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.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/billpusztai/3128094061/"}billpusztai{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

SERVICE: Every church in Toronto (and this is a fairly complete list) will be holding a Christmas Eve service today or tonight. (Some will also hold Christmas Day services.) But the big ticket is the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto’s annual service and celebration, held not at their east-end location, but at Roy Thomson Hall. In addition to a sermon by Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes and music from the MCC Choir, the church will be joined by special guests Alana Bridgewater (We Will Rock You) and Sterling Jarvis (Caroline, or Change). Roy Thomson Hall (60 Simcoe Street), 8 p.m., $25.

CHINESE AND A MOVIE: It’s become an urban tradition for non-Christians on December 25: go for Chinese food and see a movie. Check out our film reviews for ideas. And this guide to Christmas Day in Chinatown holds up well.

Urban Planner is Torontoist‘s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to events@torontoist.com.

A Toronto-penned carol from 1887 you can play at home this season. The News, December 24, 1887.

In some ways, the holiday season that brought 1887 to a close was similar to today. People rushed around the city to pick up their Christmas gifts. Plenty of booze was downed. Discussions and editorial pages focused on the future of Toronto’s mayoralty. Digging beyond the surface, similarities via the city’s legion of newspapers shows a season that was equally celebratory and cringe-inducing.

Mail columnist H.H. Wiltshire (aka “The Flaneur”) provided the best-written observation of the state of Christmas:

Latterly the question has been often asked as to what is the meaning of the tendency everywhere during the last few years for a much more general observance of the Christmas festival. In some quarters it is attributed to increased reverence, in others to sentimentality, while we are also told that it is only seized upon as an excuse for idleness and gluttony, under the cover of hospitality. Without staying to consider how far any of these views are correct, may we not suppose that one very natural reason is the necessity we all feel for a little rest and enjoyment! Unquestionably there is more work done now in a shorter time than was ever the case before; this must cause a reaction in some form, and this season of the year has appeared most convenient because it is the nearest approach to a recognized universal holiday-time throughout the civilized world. A simple answer to the enquiry is given in the fact that that overworked humanity wants rest.

All of us with healthy minds in healthy bodies enjoy holidays and amusement, and custom, if nothing else, has made both seem especially appropriate to this time of the year. One of the best associations of Christmas undoubtedly is the increasing fondness for family and friendly re-union, when many feuds are healed and words and acts of temper are forgiven; also the inculcation and practice of the truth that there are none of us so poor in ability or in purse but that we can, by merely doing “the duty nearest hand,” make the load lighter and the day more bright for some among those whom sickness or sorrow, misfortune or folly, entitle not only to our kindness and sympathy, but also to be the unsoliciting recipients of practical and generous aid.

Advertisement, the Globe, December 23, 1887.

The rest Wiltshire extolled wasn’t present on Christmas Eve 1887, as downtown streets filled with shoppers in a rush. Though shop windows were filled with joyful displays, those entering stores to purchase gifts were, according to the Globe, hardly in a celebratory mood. “Almost everybody one met seemed to have a parcel or to be in a hurry to get one,” the paper noted. “To judge by the expression of face and the words caught in passing, the getting of the parcels seemed rather to hinder than to help the feeling of joyousness.”

The papers were filled with holiday-inspired doggerel and Christmas stories which would not be published under any circumstances today. The worst offender was a lengthy illustrated tale published in the News on Christmas Eve whose anonymous author reminisced about the glorious celebrations enjoyed by plantation slaves in the southern United States prior to the Civil War. Every imaginable derogatory term was used in a story filled with pidgin English, stock stereotypes, dancing galore, and “the wild hilarity of a negro gathering.”

Because Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, good upstanding Torontonians were expected to observe the usual pieties that created Toronto’s reputation as a place not to have any fun on the Lord’s Day for decades to come. Not that the day was devoid of pleasure—when evening rolled around, carollers hit the streets, along with impromptu brass bands playing tunes on battered instruments.

There was a sad note Christmas morning when the body of Maria Green was found in a stable behind 40 Elizabeth Street. Rather than provide any sympathy for her death from exposure, the press went into full moralizing mode. The Globe depicted Green as “an elderly woman employed as cook in a house of ill-fame on Albert Street,” while the Mail described her as “a woman of about fifty years of age, and the greater part of her life had been spent in infamy. Christmas brought to her not peace but an excess of drunkenness and debauchery with her tragic death as a wind-up.”

