From the Toronto Star Weekly, December 24, 1910 Yonge, King, Queen, Bloor, College, and Some of Their Peculiarities The average citizen knows surprisingly little about his own city. Every working day he rises in the morning, hustles to the nearest car line, and goes to his place of business by the shortest route. Habitually he…
The Yiddish Yugend Farein or Yiddish Young People’s Organization of Toronto sponsored a Sukkot Concert at Massey Hall on September 25, 1918. Below is the 24-page program, along with a list of names of people and companies mentioned. Note that the booklet’s printed pagination was incorrect and that the order of the pages is correct…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, July 6, 1926 Southeast corner of Grosvenor Street and Surrey Place, which has been purchased for $57,500. The corner property was bought from Wm. H. and Elizabeth S. Van der Smissen for $29,000 and takes in Nos. 73 and 75 Grosvenor Street and No. 15 Surrey Place. The house on…
From the Toronto Star, February 19, 1912 Shall Dancing Be Allowed in Civic Halls on Sunday? The Caretaker Could Not Put a Stop to It Mild weather has anticipated the action of the City Council in prohibiting Sunday tobogganing, but the Lord’s Day observance question is to the fore in another aspect. Is dancing to…
As nearly correct as it is humanly possible to make it From the Toronto Star, February 6, 1912 ◊ This article describes a census conducted one century ago by the police of Toronto for their own purposes only six months after the federal census of Canada. It is unknown what information was collected: did the police…
Note: This is an early and very colourfully written article about what would become a city institution, Kensington Market. It is described as being in “the Ward,” but technically it lies outside of the Ward’s unofficial western boundary of University Avenue or McCaul Street; what the author really meant to say was that it was…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 Emphatically the right man in the right place is Dr. George H. Locke as Toronto’s chief librarian. Possibly he does not look quite look the part, for there is a notable absence of “mustiness” about him. And “mustiness,” to many people’s minds, should be the lot of…
Hard to believe, but there were Jews in Toronto and probably Montreal as well who were drawing monthly pensions from the U.S. government as late as 1925 for their participation as soldiers in the American Civil War. An index of Civil War pension recipients indicates that some 4,966 veterans of America’s most sanguinary conflict filed…
Note: The following article, which appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly of January 28, 1911, describes a so-called “gipsy” encampment of a century ago in the woods to the east of the Toronto neighbourhood of Davisville and Eglinton. The people then commonly described as “gypsies” are today referred to as “Roma.” * * * A…
From the Toronto Star, November 4, 1909 ◊ This article reflects two problems sometimes faced by members of the city’s Jewish community in regard to the police. The first is selective enforcement of the law, seemingly targeting the Jews (and certainly other minorities probably even more). The second is the specific Sunday blue laws that meant…
