“People say Stompin’ Tom’s sound ain’t culture, and I say it’s real,” Toronto Mayor David Crombie declared when he handed the Canadian music icon the Best Male Vocalist award at the 1973 Juno Awards. While some critics found Stompin’ Tom Connors corny, devoted fans like Crombie were drawn by his colourful, good-humoured songs and relatable lyrics. For Connors, who passed away yesterday, 1973 was a banner year, with many of its highlights occurring in Toronto.

“If you can’t identify with one of Connors’s work songs because you’ve never picked potatoes or crewed on a coal boat,” Robert Martin observed in the Globe and Mail following a January 20, 1973 Massey Hall concert, “he’ll get you with one about that small town you grew up in or lived in for awhile.” Connors’s work could also evoke big-city life, as in songs like “To It and at It” (later used for SCTV’s classic parody of Goin’ Down the Road) or “TTC Skidaddler.”

Connors spent the early part of 1973 waiting for confirmation of a proposed Labour Day headlining show at the CNE Grandstand. One problem: the CNE board of directors had to approve performers, and half of them had never heard of Connors. As he waited, Connors turned down other potentially conflicting gigs, including a telethon. Depending on the source, in April he was offered either a “Maritime Day” show on August 17 at the CNE Bandshell or the opening-act slot for American country star Charley Pride on August 29. Either way, he would receive $3,500, nearly 10 times less than Pride was getting.

“I must decline this offer as a protest of the way the Canadian entertainers are treated by the CNE and other exhibitions in Canada,” Connors told the press on April 24. “It means something to every Canadian performer to appear at the CNE, but there are a lot of fogeys around who listen to one kind of music. They should make it their business to know what’s going on.” His action signified his ongoing support for Canadian musicians, another aspect of which was his Boot record label, which existed in an office above Gryfe’s Bakery on Bathurst Street.

Two weeks later, metro council’s executive committee asked the CNE to present 60 per cent Canadian headliners. CNE management claimed that its entertainment was as much as 95 per cent CanCon, but that total encompassed all forms of live performance. The political pressure and Connors’s stance worked. That fall, CNE officials agreed that to place more emphasis on domestic headliners.

Meanwhile, a series of concerts Connors played at the Horseshoe Tavern in mid-May were filmed for the documentary Across This Land With Stompin’ Tom. The film captured the strong rapport he’d developed with his audience, and was sprinkled with guest acts, animation, and vintage footage of TTC streetcars. Ontario Place audiences caught Connors in IMAX during a segment of Catch the Sun at the Cinesphere, or in person during an August performance at the Forum.

Source: the Toronto Star, November 3, 1973.

In early September, Connors announced that he was getting hitched to long-time girlfriend Lena Welsh. The ceremony aired live on CBC television during the November 2 edition of Elwood Glover’s Luncheon Date. Around two million viewers watched the wedding, which was broadcast from the basement of the Four Seasons Motor Hotel on Jarvis Street. Connors wrote a song for the occasion, “We Traded Hearts Today.” Guests included Polaroid-snapping New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield and Gaet Lepine, the Timmins bartender who launched Connors’s career in 1964 when he asked the performer to sing to pay off a nickel beer debt. Following a lobster buffet, the wedding party went to the Imperial Six cinema on Yonge Street (now the Ed Mirvish Theatre) for the premiere of Across This Land With Stompin’ Tom. The party moved to the Holiday Inn on Chestnut Street (now a University of Toronto residence) before the newlyweds departed for a 10-week honeymoon. The marriage endured until Connors’s passing.

Additional material from the January 22, 1973 edition of the Globe and Mail; and the January 20, 1973; March 14, 1973; April 18, 1973; May 9, 1973; May 16, 1973; September 3, 1973; and November 3, 1973 editions of the Toronto Star.

The TTC quietly marked a historical milestone last week: the University subway line (that’s the part between St. George and Union stations) turned 50. Though it failed in its early goal of providing smooth, interlined service between the Yonge and Bloor-Danforth lines, the University line aided the commutes of government workers and financial district employees, and also provided a base for linking the Spadina line (which marked its 35th anniversary in January) to downtown. It has witnessed champagne toasts and fatal collisions. Now, construction is extending the University-Spadina line into York Region, a move that would have satisfied early proponent Frederick Gardiner, who saw a “U”-shaped subway system as the logical way to serve commuters.

Our gallery toasts the line’s birthday by taking a ride along its history. Click through for more details about its development over time.

Additional material from the November 1994 edition of Coupler; the July 17, 1957, July 18, 1957, November 17, 1959, March 17, 1962, February 7, 1973, and January 30, 1978 editions of the Globe and Mail; the December 27, 1957, November 16, 1959, March 7, 1962, February 27, 1963, February 28, 1963, January 27, 1978, January 28, 1978, and January 29, 1978 editions of the Toronto Star; and the February 28, 1963 edition of the Telegram.

