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Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now

Yonge St - Jolly Miller - 1920
Yonge St. Jolly Miller 1920.jpg


Yonge St.jpg

Google street view
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Y...2!3m1!1s0x882b32971c193385:0xbb426c2d673f1edf
 

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Goldie said:
Yonge St - Jolly Miller - 1920
View attachment 132122

View attachment 132123
Google street view
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yonge+at+York+Mills/Wilson,+Toronto,+ON/@43.7408219,-79.4059616,3a,105.7y,145.42h,92.55t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sdunsljzfuaiNuGdVn9tE5A!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x882b32971c193385:0xbb426c2d673f1edf
Click to expand...

Those radial line rails were buried until about 1968-ish when they resurfaced Yonge more comprehensively - ie., dug deeper. I remember watching them uncover and then remove them. They ran where the parking lanes are now.. only on the west side of Yonge.
 
strookie said:
I still have this photo in mind, not just because of the smashing model, but also for the quality, especially for a colour photograph. When I first saw it, I thought it was old enough to have been originally black and white and someone else colourized it. But close inspection tells me it is original colour. In fact, it does not appear to have been colour enhanced, either. I would assume the cuffs and the TTC logo were redder than now depicted. Can anyone provide the name of the photographer and the date it was taken?

Less important, but I'm curious, what is she depicting with the tickets? I assume that it's just part of the pose.
Click to expand...


That's a colourized photo, by Canadian Colour. His logo is on it.
http://www.canadiancolour.ca/

She is Irene Ayers, Miss Toronto 1946 : Irene Ayers wears TTC guide uniform, and poses with tickets in hand at her home, 591 Rhodes Avenue. It was taken by Alexandra Studios - here's the original.

f1257_s1057_it1583.jpg
 
strookie said:
Tallest Miss Toronto on record at six feet even. https://www.thestar.com/photos/2014/02/17/miss_toronto_pageant_contestants_over_the_years.html
Click to expand...
I'm getting a little overwhelmed staring at her and considering her height. I Googled and there's a lot on her, but incredibly, no pics that I found as stunning as this one. I still don't know exactly what it is about this pic, but it has elements of Mona Lisa to it...

And I forget who commented on how well tailored the tunic is, but it really is, impeccably.

Addendum:
[...]
Back on the customer service side of things, the post-war grey and red work clothes worn by the women in these pictures were officially modeled by Irene Ayers, Miss Toronto 1946, after she was awarded the title at the police games that year. According to the write-up in the Toronto Star, Ayers worked as a guide at Queen and Yonge and used her $300 winnings to take a modeling course in New York while keeping her day job at the TTC. [...]
Click to expand...
https://www.blogto.com/city/2013/01/are_these_ttc_uniforms_better_than_the_current_kit/
 
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DSC said:
I think sign and arrow are pointing to the Olympia Bowling Lanes at Edward and Yonge (where World's Biggest Bookstore was.) It closed in 1978 or 1979. It had 10 lanes.

The address given for this photo is 333 Yonge (on west side) so I think it must have been its previous location. I think @ Yonge and Gerrard.

View attachment 131266

This is from 1952

View attachment 131267
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Olympia Lanes was a huge place in the late 70's when I used to bowl there. There was a large employees' league from Canada Life over on University that bowled there Monday nights for years. The main building on Edward Street connected through the upstairs levels with the space above the storefronts on Yonge Street as show above. (It was a few doors north of Edward.)
BTW another nearby landmark at the time was the favorite watering hole for many bowlers - the Nickleodeon Tavern just down the street on the corner south of what is now Dundas Square. It was on the second floor.
At Christmas time the Canada Life staff association also held a "Turkey Roll" at Olympia that would draw hundreds of bowlers.
 
Mustapha said:
Those radial line rails were buried until about 1968-ish when they resurfaced Yonge more comprehensively - ie., dug deeper. I remember watching them uncover and then remove them. They ran where the parking lanes are now.. only on the west side of Yonge.
Click to expand...

Cool! I don't remember the lines running along Yonge but remember seeing them poking through the pavement at the Glen Echo Loop at the top of the hill. I might have had a beer at the Jolly Miller, but can't recall for certain (I might be mixing those memories with beer at the Algonquin further north). My dad told me about the radial lines and recall the old car barns at Bond Lake (Oak Ridges) and the old rights-of-way in the area were visible until they were built over. I recall going to relatives in Richmond Hill and you could see the church steeples from just north of Steeles (about where the CN York Sub crosses) and nothing but farms and forests in between.
 
As a child (1940s), living on Donlands and with no car in the family, we took the TTC everywhere.
Some family friends has a small farm near Hwy.7 and Leslie St...........I think that was called the Langstaff area in those days.
In order to visit the farm we rode the Danforth-Bloor street car to Yonge, transferred to the Yonge car to go north to the top of Hoggs Hollow where we caught the Yonge Radial car.
That Radial ride was as exciting to a child as a trip on the Island ferry.
I recall that we got off at the Langstaff stop and walked about a mile east to the farm.
The Langstaff Prison Farm was visible at the north side of the road.........I'm not sure if it was called Hwy,7 or Langstaff Rd. in those days.
Today, I'm totally amazed when I see that (once-countryside) location at Leslie and Hwy.7.
 
Richard White said:
What is a prison farm? Forced labour camp?
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A quick look at 'the internet' would give you an answer but, essentially, yes. Wiki describes a prison farm as: "A prison farm is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are put to economical use in a farm (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a penal colony.[1]

The agricultural goods produced by prison farms are generally used primarily to feed the prisoners themselves and other wards of the state (residents of orphanages, asylums, etc.), and secondarily, to be sold for whatever profit the state may be able to obtain.[2]"
The Harper government closed most (or all?) of the Federal prison farms in Canada a few years ago.
 
It should also be mentioned that the Langstaff Prison Farm was a "low-security" facility intended for only the most "trustworthy" prisoners who were given the benefit of daily, outdoor work rather than being confined to prison cells.
There were occasionally news reports of prisoners who simply walked away from the fields in which they worked. Most were quickly returned to complete their sentences - usually in a more secure facility.
 
Mimico Reformatory - aka Mimico Brick Works.
Mercer Reformatory - Women.
Central Prison - light industrial.
(All of a similar bend.)

Regards,
J T
 
Goldie said:
Thanks Anna, that's excellent historical material.
Here's some more from the TorStar: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2010/07/25/old_torontos_farm_for_minor_offenders.html
The "jail" was closed in 1958 --------- sometime after that, I drove into the site with the thought of photographing the abandoned buildings, but I was too late........all gone!
Click to expand...

I did some Googling and came across this. One of the Langstaff buildings - 'Cottage No. 1' - survived and appeared in the 1980 film 'Prom Night'. Fascinating stuff; not the neighbourhood of my youth otherwise I would have gone exploring..

http://t-location-scout.blogspot.ca/2012/07/prom-night-1980.html
 
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