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Bloor Street, Toronto, 1987
Looking back through the archives to the Toronto Years, the picture pickings are rather slim. For the first few months, I could barely afford film. Once I started working long hours in a commercial studio, the last thing I wanted to do after work was grab a camera and hit the streets. As mentioned in the last post, club-hopping was more therapeutic.
Nevertheless, I retain a few samples of my “personal work” that are worth sharing … photographs that might yet outlive the reams of catalogue and ad work long since relegated to the dustbin of consumer history (though I retain a few, to be shared in upcoming posts).
My first adopted neighbourhood, near Christie Pits, off Bloor Street (again, see last post), was a fascinating place. Toronto was a cosmopolitan city with New York aspirations. By comparison, Vancouver had yet to wrap itself in glass and “world class” affectation. Perhaps for good. The first thing I noticed, walking between Bay Street’s bank towers, was how no one smiled or made eye contact. I felt like a country bumpkin.
Before my Mamiyaflex was stolen from the aforementioned flop house, I shot a few rolls of 120 film around town and a single roll on a trip to Niagara Falls. One image from that foray found its way to the Faces of Canada project and The Canadian Museum of History.
The photo above was made on one of the many days I strolled along Bloor Street with my Nikon FM. The contact sheet reveals that I walked to trendy Yorkville and back. On what must have been consecutive days, I visited Harbourfront Centre (scene of many great festivals like Peter Gabriel’s World of Music & Dance) and Toronto Island.
Honest Ed’s discount store, at Bloor and Bathurst Streets, was a Toronto institution for over 60-years. Proprietor, Ed Mirvish died in 2007 and the doors finally closed in December, 2016. The famous neon-lit exterior belied the businesslike interior, which was all about moving product, whether that be work socks or plastic crucifix.
Besides the discomfort of the dive on Clinton Street, I have happy memories of the neighbourhood: the music, the Korean food (spicy!) and an amazing bookstore somewhere just off Bloor, where I spent hours with the best selection of coffee table photography books I’d ever had the pleasure of perusing.
Renee Layberry - Ah…you took me right back to my coming-of-age stomping grounds. I was 18 in 1988, worked as a bike courier for a company based near Liberty Street, live in a crappy studio apartment in Parkdale, and was all about Lee’s Palace, Sneaky Dee’s, The Big Bop, The Rivoli, The Horseshoe, The Copa, The Boom-Boom Room, various booze cans near Kensington Market, and more. 30 years later, I live in Cook Street Village here in Victoria. There’s so much time and geograpghy between then and there and now and here. I miss that era and I miss that city as it was then. Thank you for sharing these terrific photos of a space that will always be part of my heart and identity.June 15, 2018 – 5:55 pm
Raymond Parker - It gives me great satisfaction to discover that my work has done its job, especially as I say above that my street forays were not exactly prolific at that time. Nothing makes me happier than hearing that my photographs have elicited the kind of response you describe.
I too miss that time and place ― it was a vibrant period in the city’s history, and boy were those clubs a hoot! The whole entertainment scene was just extraordinary.
Glad to hear some of those clubs still exist and some Queen Street celebrities ― Molly Johnson, for instance, who I used to bump into over breakfast, has a new album out ― have only gotten better with age.
You’ll want to stay tuned to this series; I have more Toronto stories and street scenes coming over the next few weeks.June 16, 2018 – 10:01 am