Toronto City Of Commerce 1800 1960

In its early years, Toronto was a city of small businesses of astonishing variety. Unlike today, manufacturers held a prominent place in the city. Enterprising Torontonians ran and worked in factories making suits, carpets, home appliances, shoes and much more. The city also boasted lively retail and entertainment sectors. There were confectionaries, barbershops, burlesques, sports arenas — and many others. While many of these businesses are long gone, their histories live on in paintings, archival photographs, and preserved signs and storefronts still scattered across the city. In this book, photographer and blogger Katherine Taylor recounts the stories of these old businesses and their owners and workers. Each is richly illustrated with a variety of archival images and occasionally contemporary photographs of lingering signs, buildings and storefronts. Familiar places in the city take on new meaning as she explores both famous and forgotten businesses from Toronto’s past. This book offers a new take on Toronto’s rich commercial history.

Deserves a place on every Toronto history buff's bookshelf. -- Canadian Book Review Annual Toronto Street Names provides a highly visible record of the past of Canada's largest city. It commemorates the people and events that have shaped the place and tells the fascinating and curious stories of how more than 340 Toronto streets got their names. This edition has been thoroughly updated and revised, and it now includes four walking-tour maps and a historical index. A new essay by Charis Cotter (author of Toronto Between the Wars: Life in the City 1919--1929, winner of the 2005 Heritage Toronto Award of Excellence) explores the history of the iconic Toronto streetcar and how the development of streetcar routes along certain streets helped mold the city we know today. The names of Toronto's streets map the trails and portages of the First Nations inhabitants, the arrival of the early explorers and the founding of York at the end of the 18th century. They trace the growth and political turmoil of the 19th century, the modernization of the 20th century and beyond, and the emergence of one of the world's most culturally diverse cities. The lives of brewers, politicians, architects, royalty, explorers and farmers can be traced in the city's street names. From the grand estates of Toronto's early upper class to the villages and homes that immigrants left behind, Toronto's street names tell many stories. Toronto Street Names is easy to read, intriguing and ideal for the traveler who prefers exploring off the beaten track. It is also a fascinating source of information for readers interested in the history of North America's great cities. The book is illustrated with period photographs and is fully indexed and cross-referenced.

With the same eye for character, anecdote and circumstance that made Peter Ackroyd’s London and Colin Jones’s Paris so successful, Levine’s captivating prose integrates the sights, sounds and feel of Toronto with a broad historical perspective, linking the city’s present with its past through themes such as politics, transportation, public health, ethnic diversity and sports. Toronto invites readers to discover the city’s lively spirit over four centuries and to wander purposefully through the city’s many unique neighborhoods, where they can encounter the striking and peculiar characters who have inhabited them: the powerful and powerless, the entrepreneurs and the entertainers, and the moral and the corrupt, all of whom have contributed to Toronto’s collective identity.

A treasure trove of incredible lives lived. — RICK MERCER, comedian and author Muir sets out to restore the faces of women who worked and struggled in nineteenth-century Toronto. A fascinating read. — WARREN CLEMENTS, author and publisher Emphasizes the enormously influential role women had in laying the groundwork for life in the city today. — DR. ROSE A. DYSON, author of Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its Threat to Democracy Women in nineteenth-century Toronto were integral to the life of the growing city. They contributed to the city’s commerce and were owners of stores, factories, brickyards, market gardens, hotels, and taverns; as musicians, painters, and writers, they were a large part of the city’s cultural life; and as nurses, doctors, religious workers, and activists, they strengthened the city’s safety net for those who were most in need. Their stories are told in this wide-ranging collection of biographies, the result of Muir’s research on early street directories and city histories, personal diaries, and other historical works. Muir references over four hundred women, many of whom are discussed in detail, and describes the work they undertook during a period of great change for Toronto.