Source: the Don Mills Mirror, December 16, 1970.

Did the boys at Mr. Mort’s succeed in their quest to make heroines out of girlfriends/partners/wives determined to give their man the most stylish winter threads 1970 had to offer? Or did those men stumble upon this ad and shake their heads in disbelief at what this groovy clothier had to offer?

The main figure in the ad is decked out in a finely tailored suit, apparently named after a brand of house paint. The description doesn’t indicate if customers can use paint chips to select the perfect colour combinations to weave into the smart, checked pattern.

Model B–C shows off Mr. Mort’s casual combination. This outfit is ideal for swinging get-togethers with other couples, hitting the party scene, or, with sunglasses on, driving down the highway with the radio at full blast. But be careful—the police might ticket you for driving under the influence of fine fashion!

Model D—the “leathers are in” gent—is definitely a man on the move. His ensemble is ideal for a mod mob enforcer, a primped-up pimp, a sharp-dressed bank robber, or a small-time radical terrorist. It’s an outfit any man would wear with pride on the day they suddenly decide to hijack a plane to Cuba.

Don’t forget the finishing touches! The vest scarf is a fantastic item for keeping any neck warm, but proper sizing is important. Mr. Mort does not take any responsibility for customers who accidentally choke themselves by buttoning up too tightly. Your heroine will thank you for continuing to breathe.

A cycling riding in front of St. Patrick's Market on Queen Street, 1970s. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 2, Item 125.

In the introduction to their booklet Bicycling in Toronto, Estherelke and Bob Kaplan imagined two ways the state of getting around the city on two wheels during the early 1970s might be viewed at the dawn of the 21st century:

Maybe in 30 years or so our children’s children will run up from the basement to announce the discovery of a rusting bicycle. Did we really ride bicycles back then, all that long ago? And maybe we’ll tell them about the great fad of the early Seventies, when businessmen and aldermen and all sorts of other Torontonians actually rode bicycles to work, doing their bit for ecology and physical fitness…On the other hand, we may be in the throes of something other than another fad. Let’s hope so. Let’s hope that the non-polluting, compact, maneuverable, healthful bicycle will continue to grow in popularity.

While cycling has proven stronger than a passing fad, there have been moments where it feels like members of the current City Hall administration wish it was. Yet when the Kaplans published their guide for city cyclists in 1972, there were many signs that officials, even suburban ones, were alerted to the future needs of two-wheeled riders.

In a 1971 interview with Star columnist Alexander Ross, Metro Parks Commissioner Tommy Thompson observed that local geography made cycling downtown impossible. “If I asked somebody to ride from Front Street to Queen’s Park,” Thompson noted, “do you know what would happen? The average person would be dead—and not from the traffic. The average person would be so tired from the upgrade that he’d end up walking.” Ross disagreed with Thompson`s contention, noting that he rode daily from Bloor to King and “was not even puffing.” We also suspect aldermen like William Kilbourn and John Sewell, who cycled to work at City Hall, might have taken issue.

Thompson’s department was probably happier if people walked anyway—apart from a couple of short trails such as one along Mimico Creek opened in 1965, cyclists were prohibited from riding off-road in all parks across Metro.

A bicycle tour along the Belt Line as proposed in Bicycling in Toronto (1972 edition). Note suggestion to ride through Oriole Park, which was illegal.

One of the first battlegrounds for Toronto’s cycling future was the Belt Line in North Toronto. When Canadian National Railways (CN) put the old railway line on the market in 1970, two opposing visions of its future emerged. Metro parks officials and York Mayor Phil White saw a great opportunity to develop the land into recreational land that could include a bike path. Toronto Mayor William Dennison and his executive committee favoured buying portions of the Belt Line to expand roads and existing parks. Dennison told the Star that he opposed a continuous path along the Belt Line because “people have demonstrated they just won’t use it.”

Dennison also echoed the fears of homeowners along the Belt Line in Forest Hill, who worried about safety issues and vandals salivating over easier access to wreck their homes. Resident William McKay, who belonged to a ratepayers association opposed to any public use of the right-of-way, feared a Belt Line park would attract lusty young lovers. “How can I teach my children morals,” he told the Star, “when there are couples seducing each other a few feet from my house?” Also underlining anti-park sentiment was the possibility, endorsed by Dennison, of selling portions of the Belt Line Toronto didn’t need to residents to expand their backyards. As a Star editorial declared, “there are always people who cannot see past the ends of their noses.”

