Well, apparently I've written fewer posts on the blog this year than in any other year since I launched the Dreams Project. But I'm going to go ahead and say that's because this year's posts were bigger, longer, more detailed and more ambitious than ever before. So I'm especially happy to share my favourites from 2015. They cover everything from drunken Prime Ministers to bloody, fashion-driven wars, from ghosts to dogs to pirates, plus plenty of baseball, too. Some of them are among the most popular posts I wrote this year; others are just personal faves.
The last couple of months have been especially quiet around these parts — but that's mostly because I've been caught up working on some exciting new ideas for 2016. Thanks so much to everyone who has read and shared and commented over the last twelve months. The next twelve should be a lot of fun.
So here we go!
Sir John A. Macdonald, Drunk and In Flames
It's one of the best-known facts in all of Canadian history: our first Prime Minister drank. Like, a lot.
Sir John A. Macdonald wasn't just a charming social drinker; he got the
kind of drunk where you find yourself puking on a chair at the Governor
General's residence. Or throwing up on stage during a public debate.
There were times when he went on benders that lasted for days, too drunk
to show up for his official duties. And on a winter night in London,
England — right in the middle of the final negotiations over
Confederation — it seems to have nearly cost him his life... [continue reading this post from January 5, 2015]
Marcel Duchamp & John Cage Play Magical Chess
An Illustrated History of Baseball in Toronto
A Torontonian Historical Map of London, England
Toronto has a deeper connection to London, England than it does to
almost any other city in the world. After all, our entire country was
essentially ruled from this place for more than a hundred years. Some of
the most important moments in the history of our city happened
in this city, nearly six thousand kilometers away. As you walk through
the streets of Westminster, or Piccadilly, or Mayfair, you're likely to
pass dozens of hidden connections to the history of Toronto without ever
realizing they're there... [continue reading this post from January 21, 2015]
On a cold winter's night in 1968, a phone rang in an apartment on
Spadina Road. The man who answered it was Lowell Cross, an American
student at the University of Toronto. He'd come north to write his
thesis on the history of electronic music, studying under Marshall
McLuhan among others. Soon, he would become known as "the inventor of
the laser light show," but he was already experimenting with new
technologies — combining electronic music with electronic visuals. One
of his multimedia projects had just been featured at Expo '67 in
Montreal. He was gaining quite a reputation. That's why his phone was
ringing. John Cage was calling... [continue reading this post from March 4, 2015]
A Tour of Toronto's Skyline in the Summer of 1930
The summer of 1930. It was the beginning of a difficult decade for Toronto, along with much of the rest of the world. The Great Depression had just begun. But before the stock market crashed, the boom of the 1920s had fueled construction projects all over the city. Toronto was full of elegant new landmarks — many of them still familiar to Torontonians today: Union Station, The Royal York Hotel, Maple Leaf Gardens, The Palais Royale, The Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion, The Princes' Gates... And on one July day, a photographer climbed to the top of a building on the north-east corner of University & Dundas, pointed a camera south, and took this photo of our city's new skyline. It's full of interesting details, so I thought I'd give a brief "tour" of some of the buildings you can see... [continue reading this post from March 17, 2015]
The Bloody Burlington Races & The War for Lake Ontario
The summer of 1930. It was the beginning of a difficult decade for Toronto, along with much of the rest of the world. The Great Depression had just begun. But before the stock market crashed, the boom of the 1920s had fueled construction projects all over the city. Toronto was full of elegant new landmarks — many of them still familiar to Torontonians today: Union Station, The Royal York Hotel, Maple Leaf Gardens, The Palais Royale, The Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion, The Princes' Gates... And on one July day, a photographer climbed to the top of a building on the north-east corner of University & Dundas, pointed a camera south, and took this photo of our city's new skyline. It's full of interesting details, so I thought I'd give a brief "tour" of some of the buildings you can see... [continue reading this post from March 17, 2015]
They appeared out of the darkness, looming above the waves. Ten warships
sailing across Lake Ontario, far out in the water south of Toronto.
