Librarian
HST118: The City in HIstory
Welcome to the library research guide for HST118: The City in History.
The majority of humanity now lives in urban areas. How, when, and why did people shift from rural to urban life? Using a wide range of sources, this course introduces students to the development of cities and urban cultures from the ancient world to the modern metropolis. It examines both the causes and the effects of urbanization, and considers how people have shaped - and been shaped by - urban environments around the world.
Explore this page's menu for useful resources and tools that will help you navigate this course.
Detail from plate 13 (Ward 3) of Goad, Charles E. Atlas of the City of Toronto and Suburbs. 3rd ed. 1923-1924.
Source: Toronto Metropolitan University Library & Archives. Archives and Special Collections.
Useful Resources
TMU Libraries subscribe to many databases ideal for historical analysis, which are accessible to the TMU Community.
Visit the Journals and Articles page for vital databases that contain information not available on Google or Omni.
The following databases may be of particular use for this course.
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Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowThis database contains abstracts of articles from journals relating to the history of the world (excluding Canada and the US) from 1450 to the present. Also included are abstracts of important books in this field.
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America : History & Life This link opens in a new windowAmerica History and Life contains citations, with abstracts to social science and humanities literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistoric times to the present.
Maximum of 6 simultaneous users. -
Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database (CBCA) This link opens in a new windowThis database, with 600 full text titles, is the most comprehensive Canadian reference collection available today. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, CBCA Complete features a highly-respected, diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.
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CPI.Q Canadian Periodicals Index This link opens in a new windowCPI.Q is Gale’s award-winning full-text resource specifically designed to provide instant access to the most requested Canadian reference materials. Covering a wide range of disciplines, CPI.Q is the perfect one-stop resource for researchers in need of information from Canadian-focused journals, magazines, newspapers and reference sources.
CPI.Q features a wealth of Canadian and international periodicals, Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s weekly magazine and Canadian News Facts as well as comprehensive encyclopedic reference material. -
C19: Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new windowC19 Index is a bibliographic database for 19th century research, providing integrated access to the most important finding aids for books, periodicals, official publications, newspapers and archives. Users can query collections simultaneously, or can conduct more detailed research using collection specific search screens.
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British And Irish Women's Letters And Diaries This link opens in a new windowBritish and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of women, as revealed through pages of published letters and diaries from 1500 to 1900, including several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database. -
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new windowBlack Studies Center brings together essential historical and current material for researching the past, present and future of African Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. It is comprised of several cross-searchable, component databases, which include:
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British Periodicals This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
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China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980 This link opens in a new windowManuscript material relating to the activities and observations of British and American diplomats, missionaries, business people and tourists in China from 1793 to 1980, together with rare periodicals, colour paintings, maps, photographs and drawings. All of the manuscript material has been indexed by person, place and subject. An interactive map encourages searches by city and region.
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Defining Gender This link opens in a new windowThis exciting collection of original source material from British and European archives will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology, education and cultural studies from a gendered perspective. Manuscripts, printed works and illustrations combine to address the key issues from both masculine and feminine perspectives.
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Canadiana This link opens in a new windowCanadiana is a bilingual digital library of primary (source) documents of early Canadian printed publications including books, annuals and periodicals. Over 1,300 sources (including 350 titles from outside the U.S.) are indexed and abstracted. Of these, 600 are available in full text.
Formerly known as Early Canadiana Online. -
Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new windowEarly Encounters in North America contains over 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters. Particular care has been taken to index the material so that it can be used in new ways. For example, you can identify all encounters between the French and the Huron between 1650 and 1700.
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Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowBearing witness to what many scholars consider the three most significant events in world history – The American Revolution, The French Revolution and The Industrial Revolution – this resource features: Full-text search capabilities; Canonical titles of the period as well as contemporary works that analyze and debate those titles; Works by both well-known and lesser-known authors. Toronto Metropolitan has both original ECCO and ECCO 2.
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Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new windowThis database brings together journals printed between 1693 and 1799 illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. They offer effective coverage of the important issues of the period, and are invaluable to the study of all aspects of the eighteenth century, including crime, sport, advertising, the theatre; fashion; politics, revolution; agriculture; social issues and society life.
