#toronto history

[ziskeyt]

Christie Pits

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Christie Pits Riot. The largest race riot in Canada. Christie Pits is a park in Toronto, Ontario. It's pretty large, and these days is a very active park in the summer and a place for sledding and ice skating in the winter. On this day in 1933 the tensions between the Jews who lived in the neighbourhood around the Christie Pits park and the white Canadians who wished to ally with the nazis, who made up what they called Swasitka Clubs, came to a head during a baseball game. The Jews were joined in the fight by their immigrant neighbours, primarily Italians, who also had come head to head with the white nazis before. These hate-filled Canadians wished to restrict Jews from jobs, education, going to the beaches, owning property, and really, given their alignment with the nazis and proudly waving the swastika flag, we can be pretty sure they wanted us dead as well.

The Toronto Star paper noted that there were ten thousand people who ended up joining the fight.

This is the only photo that exists:

(ID in alt) Christie Pits resulted in one of the first prohibitions against hate speech with the Mayor of the time saying that he would prosecute any future displays of the swastika. If you'd like to read more, Jamie Michaels, who wrote the graphic novel Christie Pits published an article today about the riots:

There was an event today in the park to commemorate the anniversary. As well as a few in May and June, Jewish and Italian heritage months respectively. While I don't know the best way to commemorate a fight like this, remembering that it happened, and why it happened is incredibly important. We're in a time that is very reminiscent to what people were dealing with then; from money seemingly meaning less while everything costs more, to the wealthy flaunting their great discrepancy from the majority, to people walking off work to strike for better conditions. Times of turmoil are times when people will often turn to trying to find a reason for their uncertainty, and as history has taught us, this often leads people to explaining their misfortune by finding a scapegoat -- and that scapegoat is usually Jews. In today's world, there are those who are virulently antisemitic with their whole chests, and those people are easy to point to and say they are what they are. But, we're also in a time where there is a lot of coded antisemitism around, from age-old conspiracy theories, to various racist tropes finding rebirths in memes and "jokes", to character types and appropriation of Jewish culture to make something seem exotic and mystical. You as an individual have the responsibility to educate yourself about racist dogwhistles and coding so you don't go around parroting things you don't believe, and eventually find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of white supremacist rhetoric. They say those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, but doom makes it sound like something that people aren't able to do anything about it. Learn history. Learn what hatred has looked like in the past and morphed into today. Learn history. You are not doomed and you are not helpless. You too can take part in stopping rising fascism by learning what it looks and sounds like. You have a responsibility to yourself and to the future to learn about where we came from to get to where we are today.

#antisemitism #history of antisemitism #christie pits riot #toronto history #canadian history #today in history #jumblr

[oldlovecassette]

A young couple shopping in Corso Italia, one of Toronto's biggest Italian Canadian neighbourhoods, in 1970. At the time, the couple had recently arrived from Italy as immigrants: today, they're married with three children and own Pascale Gourmet on Yonge Street.

Taken by Toronto Star photographer Bob Olsen (via the Toronto Star Archives)

#toronto #1970s #70s fashion #toronto history #italian diaspora #was doing my usual online exploring of old toronto photos and found this gorg pic! #the link in the caption has a story from the woman in the pic who the archivist tracked down in 2019: she was so happy to see the photo :') #gorgeous dress and heels + great red jacket on the lady in the background

[kittka42]

Davids and Daniel - King St Druggists

Davids and Daniel – King St Druggists

Banner image is of E. E. Rutherford’s Cut Rate Drug Store at Spadina and Nassau, circa 1915. Courtesy of Toronto Public Library. If I had a time machine, there’d be many aspects of 19th century Toronto life which I’d love to travel back to and experience firsthand – but medical care would not be one of them. That’s because, up until the mid-19th century, doctors were most commonly general…

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#Bigley #Blogg #C. D. Daniel #Chemists #Druggists #Ghost Sign #Ghost signs #Joseph Davids #King St East #Patent Medicine #TOHistory #Toronto History

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

412 Danforth, June 17, 1919. Toronto. City of Toronto Archives, Series 270 Taken from a 'Vintage Toronto' site where the uploaded tried to snip off, badly, the archival reference...

#toronto #street scene #city of toronto archives #toronto history

[laughicate]

what to do with phone numbers if you're scanning old newspapers for archiving purposes?

I've gotten my hands on like 30 or so issues of an old leftist newspaper (called guerilla) that ran in the early 70's in Toronto. stuff like rochdale news, international news, and comics. I'm wondering what to do about the old classifieds/personals/etc sections with individuals' numbers even though the paper is quite old. or even if, given it's also a leftist newspaper, names should also be censored if I were to upload to IA, connexions, or personal file hosting service or whatever.

I need to scan and upload a bunch of the shit I've gotten my hands on because I'm a collage nut with the hoarding gene but idk what good practise is for this, I'm not an official archiver, but otherwise I have my own large-bed scanner and really don't mind doing this on my own. here's a preview:

bathhouse ad for The Roman Sauna Baths which closed in 1989, from a 1971 issue

#archiving #idk what to tag #toronto #torpoli #toronto history

[saresmusings]

Canada’s first subway opened along Yonge, running 4.6 miles from Union to Eglinton in 1954.