They were first spotted at dawn, as the black September night gave way
to the light of day, wooden hulls carving through the waves, sails
stretching high into the early morning sky. From each of the ships flew
the red, white and blue: fifteen stars and fifteen stripes. The American
fleet. This was 1813. Toronto was in the middle of a war zone. And it
was going to be a bloody day... [continue reading this post from March 31, 2015]
No one knows exactly when baseball was born. There's a bullshit story
about an American war hero, Abner Doubleday, inventing the game in the
1830s, but that's a lie. What we do know is that by the end of the 1850s, baseball had already arrived in Toronto. That's when the Globe wrote
about a local team practicing every Monday afternoon on the U of T
grounds. But back then, many Torontonians still sneered at the new sport
— they dismissed it as a sandlot game played by "undesirables." Cricket
and lacrosse were much more respectable. And they were much more
popular, too... [continue reading this post from April 13, 2015]
Plus, I wrote a couple of other baseball-related posts this year:
On José Bautista's Bat Flip & The Making of History in Toronto
The Tragic Tale of Toronto's First Big Baseball Star
The True Story of Toronto's Island Ghost
Plus, I wrote a couple of other baseball-related posts this year:
On José Bautista's Bat Flip & The Making of History in Toronto
The Tragic Tale of Toronto's First Big Baseball Star
They say that on some dark nights, as an eerie mist creeps over the
Toronto islands, you can still hear him moaning somewhere in the
distance. On others, you might hear him walking up the steps of the old
lighthouse, even though there's no one there — or see a ghostly light
shining up top, even when the lantern isn't lit. Sometimes, you might
find his fresh blood spilled on those old wooden stairs. Or even catch a
glimpse of him yourself: a spectre stalking through the undergrowth, or
wandering the paths around the lighthouse, bloodied and beaten, his
arms missing. They say he's the ghost of Toronto's first lightkeeper and
that he's searching for the pieces of his body that were hacked off
more than two hundred years ago and buried somewhere in the sand... [continue reading this post from April 30, 2015]
Toronto's Founding Dog — And How He Almost Got Eaten
It was the summer of 1793. The summer our city was founded. On an early Tuesday morning, as the late July sun rose above Lake Ontario, a British warship sailed into Toronto Bay. She was the HMS Mississauga. She had sailed overnight from Niagara, arriving in darkness, waiting for dawn and a local fur trader to show her the way through the treacherous shoals at the mouth of the harbour. On board was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada: John Graves Simcoe. His family was with him, too. The Simcoes had come to found a new capital for the new province: a tiny muddy town that would eventually grow into a booming metropolis of concrete and glass filled with millions of people... [continue reading this post from May 27, 2015]
A Tour of Queen & Spadina A Hundred Years Ago
Toronto's Rebel Mayor & His Pirate Admiral
It was the summer of 1793. The summer our city was founded. On an early Tuesday morning, as the late July sun rose above Lake Ontario, a British warship sailed into Toronto Bay. She was the HMS Mississauga. She had sailed overnight from Niagara, arriving in darkness, waiting for dawn and a local fur trader to show her the way through the treacherous shoals at the mouth of the harbour. On board was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada: John Graves Simcoe. His family was with him, too. The Simcoes had come to found a new capital for the new province: a tiny muddy town that would eventually grow into a booming metropolis of concrete and glass filled with millions of people... [continue reading this post from May 27, 2015]
It has been nearly two hundred years since the intersection of Queen
& Spadina was born. When the two roads first met, Toronto still
wasn't even a city yet: it was the town of York, home to less than two
thousand people. Queen Street had been one of the very first roads the
British built when they got here, part of the original plans for Toronto
all the way back in 1793. They called it Lot Street back then, the
northern edge of the first few blocks built in the new town (right
around the St. Lawrence Market). A few decades later, it was renamed in
honour of Queen Victoria.
By then, Spadina had also been built. It was laid out as a wide avenue by William Warren Baldwin, a doctor and lawyer who also designed Osgoode Hall and would play a leading role in the political struggle for Canadian democracy. He had just built a brand new house on his sprawling country estate; it stood on the hill above Davenport: the original Spadina House. Baldwin had the grand avenue carved out of the forest south of his home in order to get a better view of the lake. The estate, the house and the new road would all be given the same name: Spadina. It's an Anglicized version of an Ojibwe word: "Ishpadinaa" ("a place on a hill").