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Empire Online This link opens in a new windowThis resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
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English Historical Documents This link opens in a new windowEnglish Historical Documents Online contains over 5,500 indexed and fully searchable primary documents from 500 to 1914. This includes American Colonial Documents, which was previously out of print. The online version of the standard series of primary source documents in British history, conceived in wartime and with volumes published since 1953, can also be found here.Sources include government and cabinet proceedings, military dispatches, newspaper articles, pamphlets, personal and official letters and diaries. It covers political and constitutional topics and social, economic, religious and cultural history.
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Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new windowThe core of the material is a collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world and dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. The main focus is accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. These have been reproduced in colour where appropriate. These are augmented by an array of translations and supporting materials (all of which are fully searchable) and interactive maps showing the routes of the travellers.
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Oral History Online This link opens in a new windowOral History Online provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,500 collections of Oral History in English from around the world.
The collection also provides keyword searching of more than 271,000 pages of full-text by some 9,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 3,000 audio and video files and over 17,000 bibliographic records. -
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowWomen and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 is organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. This collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally. The collection currently includes 124 document projects and archives with more than 5,100 documents and 175,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,800 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
Archival Resources
Archives at the local, provincial and national level may be custodians of important primary sources, particularly photographs, registers, legal documents etcetera. Some university archives also contain unpublished theses and dissertations that are not available in digital or microformat.
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TMU Archives & Special CollectionsArchives & Special Collections are located in the Toronto Metropolitan University Library Building (LIB) on the north side of Gould Street, just east of Yonge Street, between O'Keefe Lane and Victoria Street. Enter the Library on the 2nd floor of the building. We are located on the 4th floor of LIB. There are two sets of elevators or stairs required to access the LIB building (2nd floor) and Archives & Special Collections (4th floor).
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Archival Research TutorialWelcome to York University's guide on conducting archival research. This guide will introduce you to the archival resources held by the Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections (ASC) and methodologies needed to successfully complete your papers and assignments.
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Toronto Telegram fondsCollection consists of digitized photographic prints, photographic negatives, as well as associated textual documentation from the Toronto Telegram newspaper photo archives. Digitization sponsored by patron request as well as grant-funded projects aimed at preserving objects suffering from severe vinegar syndrome. Digitized material represents approximately 1% of the total collection. What follows is a summary of digitization projects that draw upon the collection. In 2001, a pilot project was established to digitize a sample of 1,000 images (of Toronto's waterfront as well as ethnic groups within the city) to examine and evaluate techniques, procedures, and costs for digitizing collections. The outcome of the project resulted in a better understanding of the resources required of such a project while providing an opportunity for York University Libraries to develop expertise in digitization and the mounting of locally produced databases. From about 2000 to the present patron-driven requests to digitize material related to historical events or institutions has led to the predominance of topics such as bank robberies in the 1960s, the Woodbine Racetrack, the counterculture scene in Yorkville, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and The King Edward Hotel. Since 2010, images related to the Mariposa Folk Festival have been digitized as part of an ongoing collaboration with the Mariposa Folk Foundation. Since 2010, York University Libraries has sponsored ongoing digitization of boxes of photographic negatives suffering severe vinegar syndrome, resulting in the preservation of images categorized under the following subject headings of: animals, dogs, cats, Armistice Day, Biafra, banks, flowers, food, Hamilton, Hallowe'en, Hairdressing, Haliburton, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Cuba, and Saigon among others. Since 2010, images related to the Portuguese Canadian community have been digitized as part of an in-kind partnership with the Portuguese Canadian History Project (PCHP). Since 2012, images related to the Greek Canadian community have been digitized as part of an in-kind partnership with the Greek Canadian History Project (GCHP).
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City of Toronto ArchivesAt the City of Toronto Archives you can find historical records, including:
- records created by the City of Toronto government
- records created by municipal governments that existed before the 1998 amalgamation
- papers of people, families, organizations and businesses
- photographs
- maps, plans and architectural drawings -
Using the City of Toronto ArchivesYou can use the materials in the Archives, but you won’t always be able to find things by yourself. But don’t worry—we are here to assist you. It’s our job to help you find what you are looking for, but we do not do your research for you!
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Ontario ArchivesPreserving the documentary heritage of the land we call Ontario and its people.