After two years of talks, Toronto City Council approved a land swap with CN in October 1972. In exchange for the title to Union Station (which CN and Canadian Pacific intended to demolish as part of the never fully realized Metro Centre project) and a parking lot at Lake Shore Boulevard and Yonge Street, the City received the Belt Line and the future site of Roy Thomson Hall. Among the boosters of turning the rail bed into a bike path was alderman David Crombie, whose election as mayor soon after may have raised the hopes of North Toronto cyclists. Though it took a few years, both green space and a path were built and eventually named after park proponent Kay Gardiner.

Bikeway signs proposed in Bikeway System Within Metropolitan Toronto, 1974.

The possibilities surrounding the Belt Line weren’t the only promising signs for cycling infrastructure in 1972. That May, Metro Council’s transportation committee approved a bike path running along Eglinton Avenue between Martin Grove Road and Islington Avenue. Metro Roads and Traffic Commissioner Sam Cass indicated the Eglinton pilot would determine any traffic regulations introduced to future trails. By October the committee, under strong urging from East York Mayor True Davidson, instructed Cass to initiate a study to plan a Metro-wide “bikeway” network.

In eastern Scarborough, the Metro Parks Committee approved construction in June 1972 of a bike path along Highland Creek. This route was intended to connect with a path previously approved by Scarborough council which would stretch from Ellesmere Road to Markham Road. The new path was built by the Scarborough branch of Pollution Probe and funded by a mixture of federal and provincial grants, donations of materials from the road construction industry, and fundraising events like a bike-a-thon to Ontario Place in September, which drew 1,000 participants.

Cover of the 1972 edition of Bicycling in Toronto.

It’s possible some of those participants might have flipped through Bicycling in Toronto before their ride. Published by Toronto Life, the guide offered cyclists tips on rules of the road, rental locations, maintenance tips, and many tours around the region. It noted the dearth of bike racks, a problem authors Estherelke and Bob Kaplan tried to tackle by urging the post office to install them as a public convenience at their Metro locations. Private parking lot chains they talked to weren’t interested in providing space for bicycles—“For one thing, they feel guilty about charging for such amounts of space, and for another they don’t want the responsibility of protecting bikes from theft and damage.” They also discovered many managers of high-rises wouldn’t install racks unless there was sufficient demand from tenants via petition. One private company was praised for its extensive use of racks: McDonald’s.

The guide received a critical drubbing in the Star, where reviewer Roger Whittaker (not the mellow singer) tore it to shreds. He was outraged that Bob Kaplan, a Liberal MP who, as Solicitor General in the early 1980s, oversaw the formation of CSIS and passage of the Young Offenders Act, openly advised riders to break the law in the suggested tours section by riding through several parks—“When a man who helps make laws advises people to break them—that’s remarkable.” Whittaker felt the routes the Kaplans devised were “ill-advised” as they placed riders on busy arteries like the Bayview Extension or, where no roads or proper paths had been built, led people into “a mudpie.”

Map of routes proposed in Bikeway System Within Metropolitan Toronto. The Globe and Mail, June 11, 1974.

Paving over muddy spots was among the items Wojciech Strok reviewed when he was handed the task of devising a “bikeway” system for Metro Council. Based on research, European examples, and a telephone survey, Strok devised a cycling infrastructure designed more for recreational use, and less as an alternative commuting network. “By designing a system,” he told the Globe and Mail, “we hope to draw a large majority of cyclists off unsafe streets.”

Released in spring 1974, Strok’s report, Bikeway System Within Metropolitan Toronto, recommended the construction of a 246 mile system across Metro Toronto in stages. The first stage consisted of six routes, the longest of which stretched from Eglinton Avenue and Highway 427 to the Metro Toronto Zoo via a diversion through Queen’s Park. Over the long term, routes needed to provide easy access to recreational areas, schools, downtown, and shopping areas like the Golden Mile and Six Points. The network should also tie into larger provincial bicycle routes, such as a “Lakeshore Route” he envisioned running from Niagara Region to Kingston. Strok advocated routes that offered as few intersections as possible to create safer riding conditions by using parklands, parallel routes along major roads, and hydro corridors for the bikeway. He suggested that riders could utilize sidewalks in low-traffic areas, as he felt riders could co-exist easier with walkers than other vehicles.

Portion of a cross-section of a bikeway from Bikeway System Within Metropolitan Toronto, including a couple who might have disturbed opponents of a Belt Line path.

The report recommended licensing as both a method of raising revenue to build the network and to make cyclists fully aware of the rules of the road. Children would undergo three levels of graduated licensing, while those with motor vehicle licenses automatically qualified to ride bicycles anywhere, though driver training would now include a section on cycling. Beyond licensing, other suggested funding methods included general revenues and property taxes, and subsidies from higher levels of government.

