Elgin Views, 1980s

Recently, on the Lost Ottawa Facebook group, an individual named Ronald Temchuk shared some photographs of Elgin street from the early 1980s. It’s not just because I’m a very happy Elgin resident that these stood out to me: I’ve written stories in the past about a few of these places (with many more in the hopper).

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Then & Now: Woodbine at Queen East

Woodbine, looking north from Queen East, c. 1972. Image: Toronto Public Library, Beaches, LOCHIST-BE-40.

It has not been often that I’ve posted “then and now” photos here on Margins. While browsing the photographs that have been digitized by the Toronto Public Library this evening, I was reminded of one of the more influential-to-me discussion threads on the Urban Toronto boards: Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now. Although it has slowed down considerably in recent times, the nearly 900 page discussion is a rich one.

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Views: Bell’s Corners (1980)

Robertson Road in 1980. Image: City of Ottawa Archives, CA025336.
Robertson Road in 1980. Image: City of Ottawa Archives, CA025336.

I first encountered the above image of Bell’s Corners1I categorically refuse to leave the apostrophe out. in Bruce Elliott’s The City Beyond (1991). Although I don’t count many on my team of consummate fans of crass commercialism in the public realm, I’m willing to stand out and say that I’ve always been a fan of this sort of suburban view. In my mind’s eye, this sort of “messy” collection of signage is the suburban visual-equivalent of the ideal dense and walkable neighbourhoods that I cherish most deeply.

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Notes

Notes
1 I categorically refuse to leave the apostrophe out.

Views: Ottawa’s Leslie Park (1969)

Shots taken by the CMHC on May 9, 1969 of the Redwood Court row housing development in Ottawa’s (then Nepean’s) Leslie Court. This was one of the Campeau Corporation’s many (many) developments in the national capital.

Quickie: Lord Elgin Hotel (1941)

The Lord Elgin, lookin' good at 75. Image: Google Maps.
The Lord Elgin, lookin’ good at 75. Image: Google Maps.

Recently, the Lord Elgin Hotel celebrated its 75th anniversary. The wartime hotel on federally-owned land couldn’t have been constructed at a better time for a capital that was about to undergo a dramatic transformation. I was recently thumbing through the pages of some back issues of the RAIC Journal for an unrelated project and came across the following from the December 1941 edition.

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Not (D)workin’ Anymore

Customers crowd in for Dworkin's fur sale, February 1954. Image: City of Ottawa Archives CA043229.
Customers crowd in for Dworkin’s fur sale, February 1954. Image: City of Ottawa Archives CA043229.

In 2012, Dworkin Furs announced that it would liquidate its stock and close up business after 111 years. Although sales of fur have continued to fluctuate on a global level, changes in how what was once a staple of the Canadian economy is understood means that it is unlikely that the long-established Rideau business would have ever seen the sorts of lines that it did in the 1950s.

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Toronto (Telephone) Exchange

A TTC bus all decked out for Christmas in front of the Andrew's Manor Apartments, 896 Eglinton East, at Don Avon. 1958. Image: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1567, Series 648, File 37.
A TTC bus all decked out for Christmas in front of the Andrew’s Manor Apartments, 896 Eglinton East, at Don Avon. 1958. Image: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1567, Series 648, File 37.

Earlier this week, I wrote a short piece about the Andrew’s Manor Apartments at 896 Eglinton East, in Leaside. Today, I transcribed the apartment’s entry in the 1954 Might’s Directory and filled in any missing information from the subsequent year’s edition.

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