On December 7, 1896, the Globe heralded “the dawn of the horseless era” in Toronto, following the test of a motor vehicle at Dixon’s Carriage Works at Bay and Temperance streets. Dixon’s had hitherto dealt exclusively in horse-drawn vehicles, and this “motor carriage” was the first of its kind in Toronto, the personal property of [...]

“We want you to forget about today, about yesterday, and about tomorrow,” the singer proclaimed to the crowd of 10,000 at Maple Leaf Gardens. “Tonight we’re gonna create a whole new world,” he added as the band roared in “Fire,” their traditional opening number. By the time he played Toronto on May 3, 1969, Jimi [...]

Toronto’s Michael Balazo has been in Halifax since November 2011, working as a writer on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Since he left town, he’d stopped posting on his satirical blog, Toronto Sun Cover Reviews, where for years he’d been writing select reviews of the covers of, in his words, “Canada’s most reactionary/hysterical newspaper.” [...]

Dysfunction has a long history in Toronto hockey. A hockey impresario in the amateur ranks, Edward J. Livingstone’s graduation to the professional game quickly devolved into bickering, power struggles, and lawsuits. As owner and manager of the Toronto Shamrocks—and later, the Toronto Blueshirts—of the National Hockey Association, Livingstone clashed repeatedly with his fellow owners. The [...]

After the Second World War, there was a huge influx of immigrants from the Netherlands to Canada. Faced with the problem of overpopulation and rebuilding a war-ravaged country and economy, the Netherlands was eager to encourage emigration. When Canada was grudgingly looking to reopen immigration in the late 1940s after the hiatus of the Great Depression and the war, the immigration policy remained highly selective until the late 1960s. But along with the British and Americans, Northern Europeans like the Dutch were favoured by Canada and actively courted. When economic factors slowed Dutch emigration, the Canadian federal government stepped in to assist financially to maintain the flow of immigrants.

The Toronto-hosted G20 last June was the scene of the largest mass arrest in Canadian history—more than 900 civilians in one weekend. Most of those arrested were not charged, and many of the charges that were pressed were dropped in the aftermath of the summit. To many of us, the G20 is a faded, nightmarish memory of what our city could look like. A story we tell when out-of-towners comment on Toronto’s beauty and peaceful streets. A year after world leaders packed up shop, though our streets were cleaned and our windowpanes fixed, some people are still enmeshed in lawsuits stemming from the G20. Here are the updates.

Is this the future? Photo by Josh Jensen, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. On Tuesday night we learned that, because of the extreme difficulty involved in getting access to medical marijuana in Canada, an Ontario Superior Court judge had deemed provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that outlaw the possession and cultivation of [...]

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. Portrait of John Anderson from Harper Twelvetrees, ed., The story of the life of John Anderson, the Fugitive Slave (W. Tweedie, 1863). From the Archives of Ontario. The first wave of [...]

UPDATED An apparent copy of the statement of claim filed by the attorneys of Adam Josephs (better known to the internet as “Officer Bubbles”) has surfaced online. If you read just one thirty-page legal document today, let this be it. Last week, the media found out that Josephs, a Toronto police officer, was suing YouTube [...]

Rob Ford at May’s interfaith debate. Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontost. Oliver Ogilvie (an internet pseudonym; he wouldn’t disclose his real name) owns RobFordMayor.com—a self-described “low grade satire” site that mocked the eponymous city councillor and mayoral candidate. This week, Ogilvie received a cease-and-desist order from Ford’s lawyers, which we’ve since obtained ourselves. “Mr. Ford has [...]