To provide relief for users, Strok proposed building convenience facilities like bathrooms, newsstands, refreshment stands, and water fountains along the routes. Since winter was deemed too harsh for normal cycling, it was suggested Metro could avoid clearing paths and use them for cross-country skiing.

Advertisement, the Globe and Mail, February 20, 1975.

Due to demand from governments and citizen groups around the world, the 700 copies of the report quickly disappeared, prompting reprints sold for $25 apiece. Its findings were discussed over the next year, with critics pointing out its downplaying of commuting and fears over mixing cyclists and pedestrians on sidewalks. If nothing else, the report built momentum—in June 1975, Metro Council approved a $1.8 million budget to build a 100-mile bikeway network by 1979. The first approved route ran from Eglinton Avenue and Islington Avenue through the Humber Valley to the lake, then east to Lake Shore Boulevard and Bathurst Street. That summer also saw a nine-mile test route along city streets from Lawrence Avenue to Lake Shore Boulevard, which incorporated future bike lane arteries like Russell Hill Road and St. George Street.

The popularity of cycling received a forced boost thanks to a 23-day TTC strike during the summer of 1974. Phones rang off the hook at bike shops across the city as frazzled commuters purchased new sets of wheels or pulled their old cycles out of storage. Bloor Cycle co-owner Peter Kent told the Star that “because of the repair volume, customers have to wait two or three days instead of getting same-day service.” While some chains, like Simpsons, saw their bicycle sales more than double, others like Eaton’s were ill-prepared to meet the sudden demand. It didn’t help that local manufacturer CCM’s plant in Weston was retooling for new models and couldn’t resume production.

Bob and Estherelke Kaplan enjoying a ride. Bicycling in Toronto (1975 edition).

The Kaplans reflected on the strike in a revised edition of Bicycling in Toronto issued in 1975. “As we dodged in and out among rows of waiting cars,” they noted, “we looked at the frustrated drivers, they looked at us and we both knew that bikes were winning. That experience gave drivers a bicycle-consciousness that will stick with them to our benefit.”

Additional material from Bicycling in Toronto by Estherelke and Bob Kaplan (first edition Toronto: Toronto Life, 1972; second edition Toronto: Greey dePencier Books, 1975), Bikeway System Within Metropolitan Toronto by W. Strok & Associates Limited (Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto, 1974), the May 30, 1972, August 29, 1972, September 18, 1972, October 13, 1972, and May 18, 1974 editions of the Globe and Mail, and the August 12, 1970, August 22, 1970, October 13, 1971, May 12, 1971, September 16, 1972, August 20, 1974, and July 12, 1975 editions of the Toronto Star. Thanks to Astrid Idlewild for archival photo suggestion.

Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

Source: the Toronto Star, December 31, 1969.

As Eaton’s centennial year drew to a close, the venerable retailer used its final newspaper ad for 1969 to reflect on the state of the world. The year’s major event, the moon landing of Apollo 11, inspired the image (click for a larger version).

The ’70s proved a tumultuous decade for Eaton’s, filled with highs (the opening of the Toronto Eaton Centre in 1977) and lows (the demise of its catalogue in 1976).

All the topics discussed in this ad still dominate public debate to varying degrees. They’ll fuel conversations, with or without the aid of a few stiff drinks, at this evening’s celebrations.

As this Vintage Toronto Ads entry is being posted, last-minute Christmas shoppers are scurrying across the GTA. Odds are good that if you’re reading this before the big boxes and malls have shut their doors, you’ve finished fulfilling wish lists and are marking time before the traditional exchanging of gifts and testing of your stomach’s capacity.

If you’re procrastinating until zero hour to hit the stores, or if you enjoy the adrenaline rush that comes from a last-second blitz, perhaps our gallery of vintage holiday shopping ads will provide a final burst of inspiration. Or, if you think Christmas is an over-commercialized orgy of capitalism, enjoy the period ad design.

Click through the image gallery to read more about each ad.

Source: the Don Mills Mirror, November 22, 1972.

Yorkdale wasn’t joking when it called itself “Canada’s Christmas Centre” in the early 1970s. Around 100,000 children per year perched themselves, either with excitement or with pure terror, onto the laps of the three Santas the mall employed. We imagine a few fading images taken during those brief visits survive in homes around the GTA.

Chief Santa John Horning was well acquainted with the hazards of the job: bruised knees, beard-tugging, and leaky bladders. After eight years on the job, he found that children weren’t greedy, but were “just victims of advertising.” He told the Don Mills Mirror that “every now and then a smart Alec asks for a million dollars, but to balance that a few ask for peace and happiness in the world.” Horning noted that while kids always offered to leave cookies, “I’d like to tell them to leave a shot of rye.”

