Categories
Design History Infrastructure Ontario Toronto Transit

Introducing Mount Dennis

Toronto’s newest transit hub is only half-opened, but it provides a preview of the region’s upcoming new transit links. Despite a decent layout and good incorporation of local heritage, some tweaks for improved wayfinding are necessary.

Categories
Brampton Canada Development History Toronto

The fall of an empire

After 355 years, and several years of noticeable decline, Canada’s oldest corporation and last department store comes to an ignoble end.

Categories
About me Development History Toronto Urban Planning

Woodbine Centre: the end of a Fantasy

Woodbine Centre, built in 1985, was an adventure for a child of the 1980s and 1990s. The once-thriving mall has hit hard times and will likely see redevelopment in the next decade.

Categories
History Transit Travels

Transit museums’ transit dilemma

Most North American transit museums are, ironically, difficult to get to without a car

Categories
History Roads Toronto

The continuing history of Dundas Street

Nearly three years ago, I wrote about the complicated history of Toronto’s Dundas Street. Calls to rename the street, which honours Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, came during a time of reckoning in Canada and the United States with racism, colonialism, and our ongoing relationships with First Nations. Ryerson University (my alma mater) changed its […]

Categories
Development History Ontario Travels Urban Planning

The end of Sarnia’s Eaton Centre

Late last year, I wrote about the closure of the Hamilton City Centre mall, the last of Ontario’s downtown Eaton Centres to open. But Hamilton’s failed shopping centre wasn’t the only old downtown mall to close in recent years: Sarnia’s Bayside Centre, opened in 1982 as the Sarnia Eaton Centre, was recently demolished, with a […]

Categories
History Toronto Travels

I went back to Toronto

Toronto, Ohio, that is.

Categories
Cycling History Infrastructure Roads Toronto Walking

The jarring streetscape of Jarvis Street

Over a century ago, Jarvis Street was Toronto’s most fashionable address, and home to prominent families including the Masseys, who made their wealth from the farm equipment industry, and whose names live on through Massey Hall, Hart House, the Fred Victor Mission, and Massey College. The wide boulevards allowed for lush street trees to flourish, […]

Categories
Development History Ontario Travels Urban Planning

The end of another Eaton Centre

Opened in 1990, the Hamilton Eaton Centre will close for good on Boxing Day, 2022.

Categories
History Intercity Rail Toronto

Toronto’s secret station stairways

The hidden stairways to Toronto’s railway heritage.