WHAT: Heritage Toronto mayoral debate WHERE: St Lawrence Hall, 3rd floor in the Great Hall at 157 King Street East (at Jarvis) WHEN: Monday, August 30th at 7:00pm - 9:00pm Here's a new spin on all the mayoral debates that have been occurring over the last few months, one where Toronto's built heritage is discussed. In this angry season (or fake-angry season) who could be angry over heritage? As we've seen over and over, because the city doesn't have a properly functioning heritage policy, and the designation of heritage buildings has a historically long ...

The following is a reprint of my recent psychogeography column in Eye Weekly looking at the future of Ontario Place. The photos included in this post are from Not My Father's Slides, Tanja Tiziana's wonderful project that rescues abandoned Kodachrome slides she finds at estate and yard sales. The pictures used here, of an unknown family, are dated to July 1973. They are very much like the golden-hued ones I write about below. Happy days at Toronto's happy day machine. Check out Tanja's site when you're done reading. In one of the photo albums I grew up with, one that contained snapshots of my parents’ lives before I was born, there were a handful of pics taken in 1971 at Ontario Place, the year it opened. They’ve all got the golden tint that photos from that era have acquired — the troubles of the day seem far away as everything is muted by that gilded patina. One that always stood out is of a polyester-clad choir singing what I imagine is the old Expo ’67 Ontario anthem “A Place to Stand.” It all looked so optimistic and young, the brilliant future of Ontario and Canada. The future is old now — nearly 40 years old — and it’s easy to drift into nostalgia about a place like Ontario Place, one of those civic spaces that are nostalgia machines. Everybody of a certain not-too-old age has a memory of either romping or working around here or heard stories passed down from a baby-boomer parent of working here in the early 1970s.

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SPACING RADIO SUMMER SHORTS If you live in and around Toronto, or have ever visited the city, you've most likely passed by Etobicoke's Richview Cemetery. Most likely in a car and traveling at a high velocity. Awkwardly situated amidst the onramps at the intersection of Highways 401 and 427, the Richview Cemetery is not your average resting place for the dead. Reporter Andrew Walsh explores this historic geographic oddity. photo by Sean Galbraith

The Brick Works have been acknowledged by photographers, urban explorers, graffiti artists, homeless people, and underground events promoters as the perfect place to do… just about anything. The long-unoccupied Kiln Buildings are now covered from wall-to-wall, kiln-to-kiln with so many pieces of artwork that Evergreen, the group restoring the entire Brick Works facility, considers the graffiti a representation of its history – the abandoned years. As part of the plan to keep the Kiln Buildings as original as possible, at least 70% of the graffiti art is going to stay. But they’ve added another element to the long spray-painted walls – sticker portraits. Dan Bergeron was contacted by Diaspora Dialogues, a company that has done many art installations in buildings around the city (including at Union Station for Doors Open Toronto in 2009), and wanted to do something to the Brick Works that represented its history. Bergeron considered the proposal for a while and discarded their idea of archival images of the quarry and building in favour of a concept that is familiar to him. Bergeron has done mass scale portraits around Toronto, such as his Regent Park Portrait Project, and decided to photograph some of the living employees of the Kilns. Those who traversed the Brick Works during Doors Open this year may have already seen the larger-than-life portraits created by Bergeron and an assistant. The faces of the six men, portrayed high up on the walls, represent not only the people who worked in the kilns, toiling away in front of 2,000 degree Fahrenheit fires, but the history of Toronto's structures. “They built the city,” Bergeron said, and he wanted to pay homage to them.

This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class is about). This New Toronto post was researched and written by Giny Kim. Click here to see a larger version of their psychogeographic map of the area. The historic town of New Toronto is a neighbourhood in the south-west end of Toronto. New Toronto was established in 1890 and it once was an independent municipality starting 1913 and ended in 1967. Once its population reached 5,000 it had highest value of manufacturing per square mile in North America. North of Birmingham Street in New Toronto has traditionally been a large industrial district, although a number of industries moved or closed in the period from 1987 to the early 1990s.

This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class is about). This Fort York post was researched and written by Amanda Compagnone and Stephanie Reich. Click here to see a larger version of their psychogeographic map of the area. The Fort York neighbourhood is located south of CN and CP railways between Strachan Avenue on the east and Dan Leckie way on the west, and extends south to the Lake Shore. Currently this neighbourhood is ever-changing and, at some times of the day, seems like a residential ghost town. It also contains historically rich sites such as Fort York garrison along with a few existing industrial buildings, some of which have been converted to meet the need for residential uses in the area, while others are still in need of restoration. Amongst the converted buildings is the ‘Tip Top Lofts," the original manufacturing, warehousing, retail and office operations of Tip Top Tailors Ltd. built in 1929, designated as a heritage structure in 1972 and converted to lofts in 2002.