Left: Cartoon, the News, December 24, 1887.

The delay of most public Christmas activities to December 26 appeared to create a pent-up thirst among Torontonians, as people went wild when the bars reopened that morning. “’Moral’ Toronto Spends a Very Liquid Christmas” screamed a headline above the World’s account of “the drunkenest day that Toronto has seen for years.” Sleighs overflowed with “more young men than is allowed by the law regarding cruelty to animals.” People who claimed to have never touched a drop of alcohol were among those found in packed saloons. Some establishments closed early to avoid a steady stream of barroom brawls and police visits. “The ordinary drinking public dropped into their usual haunts and were surprised and disgusted at what they saw,” the World reported. “By 6 o’clock there were so many places closed that a usual question was ‘well, where can we go to get a drink?’” Police handled the chaos by making arrests only when necessary. The Globe theorized that the drinking orgy was due to liquor vendors attempting to demonstrate that tougher temperance laws would increase the abusive effects of booze, especially a set of bylaws on the upcoming municipal election ballot.

Alcohol control played a key role in the mayoral campaign that holiday season. On November 3, 1887, Mayor William Holmes Howland announced he would not run for a third term. While Howland spoke to Christian and temperance groups in other cities to extol the effects of his campaigns to reduce the availability of alcohol, the question arose as to who would continue his moral crusade and efforts to curb corruption at City Hall. The favoured candidate among the reformer set was rookie alderman Elias Rogers, a Quaker pro-temperance activist who was one of Toronto’s largest coal merchants.

Two other candidates emerged. Edward Frederick Clarke was a rookie Conservative member at Queen’s Park who published the Orange Sentinel newspaper. Unlike many Orangemen of the era, Clarke was seen as a broadminded man due to actions like allowing Irish Catholic activists to speak at the organization’s hall. Because he wasn’t a fervent temperance advocate, he was depicted by opponents as a friend of the saloon. Daniel Defoe was a veteran alderman who touted his long council experience but was handicapped by his Catholic faith in a very Protestant city—the best he could hope for was a spoiler role. Whoever became mayor needed to be, according to a Globe editorial, “a level-headed, painstaking, conscientious man of marked business ability.”

The campaign was well underway when official nominations were made during a raucous meeting at City Hall (now incorporated into the south St. Lawrence Market) on December 26. The loudest members of the overflow crowd were Clarke supporters, who jeered the other candidates and their nominators. Rogers received most of the verbal abuse, some of it deserved. Female electors were still a new concept—Ontario had granted spinsters and widows the vote in municipal elections in 1884—so Rogers pointed out those in attendance and indicated they were on his side. When a heckler yelled “How do you know they are?,” the Telegram noted that Rogers “knew they were on his side because the ladies were always on the right side.”

More troubling for Rogers were reports that he was the head of a “coal ring.” A series of exposes in the News written by Clarke ally and York West MP Nathaniel Clarke Wallace portrayed Rogers as the leader of a cartel who artificially inflated the price of coal in Toronto, failed to pass savings onto consumers after the federal government removed tariffs on the heating fuel, and conspired to drive competitors out of business. Rogers painted himself as a victim via a complicated explanation involving American coal combines, merciless railway companies, and forming his own ring as a protective measure.

Cartoon depicting Elias Rogers and Edward Clarke, the News, December 31, 1887.

Despite increasingly lengthy explanations about the coal ring which convinced few voters, city churches and most of the press endorsed Rogers. Endless ink was devoted to depicting him as the best man to uphold Howland’s policies and continue the moral crusade against corruption and liquor. Papers like the Telegram were smug in their certainty of a Rogers victory, declaring that the defeat “will simply be extraordinary.”

The extraordinary happened. As the votes were tallied on January 2, 1888, Howland waited for the results at Rogers’ HQ and kept the crowd pepped up. When the early results showed Clarke in the lead, Howland urged people not to leave. By 9 p.m. the race was over—Clarke defeated Rogers by nearly 1,000 votes. Clarke appeared at the window of the News’ newsroom and gave his victory speech, where he declared his win as “not a triumph of the saloon, but a triumph of the moderate over the intemperate party.”