Because heaven knows Santa needs a little fortification to cope with the stress of making all those deliveries on Christmas…

Additional material from the December 13, 1972 edition of the Don Mills Mirror.

Funland, Yonge and Gould Streets, circa 1980. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 1465, File 19, Item 26.

The progression went like this. A young innocent, almost always a male, fell in love with the flashing lights, bumpers, and rolling silver spheres of a pinball machine. He skipped a class or two, figuring his time was better spent mastering flippers than French. He developed an unsavoury group of new friends. As his academic marks declined, he learned vital skills, like extorting lunch money from other students to fund his pinball habit. Soon enough, he was a full-blown juvenile delinquent, leading a life of crime, drugs, and violence.

This scenario, straight out of an ancient scare-mongering classroom film, was among the main motivations behind the creation of a City by-law regulating the number of pinball machines a single business is able to operate—a by-law whose bite was felt just last week, when Parkdale’s Pinball Cafe closed down.

Establishing these pinball regulations was an endless process best summed up by a frustrated bureaucrat in a 1993 City of Toronto report:

The issue of permitting pinball, mechanical and electronic game machines in the City of Toronto has been the subject of debate, by-laws, an Ontario Municipal Board hearing and Council sub-committee attention over the past 13 years. To date, no mutually satisfactory agreement on an appropriate policy has ever been reached between industry representatives, the City of Toronto, and the Toronto Board of Education.

Guardians of public morality had long battled the evils of pinball. During the 1930s, the main concern was gambling, as some machines issued slugs used for monetary rewards instead of free games or candy. Starting in April 1937, Toronto police frequently raided businesses with pinball machines, charging owners with keeping common gaming houses if any funny business was going on.

The legal status of pinball varied between municipalities, ranging from a total ban (Forest Hill, 1944), to legally imposed restrictions on operating hours (New Toronto, 1949). By the late 1950s, a logic-twisting Supreme Court of Canada decision on games of chance wound up classifying pinball machines as illegal gambling devices. This didn’t stop operators from finding loopholes, nor did it stop people buying machines for home use.

The battle over pinball heated up in January 1975, when the Metro Toronto Police morality squad shut down 150 machines at Peter Budd’s four arcades on the Yonge Street Strip, including his flagship Funland parlour. Budd was told he wouldn’t be charged with keeping a gaming house as long as the machines stayed unplugged. A Star editorial published two weeks later declared the pinball laws “silly” and the effort to police them a “waste of time.” Federal Minister of Justice Otto Lang soon introduced amendments to the Criminal Code legalizing pinball machines, which came into effect in January 1976.

Cartoon, the Globe and Mail, February 10, 1977.

Toronto politicians occupied themselves with setting operational limits on pinball machines, both to protect innocent youth and to keep profits away from organized crime. When a Metro Toronto licensing committee proposed in September 1976 that anyone under the age of 16 require the presence of a legal guardian to play pinball, the Globe and Mail suggested that “Anyone knowing the whereabouts of a 13-year-old youth willing to be caught dead in the company of his parents, in front of a pinball machine or anywhere else outside the home, should communicate directly with the Guinness Book of Records.”

Metro Toronto Chairman Paul Godfrey was among the councillors against age restrictions, possibly because of the fact that his four-year-old son liked to play pinball during family vacations to Florida. “I don’t usually allow it here because it’s frowned on by the chief of police,” Godfrey’s wife, Regina, told the Globe and Mail in early 1977, “but I let him do it down there.” Also against stricter controls was North York Mayor Mel Lastman, who felt pinball was “a ridiculous way to spend money, but it’s better than drugs or booze.”

After a failed attempt to wrest stronger regulatory powers from the province, the City tinkered with its general zoning by-law to restrict where games could be located. An amendment added in December 1979 prevented pinball “establishments” (defined as any business that offered between three and 20 pinball or video games) from locating within 300 metres of any school. Establishments could not be within 150 metres of one another. Other commercial businesses were not allowed to install machines unless they were located in specific industrial-zoned areas, which turned out to be the Port Lands and the Stockyards. Already-existing businesses like Funland were allowed to continue operating, which probably displeased those crusading to clean up Yonge Street.

The City had trouble enforcing the by-law, so officials decided to loosen it up. New regulations, passed by city council in 1984, reduced the school-proximity rule from 300 to 45 metres. Up to 10 pinball or video games were allowed at certain types of entertainment establishments, ranging from bowling alleys to movie theatres. Other businesses would be allowed to install up to two machines.

Source: the Toronto Star, April 11, 1978. The headline on this story was "Pinball's clang, flash, lure Metro teens to sleazy life."