Yesterday my Cities for People walk ended in Kensington Market after a tour of Clubland and the Queen Street Graffiti Alley. I started to talk about how the Market has changed over the years, but not really. Certainly there are more patios now than there ever have been, and there are more boutiques among the thrift and vintage and other-stuff stores, but the rough edges have never disappeared as they have on Queen West or some other areas. It's still an incubator of culture, art, punk rock, indie rock and whatever else. I mentioned the notorious and venerable Kensington punk band Bunchoffuckingoofs and how part of their legend involves (kind of) keeping the peace in the Market from their equally legendary headquarters/boozecan "Fort Goof" when both Skinheads and crack cocaine were rolling through the neighbourhood. How much is true or myth is certainly debatable (would love for readers who were around to recount their first-hand memories here) but it's an instance where culture and city building went hand in hand, and artists became a kind of community leader. I found this partial documentary that seems to date to about 1984. While showing 1980s punk rock lifestyle in all its unglamorousness, there are fantastic shots of the Market and Spadina from that era, as well as a magnificent pan of the downtown core from the CN Tower. Take a look at all those parking lots. Most of them are filled in now (the next time somebody complains to you about "Condos," remind them of what was there before). What this video does reflect is a kind-of-roughness -- a bleak, almost-British-1970s-punk-rough -- that the market certainly does not have anymore writ large; though as one of the Goofs says in the video, much of Kensington still closes early, allowing bands to play and more noise to happen than would be allowed in other parts of the city, and the dumpster diving they mention still occurs (see Jessica Duffin Wolfe's archived Spacing article on the practice from our Fall 2007 issue). For more recollections of the era, listen to this short recollection of Courage My Love's history I recorded Stewart Scriver giving for our Kensington Market [murmur] project as well as (former Spacing intern) Liz Worth's recent book Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk Rock in Toronto and Beyond 1977-1981. Below check out the Goofs, still in action, two years ago at a Pedestrian Sunday on Augusta Avenue.

This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class is about). This post was researched and written by Katie Felton, Nicol Bernstein + Kate Schuyler. Click here to see a larger version of their psychogeographic map of the area. The purple circle represents the abattoir smell radius. Illustration by Nicol Bernstein. All photos by Kate Schuyler. The Year was 1793... It is difficult to imagine that at one time what is now the Niagara Street area, sandwiched between modern Fort York and Wellington neighbourhoods, was the sort-of shoulder-bone of Old York during the 19th century. Niagara Street itself was laid down over 160 years-old, as a flowing curve that lined the banks of the now buried Garrison Creek. The Niagara Neighbourhood was considered a part of the Fort York military reserve, at a time when the Western-most reaches of York began at modern-day Peter Street and the Toronto Islands were still connected to our shoreline by a peninsula. The Fort at York was placed strategically at the base of the peninsula as an access point from the Toronto Bay. The settlement began just South of where Front Street is today and at the lower-end of Bathurst. However, the city’s shorelines were later extended South by 900 metres using landfill methods, which brought drastic changes to public use of the Niagara area and became the heavily industrialized area we now know as the Lakeshore. With the dilapidation of the Old Fort and plans for a New Fort elsewhere, land lots in the area were sold to officers and the highest bidders, signifying the beginning of its now primarily residential land use.

The final design for the St. Lawrence Market North building was announced this morning, and the main component? Glass, and lots of it. The indoor atrium will be completely surrounded by glass to create an open and airy atmosphere for the Saturday farmers’ market and Sunday antique market space, to create the illusion of being in an actual open air market. This concept will work wonders for the markets winter months when an actual outdoor market is unrealistic, and will be a drastic change from the confined indoor space of the current market. The four-storey building will easily allow anyone inside to see surrounding Front Street, Jarvis Street and Market Lane Park because of tall glass windows on every level. While the market will consume the entire first floor, the second, third and fourth will act as court rooms and offices for the Toronto Court Services offices. Underground, there will be a parking garage that will accommodate 250 cars. The building also boasts a green roof and geothermal system using natural lighting and a unique ventilation system with opening vents in the roof and walls that allow for air flow in the cooler months. The heritage of the St. Lawrence market neighbourhood is to be maintained by incorporating the view of St. Lawrence Hall into the design of the new market. The open atrium allows for a view of The Hall to the north as well as the south market building. Design concepts, which were laid out in reports by a team of community members and City staff, are to match those of the surrounding neighbourhood in material and form and be unobtrusive.

Just in time for Doors Open this weekend, the John Street Roundhouse Park National Railway and Heritage Centre staged its grand opening today. The 17-acre park includes four full-sized locomotives dating back to 1944 as well as Toronto’s own car, No. 1, built in Kingston, Ontario in 1950. (Hurry, though, if you want to see it; the roundhouse will soon be fenced off as part of the security buildup to the G20.) There are also three freight cars and two passenger cars in ...