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Historicist: Souvenir Views of Toronto, Canada

By Jamie Bradburn

Every Saturday at noon, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.
Usually when preparing Historicist, we dig through local archives and libraries to find the pieces of Toronto’s past that are brought to you every weekend. Sometimes the material finds us, as is the case with today’s gallery of postcards submitted by reader Todd J. Wiebe.
The postcards were among a large collection of items donated by the estate of fine art scholar Richard Wunder to the Van Wylen Library at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where Wiebe works as a librarian and assistant professor. “It is a very large collection,” says Wiebe, “and this past summer was the first we really got around to going through it.” As the materials were being processed and appraised, a worker in the library found the postcards and passed them on to Wiebe “because I’m from Southern Ontario.”
The set contains twenty-two postcards attached to each other accordion-style. They were produced by the Canadian branch of Scottish postcard maker Valentine & Sons. Based on the age of the landmarks depicted, we’re guessing that this package was produced in the mid-to-late 1920s due to the presence of Union Station (opened in 1927, though it had stood largely completed since 1920) and, given the presence of the city’s tallest buildings in the set, the lack of postcards for the Royal York Hotel (opened in 1929) and Commerce Court (opened in 1931).
All images courtesy Todd J. Wiebe.

Comments

  • http://undefined spacejack

    I didn’t realize they used to skew the perspective of photos (or photo-illustrations) before photoshop. It’s equally irritating, but I wonder how they did it. I suppose they could have tilted the projector/paper in the darkroom or maybe projected it at an angle to trace. Funny how the King Edward hotel looks twisted.

  • thelemur

    Are the cars outside Central Tech driving on the left?

  • http://undefined Marc Lostracco

    Old large-format cameras were notorious for distorting images; that’s what those accordion bellows were for. The bellows would tilt the film plate, either correcting or increasing the distortion. There was more distortion on wider-angle lenses, so if you wanted the whole building in there, you might get that stretchiness near the top. It probably made the building look more impressive anyway, à la wide angle lenses today.

  • http://undefined David Toronto

    I wonder 1)if the slide is reversed, and, 2)if the cars are
    even on Bathurst Street. There doesn’t seem to be a
    football field like there is today.
    I’m guessing that the cars are on Lippincott Street
    and that a severance occurred in order for the school
    to have a football field. The flipped slide would
    account for the wrong direction of the cars.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    Two small clarifications—not warranting a correction, but warranting a change to the text above. We called Wiebe a “professor” (most accurately, he’s an assistant professor), and said that “a worker in the library’s archives” found them, but the postcards aren’t yet in the archives.

  • http://undefined mark.

    Perhaps, but I have a sense that driving on the left or right wasn’t totally necessary at the time. Roads like Bathurst were very wide with few cars and I imagine that if you were driving to a building that was on your left, you’d just pull up on your left rather than do a U-turn to pull up on your right. Other cars had lots of room to go around. I would guess, too, that roads had lots of holes and debris and you would drive where ever to avoid these rather than stay on the right and drive in a straight line.

  • thelemur

    I think the Lippincott explanation makes sense, which would make the sidewalk in the foreground the location of the present athletic field. I’m not so sure about the slide being flipped – mark.’s explanation seems sound and Lippincott may also have been a one-way street (in practice if not by law).

  • thelemur

    It’s not reversed, because that view is possibly only from the southwest corner as depicted – the north side of the building doesn’t have the staircases. You can get this view of the building (approximately) by standing where Lippincott used to run or on the athletic track, although the building is now partly obscured by trees.
    As for the cars, it’s probably the driving habits of the time or else a quirk of proto-Photoshop – the car parked at the curb looks a little scrunched.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    Did City Hall really have such a big courtyard in front of it?

  • http://undefined David Toronto

    The forecourt is smaller because
    the Bay Street re-alignment took
    away part of the landmass.
    The bulk of the cenotaph also takes
    away the appearance of spaciousness.
    Add to that the fact there were
    no large buildings surrounding
    the “old” city hall and its having
    more daylight made it appear more
    spacious than it really was.
    The old city hall dwarfed its neighbours.
    Now, it’s the other way round.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    The Bay Street realignment (actually just the branching at Queen of Terauley) didn’t take much more than a corner off the lot. Queen was where it is now, so the photo is more of an illustration that takes some liberties with the size of the frontage.
    Compare this view of Queen from Yonge – the presentation of the area in front of City Hall has been simplified but it indicates the distance between the façade and Queen St.
    However, there was initially a plan to have a much larger public square in front of City Hall, with a wide avenue leading south to Front, but it never came to be.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JNDNP5GDIREBUED4ZFZRTB2SNA Frc Radio

    The title of this article could well be “Souvenir Views of Toronto”. Adding “Canada” makes it sound foreign, almost overseas, and I've always found it irksome to bypass the name of our vast province as if it were insufficient identification. While “Canada” is in the title of the postcard pack, Historicist doesn't have to mimic the name as if cataloging the item in an archive.

    Common reference was, and is, Toronto, Ont., much like “Holland, Michigan”, referenced in the article. Even if “Toronto, Canada” were following a historic [city, province] style, the Province of Canada reference (1841-1867) wouldn't make sense, because that province ceased to exist about 50 years before the cards were made.

    Below the image of the Canadian Ensign, a note says it was “Canada's national flag until 1965.” Not quite. Apart from it being unofficial, this particular design was used from about 1905 to 1922. The flag features a Great Shield comprised of emblems of nine provinces, taken from their shields. It followed the provincehoods of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905. Then, in 1922, the complicated shield was simplified, adopting the one from the federal coat of arms. That design was itself changed, before the Maple Leaf became official in 1965.

    The flag helps to date this set. If it's from 1920 at the earliest (because Union Station stood), then it's likely from 1922 at the latest, when the flag changed. However, I suppose it's possible the maker used an old flag design in the mid- to late-20s.