So it was when Baldwin built his avenue in the 1820s that the intersection of Queen & Spadina was first created... [continue reading this post from June 23, 2015]
By then, Spadina had also been built. It was laid out as a wide avenue by William Warren Baldwin, a doctor and lawyer who also designed Osgoode Hall and would play a leading role in the political struggle for Canadian democracy. He had just built a brand new house on his sprawling country estate; it stood on the hill above Davenport: the original Spadina House. Baldwin had the grand avenue carved out of the forest south of his home in order to get a better view of the lake. The estate, the house and the new road would all be given the same name: Spadina. It's an Anglicized version of an Ojibwe word: "Ishpadinaa" ("a place on a hill").
So it was when Baldwin built his avenue in the 1820s that the intersection of Queen & Spadina was first created... [continue reading this post from June 23, 2015]
William Lyon Mackenzie ran for his life. His rebellion had failed. It
was a disaster. His rebel army was crushed on Yonge Street. His
headquarters at Montgomery's Tavern were burned to the ground north of
Eglinton. Some of his men were already dead. Others would soon be hanged
for treason. Just a few years earlier, Mackenzie had been the first
Mayor of Toronto. Now, he was the city's most wanted fugitive. The
Lieutenant Governor was offering a £1000 reward
for his capture. So Mackenzie was forced to flee the city he loved,
smuggled through the countryside by his supporters as gangs of angry
Loyalists searched for him. He ran all the way south to Niagara, getting
rowed across the river just a few minutes ahead of the men who had come
to arrest him. He was lucky to escape Canada with his life. He would
spend the next decade living in exile.
But Mackenzie wasn't ready to give up. Not yet. His failed rebellion in Toronto was just the beginning. Now, he and his supporters would launch a war against the British government in Canada, hoping a series of bloody border raids would spark a full-scale democratic revolution. It would last a year — for pretty much all of 1838. We call it the Patriot War.
And the rebel's admiral in that war was a man by the name of Pirate Bill Johnston... [continue reading this post from July 8, 2015]
This is a photo of horse shit. But it's not just any photo of horse shit. This horse shit is on Woodbury Common
— a beautiful patch of heathland in the English countryside. And with
horse shit on Woodbury Common, you can tell a story about the founder of
Toronto — John Graves Simcoe — and about a man who challenged him to a
duel over that dung.
This was a few years after Simcoe founded Toronto. He'd come back home to England by then, returning to his country in a deeply troubled time. England was at war with France... [continue reading this post from August 3, 2015]
This was a few years after Simcoe founded Toronto. He'd come back home to England by then, returning to his country in a deeply troubled time. England was at war with France... [continue reading this post from August 3, 2015]
1687. A year of war and famine on the shores of Lake Ontario. That
summer, on a night in early July, an army camped near the mouth of the
Rouge River, at the very eastern edge of what's now the city of Toronto.
A few thousand men — professional soldiers from France, militia from
Québec and their First Nations allies — feasted on venison before
bed. They were tired, finally heading home at the end of a bloody
campaign against the Seneca.
Their war was driven by a fashion trend. Far on the other side of the Atlantic, in the cobblestone capitals of Europe, hats made of beaver felt were all the rage. The demand had already driven European beavers to the brink of extinction. Now, the furriers turned to the Americas to feed their ravenous sartorial appetite. The competition over the slaughter of the large, aquatic rodents plunged the Great Lakes into more than a century of bloodshed and violence. By the end of the 1600s, a series of conflicts had been raging for decades on end. Thousands of warriors fought bloody battles over control of the fur trade. They called them the Beaver Wars.... [continue reading this post from December 16, 2015]
Their war was driven by a fashion trend. Far on the other side of the Atlantic, in the cobblestone capitals of Europe, hats made of beaver felt were all the rage. The demand had already driven European beavers to the brink of extinction. Now, the furriers turned to the Americas to feed their ravenous sartorial appetite. The competition over the slaughter of the large, aquatic rodents plunged the Great Lakes into more than a century of bloodshed and violence. By the end of the 1600s, a series of conflicts had been raging for decades on end. Thousands of warriors fought bloody battles over control of the fur trade. They called them the Beaver Wars.... [continue reading this post from December 16, 2015]
