read the whole article from Mississauga Life.

I have long had the theory that today’s downtown Toronto Hipsters are actually suburban transplants who are living the urban lifestyle they imagined in their heads while living in small town Ontario, or while being driven around suburban strip malls as children.

When I was a kid living in Parkdale, every immigrant family’s dream was to buy a house in the suburbs and have a nice big backyard, with a garden, and parking, and good schools, and nice, sane neighbours.

I watched my friends one after the other leave downtown for Rexdale, Mississauga, Woodbridge, Markham, Ajax and so on.

This article by Chris Carriere is so on the money, it hurts.

Because while trying so hard to be extraordinary, they’re really just unextraordinary.

Those of us who grew up downtown, don’t have the intense hatred for the 905, and there are fewer and fewer people I meet these days who actually grew up in the core.

The downtown cores’ hate on for the 905 is really just self-hate.

Thanks Chris, for validating me.

🙂

Vintage Yonge Street.

From Vintage Toronto.

Dunlan Diner at Lansdowne and Dundas.

Long gone…but was there when Knob Hill Farms was across the street.  My mother says that it was one of the first diners that my parents went to when they first came to Canada.