The first stretch of the Yonge Street line took four years to build and was designed to move a peak load of 40,000 people per hour in the downtown core. It opened in 1954.

#saresmusings #ttc #toronto transit commission #1954 #union #eglinton #vintage toronto #Toronto history #king station #queen station #Wellesley station #college station #yonge and bloor #davisville #station #st clair #rosedale #dundas station #vintage ttc #q q q #subway #subway station #for you page #yonge street #yongestreet #eglinton station #davisville station #Toronto #ride the rocket #st clair station

[carbombrenee]

Memory - Constructed in phases between 1851 and 1889, this brick wall was built by inmate labourers at the Provincial Lunatic Asylum on Queen Street, now one of CAMH’s campuses

#photo365 #memory #toronto #toronto history #built heritage #inmate labour #lunatic asylums #ontario #landmarks

[undr]

Fabrizio La Torre. Billiards, Toronto, 1955

#fabrizio la torre #photography #vintage #black and white #street photography #art #history #vintage photography #black and white photography #1950s #toronto #canada

[psramek]

Stepping back to review old negatives I found a diptych of the University Theatre that remains now only as a historical facade. A print was made and sold at auction to raise funds for OCAD University and INTAC programs.

#University theatre #old cinemas #Toronto history #street photo #Bloor street #black and white photography #film photography

[triflingthing]

Interiors (Parkwood Estate, Oshawa)

#travelblr #wanderlust #interiors #maximalism #historic home #historic interiors #vsco #vscocam #iphonography #toronto #vscotoronto #canada #vintage #dark academia #bookblr #history

[oldshowbiz]

1972.

A member of the Sugar Shoppe lands the lead in Godspell with supporting players Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, and Martin Short.

#Eugene Levy #Gilda Radner #Martin Short #history of canadian comedy #toronto #canada #canadian #godspell

[thingsmk1120sayz]

Toronto Maple leafs training camp way back when

#hockey #vintage hockey #leafs #hockey history #Toronto maple leafs #history #old time hockey #vintage #retro hockey #retro

[kittka42]

Duane's on Roncesvalles

Duane’s on Roncesvalles

Banner image is of a Toronto Hydro Electric storefront, with shoe display, taken on June 12, 1924. From the Toronto City Archives. For some years now I’ve been prowling the city, hunting and photographing the terrazzo entrances of bygone Toronto businesses.  Some of these inspired entries in my book, Toronto: City of Commerce 1800 – 1960, while others I’ve been saving up to write about here. …

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#Duane&039;s #Duane&039;s on Roncesvalles #Ghost ad #Ghost Ads #Hurlbut Shoes #Savage Shoes #Shoe Fitting Fluoroscopes #Shoe Stores #Slater Shoes #Terrazzo #Toronto #Toronto History #X-ray Shoe Fittings

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“BUILDINGS MAKE WAY FOR STREET,” Toronto Star. April 23, 1921. Page 2. ---- At the top The Star photographer shows two dwellings on the north side of College street opposite Teraulay street, which are being razed to make way for the extension of that street northward. Below is shown the old Grosvenor street Presbyterian church, which to-day looks like the ruins in Flanders. On the right is shown the tower still standing, on the left part of the west end of the edifice, while the centre has been pretty well torn down to the ground level.

#toronto #toronto history #presbyterian church #demolishing buildings #road building #endless urban renewal

[mythosphere]

The "every man thinks about the Roman Empire at least once a day" factoid is actually just statistical error. Romanus Georgus, who lives under the Ara Pacis and thinks about the Roman Empire 10,000 times per day is a statistical outlier and should not be counted

#romanus georgus is actually ken bartlett at rhe university of toronto #tagamemnon #ancient rome #ancient history #classics #latin #history #roman empire #i love this joke

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The soul singer who helped lay the groundwork for Toronto’s music scene has been memorialized outside of the former nightclub where she solidified her career in the ‘60s.

A Heritage Toronto plaque honouring the late Jackie Shane, a transgender musician originally from Nashville, Tenn. who called Toronto home, was unveiled Friday morning in a ceremony marking the start of Pride weekend in the city and officially proclaimed June 23 “Jackie Shane Day.”

“She was someone who made the incredibly, incredibly brave decision to show the world exactly who she was in a time when the world didn’t even have the right words to describe her presence,” Marci Ien, minister for women and gender equality and youth, said at the site of the former Sapphire Tavern at Victoria and Richmond streets.

Shane, who once shared stages with Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, and Little Richard, moved to Toronto in 1959. She landed a residency at the Sapphire and released her biggest hit in 1962, “Any Other Way.” [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada, @vague-humanoid

#cdnpoli #Ontario #Toronto #Jackie Shane #transgender #canadian history #Black history #lgbtq history #LGBT+