Explore the vestiges of the hamlets and villages that have been swallowed up by Toronto’s relentless growth. Over the course of more than two centuries, Toronto has ballooned from a muddy collection of huts on a swampy waterfront to Canada’s largest and most diverse city. Amid (and sometimes underneath) this urban agglomeration are the remains of many small communities that once dotted the region now known as Toronto and the GTA. Before European settlers arrived, Indigenous Peoples established villages on the shore of Lake Ontario. With the arrival of the English, a host of farm hamlets, tollgate stopovers, mill towns, and, later, railway and cottage communities sprang up. Vestiges of some are still preserved, while others have disappeared forever. Some are remembered, though many have been forgotten. In Toronto’s Lost Villages, all of their stories are brought back to life.

Separate Beds is the shocking story of Canada's system of segregated health care. Operated by the same bureaucracy that was expanding health care opportunities for most Canadians, the "Indian Hospitals" were underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded, and rife with coercion and medical experimentation. Established to keep the Aboriginal tuberculosis population isolated, they became a means of ensuring that other Canadians need not share access to modern hospitals with Aboriginal patients. Tracing the history of the system from its fragmentary origins to its gradual collapse, Maureen K. Lux describes the arbitrary and contradictory policies that governed the "Indian Hospitals," the experiences of patients and staff, and the vital grassroots activism that pressed the federal government to acknowledge its treaty obligations. A disturbing look at the dark side of the liberal welfare state, Separate Beds reveals a history of racism and negligence in health care for Canada's First Nations that should never be forgotten.

Forty-five years after the fall of Saigon, John Boyko brings to light the little-known story of Canada's involvement in the American War in Vietnam. Through the lens of six remarkable people, some well-known, others obscure, bestselling historian John Boyko recounts Canada's often-overlooked involvement in that conflict as peacemaker, combatant, and provider of weapons and sanctuary. When Brigadier General Sherwood Lett arrived in Vietnam over a decade before American troops, he and the Canadians under his command risked their lives trying to enforce an unstable peace while questioning whether they were merely handmaidens to a new war. As American battleships steamed across the Pacific, Canadian diplomat Blair Seaborn was meeting secretly in Hanoi with North Vietnam’s prime minister; if American leaders accepted his roadmap to peace, those ships could be turned around before war began. Claire Culhane worked in a Canadian hospital in Vietnam and then returned home to implore Canadians to stop supporting what she deemed an immoral war. Joe Erickson was among 30,000 young Americans who changed Canada by evading the draft and heading north; Doug Carey was one of the 20,000 Canadians who enlisted with the American forces to serve in Vietnam. Rebecca Trinh fled Saigon with her husband and young daughters, joining the waves of desperate Indochinese refugees, thousands of whom were to forge new lives in Canada. Through these wide-ranging and fascinating accounts, Boyko exposes what he calls the Devil’s wiliest trick: convincing leaders that war is desirable, persuading the public that it is acceptable, and telling combatants that the deeds they carry out and the horrors they experience are normal, or at least necessary. In uncovering Canada’s side of the story, Boyko reveals the many secret and forgotten ways that Canada not only fought the war but was forever shaped by its lessons and lies.

When looking at old pictures of Toronto, it is clear that the city’s urban, economic, and social geography has changed dramatically over the generations. Historic photos of Toronto’s streetcar network offer a unique opportunity to examine how the city has been transformed from a provincial, industrial city into one of North America’s largest and most diverse regions. Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto studies the city’s urban transformations through an analysis of photographs taken by streetcar enthusiasts, beginning in the 1960s. These photographers did not intend to record the urban form, function, or social geographies of Toronto; they were "accidental archivists" whose main goal was to photograph the streetcars themselves. But today, their images render visible the ordinary, day-to-day life in the city in a way that no others did. These historic photographs show a Toronto before gentrification, globalization, and deindustrialization. Each image has been re-photographed to provide fresh insights into a city that is in a constant state of flux. With gorgeous illustrations, this unique book offers an understanding of how Toronto has changed, and the reasons behind these urban shifts. The visual exploration of historic and contemporary images from different parts of the city helps to explain how the major forces shaping the city affect its form, functions, neighbourhoods, and public spaces.