The city’s public and separate school boards were not amused. Officials dug out stacks of studies citing the harmful effects of pinball. They took their concerns about delinquency, drug abuse, loitering, lost lunch money, and vandalism to the Ontario Municipal Board. The OMB struck down the new by-laws in October 1985, claiming that they “lacked any valid planning principles.” With plenty of recently purchased pinball machines across the city suddenly made illegal, the City decided not to pursue any owners until yet another set of regulations could be adopted.

After close consultation with educational officials, the City’s Land Use Committee issued a report in 1987 that recommended keeping many of the machine ownership limits established in 1984 (except for entertainment venues, who would be limited to five machines instead of 10) but with the old school-distance limits. The report also recommended that anyone under the age of 18 not be permitted in pinball establishments between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on school days. These restrictions led to an outcry from the amusement industry, resulting in years of discussion. The outcome was the current set of rules—the ones the Pinball Cafe failed to follow.

Additional material from the January 30, 1975, September 27, 1976, and February 9, 1977 editions of the Globe and Mail, and the April 12, 1937, February 11, 1975. March 2, 1977, and October 10, 1985 editions of the Toronto Star.

Source: the Toronto Sun, August 24, 1978.

Mention the word “kabob” (or, depending on language and spelling preference, “kebab”) and the first image conjured up is a grilled treat on a skewer. The description of H. Salt’s “Fishkabob Feast” initially doesn’t stray from this image, promising a healthy-sounding mix of fish, fruits, and vegetables. It sounds like a dish that, with the proper glaze or marinade, could have been a last-ditch attempt to keep the Polynesian food craze alive. But the reality of the fast-food business quickly kicks in: it turns out the ingredients are dipped in batter, rather than grilled. Given the low price (even for the time), we’re shocked there isn’t a disclaimer that the fishkabobs are the same size as those depicted in the ad.

H. Salt Fish & Chips began in the San Francisco Bay area in 1965, when English expatriate Haddon Salt opened a chippy in Sausalito, California. To cultivate associations with his homeland, Salt donned bowler hats in his advertising, appended “Esq.” to his name, and wrapped the fish in reproductions of English newspapers. By the time he sold the chain to Kentucky Fried Chicken four years later, it had grown to 100 outlets. When asked what became of Salt in a 1981 Star profile of names behind well-known restaurants, a Canadian chain official said “Damned if I know.” Turns out Salt stayed in the seafood business. He ran a fishery in the desert east of San Diego.

While the H. Salt chain pulled out of Canada years ago and is currently limited to locations in California, a fish and chip stand bearing its name is a longstanding staple of the CNE’s Food Building. Given the fair’s obsession with artery-clogging, fried-food novelties, the “Fishkabob Feast” is ripe for a comeback in 2013.

Additional material from the March 30, 1981 edition of the Toronto Star.

Jacques Plante as depicted on the cover of The Jacques Plante Story.

Jacques Plante was not where he wanted to be during the 1970 Stanley Cup finals. During game one, the St. Louis Blues goaltender was knocked out cold after a shot from Boston Bruin Fred Stanfield shattered his face mask. The 41-year-old veteran netminder spent the next few days recovering from a concussion in a St. Louis hospital, where he was swarmed by reporters from Toronto. While curious about his condition, one question was on their minds: were the rumours true that “Jake the Snake” would become a Maple Leaf?

Surprised, Plante sat up in his bed and dismissed the story as silly. “It’s not that I don’t think highly of Toronto,” he told the press corps, “but you fellows know only too well the trouble I’ve had there with my asthma. The last thing that can happen to me is Toronto.” Speculation continued even though announcements from Leafs management indicated that, despite a last place finish during the 1969/’70 season, they were happy with the goaltending tandem of Bruce Gamble and Marv Edwards. Sportswriter Jim Proudfoot speculated in the Hockey News that Plante would fill in the role held by recently retired Johnny Bower of “the big stopper who’ll win the important matches, no matter what blunders are committed in front of him and who’ll make the impossible stops at times when it’ll interrupt opposition momentum and give his own colleagues a lift.” Proudfoot suspected that one or two excellent seasons from Plante would give the Leafs time for their young defensemen to develop and to find goaltending prospects for the future.

Source: Hockey Pictorial, February 1972.

Plante was released from the hospital in time to join the rest of the Blues for a post-season vacation in Miami Beach. While waiting for a bus to the airport at the end of the trip, Blues coach/general manager Scotty Bowman pulled Plante aside and told him the secret he kept since the trip began: Plante was heading to the Leafs as part of a three-team deal which earlier sent Tim Horton from Toronto to the New York Rangers. The Blues decided to protect their other, slightly younger goalies (Glenn Hall and Ernie Wakely) in the upcoming expansion draft which would admit Buffalo and Vancouver to the league. Plante reassuring Bowman that he would have made the same move, then thanked him for two wonderful seasons with the Blues since ending a three-year retirement from the NHL in 1968. Bowman later admitted letting Plante go was a big mistake.

