Torontonians forget People City Vision at Peril : The Canadian Business Daily

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Torontonians forget People City Vision at Peril

When are we, Torontonians going to really.. and I mean really wake up to the small handful of elites who appear determined to everything that we have worked hard to build in Toronto, including our vital social fabric which distinguished itself from America's urban poverty?

I donated $100 to The Canadian, because no other Toronto newspaper has sought to stand up for the People City vision of Toronto which made us the envy of cities south of the border.

Toronto 1970s

Toronto of the 1970s gives me an immediate, if odd sense of nostalgia. I wasn't around to experience much of the decade, much less remember any of it, and yet when I look at these photographs I feel the urge to return to this time somehow. I've already said as much in a shorter photo post about both the 70s and the 80s in Toronto, but having just uploaded all these images, the freshness of the sentiment compels me to repeat myself.

The Toronto of the 1970s was, in the words of Anthony Astrachan, "a city that works." Unlike a number of major urban areas in the U.S., Toronto's downtown core was not rendered a ghost town by suburban emigration, and with the rise of the Parti Québécois in Quebec, the city experienced such an influx of English-speaking Montrealers and Montreal-based companies that it became the fastest growing in North America. In spite of this, it's worth noting, Toronto was yet to become the cultural and culinary destination it is today.

And just as the Toronto experienced a building boom -- most notably in the rise of concrete apartment structures, downtown office towers, and the construction of the CN Tower -- urban planners held little regard for historic structures, knocking down such iconic buildings as the Temple Building, the original Toronto Star Building, the Mercer Reformatory and many more.

But, lest I digress into what is surely a topic for another post, I'll draw the introduction to a close and present the photographs. Where possible, I've included the date that the photographer has labeled the image with, but many don't have specific years affiliated with them. Enjoy!

Lead image of a wonderfully saturated red TTC bus by skaliwagg66.

Gone but not forgotten, 1970s record shops at Yonge and Gould

Toronto 1970