Results tagged “greatdepression”

Union Station hadn't seen a crowd that size since the Prince of Wales had visited. A throng of more than five thousand men, women, and children crammed into every corner of the concourse on November 24, 1934. Waving red banners, they eagerly awaited of the arrival of the 9:30 p.m. train from Kingston carrying Tim Buck, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC), who'd been released from the penitentiary mere hours earlier. Prison officials, hoping to avoid just such an uproarious welcome, had attempted to keep his release quiet. Buck didn't even know he was going home until an hour before boarding the train. But at the train station, Buck eluded his escort, who'd been under orders to keep Buck in the car until right before the train's departure, and managed a brief phone call to Toronto. His comrades alerted the press and hastily distributed leaflets among the public. As The Star reported, news of Buck's impending arrival "swept working class districts like wildfire," and the jubilant turnout at Union Station defied all expectations.

Henry Falk is an enigma. The New York entrepreneur and builder doesn't appear in the pages of any of the Who's Who publications of his day. His background isn't clear, nor is his date of arrival in Toronto. But his big ambitions garnered him plenty of press in the city's late-1920s building boom, when a spate of skyscrapers—including the Royal York, Sterling Tower, the Toronto Star Building, the Canada Permanent Trust Building, and Falk's own Central Building—rapidly transformed the skyline.

TO. Hogtown. The Queen City of Canada. The Centre of the Universe. Centennial City. All names applied to Toronto over the years.

Yesterday marked the official release of Google Earth 4 (the public beta has been available since the summer), a free product with a cleaner interface and a beefed-up focus on 3-D architectural imagery.

Since 2004, signs have hung on the southeast corner of Maple Leaf Gardens promising an historic Loblaws Real Canadian Superstore. "Soon you'll discover a store filled with fresh flavours, shops and services," the billboards cheerily stated, but the Gardens at Church and Carlton has loomed a decrepit shell since it went dark in 2001, despite some minor action hosting the filming of Cinderella Man. The last Leafs game was on February 13, 1999, where they lost to the Chicago Blackhawks just as they did on opening day.

Tall Poppy Interview - Howard Akler, Author