Clarke captured two key groups that Rogers’ backers had looked upon with condescension: labour and women. He pointed out his participation in and arrest during the printer’s strike of 1872 and utilized female canvassers. There were also signs that Torontonians were tiring of heavy-handed, puritanical laws enacted by the Howland administration, such as preventing the hiring of horses on Sundays. In his recently launched paper Saturday Night, E.E. Sheppard observed that people were exasperated by the increasing self-righteousness of Howland’s allies and by “sumptuary laws more arbitrary and intolerant than those which already exist and have been found unworkable.”

Besides Rogers, voters rejected the temperance bylaws on the ballot. They also rejected a ballot proposal to fund construction of a trunk sewer to improve city sanitation, a vote which falls into the great Toronto tradition of balking at spending money on needed infrastructure projects.

Additional material from Mayor Howland The Citizens’ Candidate by Desmond Morton (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973), Mayors of Toronto Volume 1 1834-1899 by Victor Loring Russell (Erin: Boston Mills Press, 1982), and the following newspapers: the December 23, 1887, December 26, 1887, and December 29, 1887 editions of the Globe; the December 24, 1887, December 26, 1887, and January 3, 1888 editions of the Mail; the December 24, 1887 edition of the News; the December 10, 1887 edition of Saturday Night; the December 27, 1887 and December 29, 1887 editions of the Telegram; and the December 27, 1887 edition of the World.

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

By now, most of us are pretty burned out on Christmas music. CHFI has been conducting its campaign of holiday-inspired terror for almost three weeks, while every shopping mall in town plays a muzak version of “White Christmas” on a seemingly infinite loop.

Santa, I’ve Given You All My Cookies and Now I’m Nothing is an antidote to all that forced cheer. Put out by Southern Ontario–based label Pop Punk’s Not Dead, the compilation is part of the longstanding tradition of punk bands making their own tongue-in-cheek Christmas songs. Roughly half of the bands on the album are from Southern Ontario, while the other half hail from places as diverse as Tennessee and Australia. (For those of you who are curious, the compilation’s title is a reference to an album by Philadelphia-based band the Wonder Years.)

While Santa may be put out by a label called Pop Punk’s Not Dead, it actually showcases a fairly broad array of sounds. Sure, there’s loads of snotty skate punk—like Double Lined Minority’s “Ex on Christmas”—and a fair bit of emo-esque melodic-aggressive wailing, best exemplified by It’s Only a Story’s “I’m Coming Home.” (You can listen to “I’m Coming Home” by clicking on the sample above.) But that’s not all there is. Sophomore’s cover of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” is fairly synth-heavy and owes as much to New Wave as it does to SoCal pop punk. There’s also a fair bit of punk-influenced acoustic material, most notably Furthest from Fame’s “Caroling for the Broken Hearted.”

Christmas music may be a little grating at times, but Santa, I’ve Given You All My Cookies and Now I’m Nothing proves that it doesn’t have to be.

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.

Source: the Telegram, November 23, 1969.

Christmas 1969: Frosty the Snowman debuts on television, trips to the moon are no longer flights of fantasy, and children line up for their holiday visit with Blinky the Talking Police Car. Snoopy might be more famous, but what child can resist a chatty cop cruiser?

Blinky was among the attractions the Telegram lined up for its Christmas Wonderland fair at the CNE grounds in 1969. While adults wished for a snowmobile or snazzy AMC Hornet, youngsters enjoyed the thrills of recent space adventures or met long-time CFTO kiddie-show host “Uncle Bobby” Ash. His spacey expression in this ad suggests he had either tested a hypnotist act or celebrated one birthday too many with Bimbo the Birthday Clown.

Among those who attended opening day was Mayor William Dennison, who brought his three grandchildren. The Dennisons were among the attendees who donated toys to a drive run by the Telegram’s Action Line problem-solving column. The paper hoped to fill over 400 barrels of toys for distribution via the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Salvation Army.

When you live in Toronto, it’s easy to go local for your holiday shopping. There are lots of talented people here, selling all sorts of awesome products and services.

We’ve searched high and low for Toronto-themed gift ideas, like these cufflinks made of old TTC tokens, pictured above. Some of the items on our list are made here, while some are related to the city in other ways. Click through the photo gallery to see them all.

