A LESSON IN HISTORY

I've been grumbling quite a bit lately about how boring Toronto is. Knowing little about local history, and having been shown fetching photographs from the city archives I decided to do my own research. Curious about the area I moved into this October, I googled images from its past.

The first photograph used to be the Toronto Central Prison, taken around 1877, where the grocery store I frequent (METRO) and my local coffee shop now exist. The rest are mainly scenes from my street taken in various years from the early 1900s.

The final image was a college that stood in the now closest park (Trinity Bellwoods).

I extended my research to any images from that era, and was quite surprised at some of the desolation, and the elegance of the photographs. I also learned Toronto had it's own "great fire" in 1904 (see images of rubble below). How I would have liked to have seen it back then.