After the trade was officially announced in late May 1970, Plante spent the off-season launching Fibrosport, a hockey equipment manufacturer specializing in goalie masks. Ever since he revolutionized hockey by donning his first face protector a decade earlier, Plante had continually refined his masks. To avoid a repeat of his recent hospitalization, he tested a mask which withstood the impact of a puck fired from an air cannon at 135 miles an hour. To avoid distraction during the upcoming season, Plante handed day-to-day production management to his 19-year-old son.

Team doctors were impressed when Plante reported to training camp in September 1970, finding his condition as good as rookies two decades younger. To prepare, he dropped his five-cigar-a-day smoking habit. Leafs executive Harold Ballard boasted that “in orthodox medicine, Plante’s health is expressed this way: 20-20 vision, age 41, 183 pounds, 140 over 80 blood pressure, and seven Vezina Trophies.” To alleviate Plante’s asthma, the team rented him an apartment on higher ground near Yonge Street and Highway 401 and arranged weekly tests at Sunnybrook Hospital. “I’ve never seen doctors anywhere else who seem so interested in finding what’s wrong,” he told the Globe and Mail.

Hockey cards of Jacques Plante from the 1971/'72 and 1972/'73 O-Pee-Chee sets.

As the season opener approached, Plante was confident about his skills. “I think I’m a better goalie now than before I retired in 1965,” he told the Hockey News. “In a couple of seasons watching hockey, I learned a great many things about goalkeeping and about the players I’d have to face—things I didn’t know before, I think that knowledge makes me better.” He made one concession to his age—“I need more time to get over a game than before. It takes a day of rest to get me back to normal.”

The team started 1970/’71 poorly, battling with the Buffalo Sabres for last place in the East Division. Play improved after Plante recovered from an injury, centre George Armstrong ended a brief retirement, and former Leaf star defenseman Bob Baun was reacquired from the Detroit Red Wings. Coach John McLellan gave Plante the freedom to choose which games to play and treated him like an assistant coach, giving him free reign to advise the team’s younger defenders. Qualities Plante was criticized for—being a know-it-all chatterbox—were embraced by the rebuilding Leafs. Players were impressed by the extensive notes he kept on opposing players and arenas. As Jim Proudfoot noted in the Star, Plante became the team’s “beloved patriarch,” who saved the team’s youth “from the jackpots their boyish mistakes bring on.” Reporters often used him for quotes, and commented on his frugal lifestyle and habit of knitting his own undershirts, which grew out of childhood poverty.

Plante soon embraced the city of Toronto. “I am still amazed at what a nice place Toronto is to live in,” he noted in his autobiography. “My view had been limited to hotel windows and unfriendly fans in the Gardens but, suddenly, I found both Toronto and its people altogether different. Maybe that’s been the trouble in our country; we just don’t get around and meet the neighbours in other provinces.

Cover, Hockey Pictorial, February 1972.

It’s hard to say what effect the supportive atmosphere had on his play, but as the season unfolded everyone realized they were witnessing an amazing performance. By the time he turned 42 in January 1971, Plante had a goals against average hovering under 2.00 and a pair of shutouts to his credit. In games he didn’t play in, the team had a losing record. A poll conducted by the Star of coaches around the league named Plante the top goalie. “If I had to win one particular game,” one coach noted, “Plante’s the guy I’d want to have going for me. It’s unbelievable, but he keeps getting better and better.” As the team rose in the standings, so did Plante’s volume of fan mail. He provided handwritten responses for up to 200 letters daily, though he saved time by providing a printed list of 15 key tips for aspiring players.

While his asthma was kept under control, Plante suffered a late-season injury whose true nature was covered up to prevent embarrassment. While lounging poolside during a roadtrip to Los Angeles, Plante suffered severe facial sunburn which prevented him from wearing his mask. The press was told he was rushed to hospital for “a badly infected face.” General manager Jim Gregory claimed the infection was caused by a botched dental cleaning. Plante drew on his legendary hypochondria when he told reporters that at first he thought he had a boil in his nose, then the mumps.

Source: the Toronto Star, April 16, 1971.

When the season ended, Plante recorded 24 wins, 11 losses, and four ties. In games he didn’t play or have a decision in, the Leafs managed 13 wins, 22 losses, and four ties. Plante also had four shutouts and a stunning goals against average of 1.88. How incredible his season was became clear years later, when hockey buff Edward Yuen tracked a statistic that wasn’t in use back in 1970/’71, save percentage. After piecing together every goalie’s performance, Yuen discovered Plante blocked 94.2 per cent of the shots he faced, giving him a .942 save percentage, which was over two percent better than the next netminder. Since the NHL began tracking the statistic in the early 1980s, the closest anyone has come to Plante’s figure is Brian Elliott, who reached .940 with the Blues in 2011/’12.