All images courtesy of the respective sellers.

One of a Kind Christmas Show and Sale
Direct Energy Centre
(100 Princes’ Boulevard)
November 22 to December 2
Weekdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The One of a Kind Show, now in its 35th year, is back in town until December 2. Looking for the perfect gift for the cyclist in your life, or for your friend’s newborn? Or maybe you want an instrument that’s perfect for jamming out in Trinity Bellwoods? Torontoist scoped out all 800 artisans on display at the Direct Energy Centre. Some of of our best finds are in the photo gallery, above.

The show will run late until 11 p.m. on November 29. It’s best to go early and during the week, though, because the place gets crowded. Happy shopping, and be thankful that you’ve avoided the Black Friday insanity down south.

WHERE: Throughout downtown.

WHEN: Sunday, November 18.

WHAT: The Santa Claus Parade is a 108-year-old Christmas tradition—one so beloved that it even once managed to survive a brush with insolvency by rallying donations from Toronto’s business leaders. This year’s instance wasn’t a whole lot different from those in years past, but that’s kind of the point of the whole thing. Click through the gallery to see a bunch of pictures of floats and happy kids.

Front page, the Toronto Sun, August 10, 1982.

Thousands of people will line downtown streets on Sunday to glimpse a visitor from the North Pole. Since 1905, the Santa Claus Parade has entertained generations with its array of floats, marching bands, and upside-down clowns. Yet if businessmen, politicians, and the public hadn’t acted swiftly 30 years ago, the parade would be little more than a nostalgic memory today.

On August 9, 1982, Eaton’s president Frederik Eaton became Toronto’s version of the Grinch when he cancelled the 77-year-old Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade. An economic recession had made footing the $500,000 bill for an event that no longer boosted seasonal sales impractical. “I’m forty-four years of age, and I remember at least forty Santa Claus parades,” Eaton said. “It has been a long and happy association, and I, with a lot of other people, have enjoyed it immensely. Times are difficult, and it seems silly to be spending money on a parade when we are having to let people go.” (The department store had laid off 500 employees four months earlier.) When the announcement was made, 70 per cent of the preparation work for the parade had already been completed.

Eaton mentioned numerous complaints about recent editions of the parade. The largest was its timing: the 1981 parade had happened on November 1 which, along the lines of the recent furor about holiday music at Shoppers Drug Mart, led some to complain that Christmas had come too early. “It’s supposed to be a positive event,” Eaton observed, “but, when it creates negative reaction, you have to wonder.”

Source: the Toronto Star, August 13, 1982.

Metro Toronto chairman Paul Godfrey was visiting McDonald’s Canada president George Cohon when an aide passed along the news. After a quick meeting with Eaton, Godfrey held a press conference. Wearing a haloed angel on his lapel, Godfrey promised a “110-per cent effort” to save the parade.

Torontonians were concerned. “It’s sacrilegious,” one woman told the Sun. “Why do we have to give up all our fantasies? I was hoping I’d be able to take my grandchildren to see it.” In a Star phone poll, 90 per cent of callers supported saving the parade. While the paper set up “yes” and “no” phone lines, the response so overwhelmed the pro-parade line that calls were automatically shifted to the anti-parade number.

Not everyone was misty-eyed about the parade’s demise. Alderman John Sewell said he preferred no parade over one held ultra-early again. At the same time, he believed Eaton’s withdrawal might “allow the people of Toronto to organize a better parade” that was less commercialized. Sun columnist Christie Blatchford adopted a “we can’t have nice things” attitude, noting the many complaints Eaton’s endured over an event that was “a gift, a present from a fine Old Toronto family that made its fortune here and felt some obligation and responsibility to the city and its people.” Roman Catholic Archbishop of Toronto Emmett Cardinal Carter, in the guise of a letter from Santa, urged people to direct their energy to helping needy children instead of throwing money at a revived parade.

A grassroots “Save Our Santa” campaign attempted to raise money by selling buttons for a dollar. It ran into problems on August 16 when a volunteer dressed as Santa ran afoul of a fundraising bylaw. Undaunted, he wandered into City Hall and received a warm reception from several councillors who happily donned the buttons.

Advertisement, the Globe and Mail, November 12, 1982.

