Results tagged “torontoarchives”

              

Even though he denies it, Jeff Low is providing Toronto with a valuable service. In his spare time, Low (or "Mustapha" as he's better known online) recreates vintage photos from the Toronto Archives and then posts the then and now photos at Urban Toronto (a popular Toronto design and architecture forum). Low isn’t the first to recreate Toronto’s vintage photos, or even the best, but his collection is the city’s largest, and since starting in April 2008, he estimates that he’s recreated more than a thousand photos. "Urban Toronto inspired me," Low told Torontoist. "There was already some of that going on on a spotty basis—I decided to make a regularity of it."

With hundreds of thousands of historic documents and more than 1.2 million photos dating from 1856, the Toronto Archives are a great way to connect with Toronto’s past. But for those of us who don’t want to make the trek to Dupont station, let alone leave our seats, the Archives’ online resources and virtual exhibits offer the next best thing. "People think of archives and libraries as inaccessible ivory towers," explained Archives Supervisor Charmaine Lindsay. "So, making the city’s history more personal is an important goal of this. Not everyone can come into the Archives; online exhibits tend to be less academic than paper ones, and they’re more accessible."

Photo by khalijkhazar from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Architecture in Toronto has been getting a lot of attention lately. Some of the coverage has even been positive. The Toronto Archives and the Friends of the Archives of Ontario are capitalizing on the trend, presenting a lecture series (PDF) in coming weeks to be hosted by the Star's architecture critic and urban affairs columnist, Christopher Hume.

February is Black History Month. To celebrate, the City of Toronto Archives is hosting an evening with Dr. Karolyn Smardz Frost on February 5. She is the winner of the 2007 Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction for I’ve Got a Home in Gloryland: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, which tells the story of two slaves who escaped to Canada in 1833. In an illustrated presentation entitled Fugitive Sources: Finding Clues to our African-Canadian Past, Dr. Frost will recount the 20-plus years she spent researching the book in various archives. The presentation will be followed by an informal discussion between Dr. Frost and CBC radio personality Garvia Bailey, then a Q & A with the audience.

Last week, Maple Leaf Gardens quietly turned 76. When the Gardens was sold to Loblaw in 2004, it appeared that the grocery store chain would fast-track the historic building into a supermarket. Now the projected summer 2007 construction date has come and gone, and nothing has changed since Torontoist covered the Gardens' 75th anniversary. We worried that the Gardens would be neglected while Loblaw dealt with its financial woes and ailing restructuring of existing...

For his entry to Touch Up Toronto, Alden R. Cudanin sent us this photo of the south side of College just east of Bathurst from about 1920, doctored to include the now-ubiquitous iPod ads. Of course, back then, in addition to billboard advertising, Apple also targeted the ever-growing praxinoscope-owning demographic, their ads featuring shadowed men and women dancing the Charleston to the latest Gershwin (or, occasionally, Daft Punk) joint.

Are you a fan of municipal development and urban planning? Do you read Spacing (or at least say you do)? Then you should endeavor to visit A Visual Legacy: The City of Toronto’s Use of Photography, 1856-1997, an exhibition of images from the City of Toronto Archives.

Looking for that authentic theatre experience in the comfort of your own home? Forget shelling out thousands of dollars on a new high-definition television. As part of ongoing renovations, the folks at the Danforth Music Hall are selling their seats.

Parents watch their kids toboggan in High Park on Christmas Day, 1910. Photo courtesy of William James/The Toronto Archives.

We bet few of you have been to the Toronto Archives. We didn’t even know where it was until last night, when we attended theToronto Book Awards. But stepping into the foyer to be greeted by a room covered in photos and maps of our city’s history, it struck us at just how fitting it is to hold the ceremony here -- books honoured for their fluent portraits of Toronto stories in a building that houses the same.

There are dozens of reasons why city council's attempts to place an almost outright ban on postering is just plain misguided. What's surprising is that this isn't the first time that the city has tried to clamp down on visual clutter.