During the first round of the playoffs against the New York Rangers, Plante split goaltending duties with Bernie Parent, who reluctantly came to the Leafs in a blockbuster trade in January 1971. “Jacques Plante came over and grabbed my arm,” Parent remembered. “Cripes, Plante was like a god to me. I had been watching him on TV since I was a kid. Now I was on the same team with him. It was then that I knew even though I still felt the hurt over the Philadelphia trade, this trade was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me in hockey.” Plante’s mentoring helped Parent lead the Flyers to two Stanley Cups upon his return to Philadelphia a few seasons later. The veteran came to his student’s rescue after Parent’s mask was tossed into the stands by Vic Hadfield of the New York Rangers in a brawl during game two of the playoffs. Parent refused to play without it, leaving Plante to fill in for the remaining four minutes of the game. As the Star observed, “when a goalie loses his favourite face mask, it is handy to have the manufacturer occupying bench space in the same dressing room.” Plante made a quick call to Magog, where Fibrosport prepared a new mask for Parent in time for game three. Harold Ballard insisted that the Rangers pay the $150 bill for Parent’s new facewear.

Clip from Face Off. Jacques Plante appears at the 14-second mark.

Plante’s magic ran out in game six, when a Bob Nevin goal nine minutes into overtime eliminated the Leafs. Despite this, he was rewarded for his efforts through the season with a spot on the NHL’s second all-star team. He was among the Leafs who appeared in the movie Face Off, though he annoyed the filmmakers by stopping several shots from former Leaf Mike Walton when he was supposed to let one go by. Plante stayed with Toronto until he was traded to the Boston Bruins during their Stanley Cup drive in March 1973. After a stint as coach/general manager of the Quebec Nordiques, he returned to the ice for a season with the Edmonton Oilers before hanging up his skates at age 46 in 1975. He continued to mentor other goalies until his death from cancer in February 1986.

Additional material from The Hockey Compendium by Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001), Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey by Todd Denault (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009), The Jacques Plante Story by Andy O’Brien with Jacques Plante (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972), and the following newspapers: the June 1970 and October 16, 1970 editions of the Hockey News, the September 10, 1970, December 5, 1970, and April 10, 1971 editions of the Globe and Mail, and the January 2, 1971. March 13, 1971, and March 26, 1971 editions of the Toronto Star.

Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

Source: the Globe and Mail, November 5, 1975.

Last week, we reported that TVOntario is cancelling Saturday Night at the Movies after almost 40 years on the air. Today’s ad from the show’s early days sums up the things that made it a hit: an enthusiastic host, smart programming choices, and the use of the medium as “a springboard for discussion, ideas, feelings and—education.”

Saturday Night at the Movies was prominently featured in the network’s “TVOntario opens eyes” print advertising campaign during the mid-1970s. Today’s ad gives a feel for the range of films the series was showing at that time: Hitchcock thrillers, swashbuckling adventures, and Cold War–paranoia sci-fi.

Sharing space in this ad is host Elwy Yost’s weeknight gig, Magic Shadows. To fit the half-hour slot, movies were split up, serial style, and curated by Yost in a less formal manner than the Saturday-night feature bills. The show featured an imaginative—if slightly frightening to children—animated opening sequence.

Source: the Telegram, September 22, 1971.

Hey, parents: are you looking for a last-minute costume for your toddler that doesn’t involve dressing him or her up as a member of the plant or animal kingdoms? If you have access to a time machine, set your coordinates for 1971 and the closest Towers discount department store. While thrifty shoppers of the day saw a “‘Baby Gir’ unimolded walker” as a cheap aid for speeding their child’s shift from four limbs to two legs, you will recognize its untapped potential as a kid-friendly Dalek costume.

Once you’ve zipped back to 2012, carefully peel off the nursery decals and spray-paint the walker grey. Paste on more circular objects if time permits. Glue a plunger on, or let your child your hold on to it like a rattle. The kid will love rolling around indoors or out, yelling “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!” in the cutest robotic voice ever.

It’s unlikely Torontonians would have conceived of a costume like this back in 1971, because Doctor Who hadn’t had much exposure in Canada then. CBC ran William Hartnell’s first five serials, including the Daleks’ debut, in early 1965. In September 1966, the first of two movies starring Peter Cushing as a human doctor (alongside multicoloured Daleks), hit local theatres. Not until TVOntario picked up the series in 1976 did Who air for an extended period of time in Toronto.