The same day, Godfrey and Toronto mayor Art Eggleton announced the formation of a non-profit corporation to run the parade, chaired by Cohon and Metro Toronto Zoo chairman Ron Barbaro. Eaton’s transferred the costumes, equipment, and floats to the new corporation. Barbaro and Cohon blitzed potential corporate sponsors, who eventually agreed to pay $25,000 annually for the next three years. Nineteen companies spanning the alphabet from Baskin-Robbins ice cream to discounter Willy Wonderful committed to the parade, as did the provincial government. Barbaro found the response “so unbelievable” that some potential sponsors were turned down, lest the parade be overrun with floats.

On November 14, 1982, the renamed Metro Santa Claus Parade entertained crowds from Christie Pits to Nathan Phillips Square, as well as viewers watching at home on CBC. The first batch of celebrity clowns included Barbaro and film director Norman Jewison, whom the Star noted “looked uncertain about being in front of a camera instead of behind one.”

Dressed as a “stray cat,” Sun writer Danielle Crittenden described what it was like to be part of the procession:

The first stretch to University Avenue was a breeze. I skipped back and forth between the rows of spectators, shook endless lines of hopeful hands, sparred with a few who pulled my tail and tried to dodge a rather intimidating block of baton twirlers. By University Avenue, my black furry boots had spanking new holes in the bottom and my meowed greetings were raspier and fewer. The crowd was about four lines deep and a sea of mittens waved. There were a few tears when some missed my exhausted paw.

Source: the Toronto Star, November 15, 1982.

Amid the crowd was a satisfied Paul Godfrey. “Today, I bumped into people of all races, creeds, colours, and religious backgrounds,” he told the Star. “If somebody had to describe what Toronto is like as a city they should come out and see the people here.”

The low point of the day occurred off the parade route. Some spectators found their trip home disrupted by the aftermath of a shooting that wounded four, at a protest in front of the Indian consulate general office at Bloor and Yonge streets.

Additional material from The Eatons by Rod McQueen (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999) and the following newspapers: the August 10, 1982 and August 17, 1982 editions of the Globe and Mail, the August 10, 1982, August 11, 1982, August 14, 1982, August 18, 1982, August 20, 1982, and November 15, 1982 editions of the Toronto Star, and the August 10, 1982, August 11, 1982, and November 15, 1982 editions of the Toronto Sun.

The Santa Claus Parade
Parade route
November 18, 12:30 start
FREE

During a drive along the 401 to the Toronto branch of Santa’s Workshop on Friday, there was a sign that Santa Claus was bringing a touch of the holiday season with him for his preview of the 108th Toronto Santa Claus Parade: gentle snow flurries skated across our windshield.

At the workshop, Santa appeared fit and trim amid the floats-in-progress, presumably because of a strict diet and exercise regimen developed by Mrs. Claus and the elves. This should ensure an energetic appearance when he rides his float through downtown streets on November 18. His route, which parade president Peter Beresford described as “six and a half kilometres of smiles and fun,” will be the same as last year. The procession will begin at 12:30 p.m. at Christie Pits, then head east on Bloor Street, south on Queen’s Park/University Avenue, east on Wellington Street, and wrap up at St. Lawrence Market.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Santa Claus Parade’s existential crisis, in 1982. Then, the event was rescued by the downtown business community after its original organizer, Eaton’s department store, decided it was too costly to fund during a recession. Several speakers mentioned this during the preview. They praised all of the donors and volunteers who have kept this seasonal tradition alive.

The parade coincides with the start of the week-long festivities for the 100th edition of the Grey Cup. The game will be saluted with a float carrying a 14-foot replica of the cup, as well as a real-life Toronto Argonauts executive, Pinball Clemons.

Several blasts from the past will evoke nostalgic memories for parade veterans. McDonald’s is sponsoring a replica of a “Farmer in the Dell” float, which appeared in the 1951 procession. It’s intended to be the first in an annual series of throwback floats. The parade website offers a downloadable reprint of a 1952 Eaton’s colouring book, which introduces a new generation of kids to Punkinhead, the defunct department store’s one-time holiday mascot.

The website also offers a downloadable app, which will transform iPhones into jingle bells for onlookers to shake as the procession rolls by. Kids can enter an online draw for four seats on Mrs. Claus’s float. Also, three days after the parade, crowd photos taken from a “SantaCam” affixed to Santa’s float will be available for viewing—and for use in embarrassing anyone caught mugging for the camera.

Red noses are currently available at 30 Canadian Tire locations in the GTA for two dollars apiece. Proceeds will be split between Canadian Tire Jumpstart, which funds recreational sports for low-income children, and the parade. For a donation of $100 to the parade, the organizers will put a child’s name on a banner attached to the 12 Days of Christmas float. Organizers are also aiming to raise $150,000 in toy donations for remote Northern communities, part of the parade’s Toys for the North program.

Be careful! It’s “fragile,” which means it was made in Italy.

First, credit where it’s due. The Toronto Star beat us to the punch researching this, but since they didn’t have screencaps, and since they borrowed some of our material for a Halloween article, we figured we’re even-Steven.

Second, how could we not do A Christmas Story? We think it’s the best holiday movie there is (okay, after Die Hard). Not only was a huge chunk of it filmed here, it’s one of the great, subtle “I didn’t know it was filmed in Toronto!” movies of all time.

You win this round, Cleveland.

A Christmas Story takes place in 1940s Indiana and some of it was filmed in Cleveland. That means the greatest single location, Ralphie’s house, is on the other side of Lake Erie. The house (complete with leg lamp in the window) has been restored by its new owner and is part of a tour you can take. Fear not, however—there’s plenty of glory left for Hogtown and environs.

The camera must be so close to Speaker’s Corner you can practically smell the piss.

Queen Street West might not seem like the heppest place to get a Christmas tree, but a parking lot at #232 served the purpose back in the early ’80s. You can even see old-timey streetcars using the tracks.

And you know the great scene where the car breaks down and, for the first time, Ralphie lets loose with the F-word (not “fudge”)? That was shot right by the Cherry Street drawbridge (yup, the same one we just saw in The Incredible Hulk).

Apparently, we have alleyways perfect for you to stage your own reenactments of Our Gang.

When the school bullies chase Ralphie and his friends it’s along Sears Street, at Minto.
It culminates in this fight with Farkas, shot just west, at 64 Sears Street, north of Eastern Avenue. Ironically, it’s just around the corner from “Memory Lane.”

When all goes wrong, the family does a Christmas dinner at the local Chinese restaurant. In this case, it’s the former Chop Suey Palace at 744 Gerrard Street East, now home to Batifole. You can see what the frontage looks like these days at their website.

Basically, all the film’s interiors were were shot at 793 Pharmacy Avenue, once home to Magder studios. SCTV was among the other tenants there.

Then the production ventured out into 905sville.

The schoolyard with the classic flagpole-licking scene was shot at Victoria P.S. in St. Catharines. Today it’s a women’s shelter so licking anything in the yard is definitely out. Anyway, it turns out the pole in the movie was placed there for the scene. It’s the magic of Hollywood, folks.

We stumbled across this site, which made our job easier and also includes some great now/then shots and the real estate listing (!) from when the school went up for sale.

If you do make the trip down to Niagara, you can stop in the St. Catharines Museum where they have the Red Ryder BB Gun and other props.

Vehicles also get in on the action. The 1938 fire truck belongs to the Chippawa Volunteer Firefighters Association in Niagara. The vintage streetcars seen above are property of the Halton County Radial Railway Museum.

Aside from that and knowing this is the film’s 25th anniversary, what else is there to know? [Ed note: This article was originally published in 2008, meaning the film is now almost four years older.] How about it that it was brought to you by the (recently-deceased) director of Porky’s, Bob Clark.

If you’re wondering, Peter Billingsley, who portrayed Ralphie, is pretty much out of the acting game. Now he looks like this. He’s a big-time producer and pals with Jon Favreau, which kinda explains why shaved his head doing something of a cameo as a scientist helping build Jeff Bridges’s suit in Iron Man.

Remember: Drink your Ovaltine!

CORRECTION: August 1, 2012, 5:10 PM This post originally had a link that was out of date. It has now been updated. We apologize for this oversight.

CORRECTION: August 2, 2012, 9:15 AM This post originally made reference to a restaurant that was in business when the post was originally written. It is no longer in business, so the reference has been removed.

Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.