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Multicultural History Society of OntarioEstablished in 1976, the Multicultural History Society of Ontario collects, preserves, and makes available irreplaceable records of our histories of migration, ethnicity, and Indigeneity. It undertakes educational programming to increase appreciation of the importance of diversity to the development and ongoing vitality of Ontario and Canada.
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The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ+ ArchivesSince 1973, The ArQuives has been acquiring and preserving material documenting LGBTQ2+ history. Our mandate is to acquire, preserve, organize, and provide public access to information and materials, in any medium, by and about LGBTQ2+ people, primarily produced in or concerning Canada.
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UTARMS Discover ArchivesDiscover Archives is the central portal to explore archival material held by the University of Toronto and its federated colleges. Use Discover Archives to search and browse archival descriptions and finding aids across archives repositories, find direction about how to access material online or in-person, and explore context and connections between the people, culture, and administrations that make up the broad University of Toronto community.
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Toronto Public Library: Local History & GenealogyResearch history and genealogy in Toronto and beyond. Our largest collections are at Toronto Reference Library, with smaller collections at other locations. We also have many online resources.
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Early English Books Online (EEBO)Early English Books Online (EEBO) The aim of the Early English Books Online Project is to capture the earliest extant edition of every English-language work published during the first two centuries of printing in England, and converting this material into fully-searchable texts. Over 25,000 texts from the first phase of EEBO-TCP have been made freely available as open data in the public domain from January 2015.
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United Nations Treaty CollectionThis publication provides information on the status of over 500 major multilateral instruments deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations (as of 1 January 2009) and covers a range of subject matter such as Human Rights, Disarmament, Commodities, Refugees, the Environment and the Law of the Sea. The number of treaties deposited with the Secretary-General keeps growing steadily. This publication reflects the status of these instruments, as Member States sign, ratify, accede or lodge declarations, reservations or objections. It is over one thousand pages in length and is published annually in hard copy (three volumes). The online version is currently updated daily.
Items from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
Toronto's 187th Birthday. Drawings of Toronto from 1854-1856 ... from the Album of Drawings and Sketches of Toronto and Surroundings. Digitized images posted to the library's Flickr site.
Toronto in the Camera: O. Thompson's Photographs of Historic Toronto. Photographs of 48 buildings taken by Octavius Thompson between 1864 and 1868.
Ontario in the Spotlight: Early Photographs of Toronto, Niagara, and Belleville. A collection of 38 photographs, chiefly "cartes de visite" collected by Henry Scadding in the last half of the nineteenth century.
A Sample of Books from the TMU Library Collection
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200 Years Yonge
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ISBN: 9781896219493Publication Date: 1998-12-10The Yonge Street as conceived by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe is celebrated, from its beginning as a First Nation's Trail, to the Yonge Street we know today, extending from Toronto to Innisfil. Augustus Jones, the surveyor assigned by Simcoe, the French, the German pioneers, the Loyalists - all were to influence the building of Yonge Street. With the building of a route came tolls, inns, villages, more immigrants and ultimately an avenue of economy serving as the key transportation route for the people, goods and services that represent our province. -
Building a Co-Operative Community in Public Housing
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ISBN: 9780802038623Publication Date: 2013-07-16Public housing projects were the original form of government supported housing for low-income residents. Over the last fifty years many projects have struggled with high crime rates and numerous social problems. One solution proposed to address these ongoing issues is granting residents decision-making power within their community by converting into a co-operative. Building a Co-operative Community in Public Housingfollows the journey of a Toronto public housing complex as it was converted into a resident-operated co-operative, a first in Canada. Jorge Sousa traces the story of Alexandra Park, which became the Atkinson Housing Co-operative in 2003 after a ten-year conversion process. Sousa, who himself was raised in the community, provides an empirical account of the contributing factors that influenced its decision to pursue community-based control, as well as the experiences of both residents and government officials engaged in this process. Finally, Building a Co-operative Community in Public Housingoffers a framework for other communities facing similar circumstances who want to learn how to go about undertaking this process. All royalties from this book will be contributed to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto Charitable Fund. -
Competing Modernisms
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ISBN: 9780929112688Publication Date: 2015-09-01The 1958 Toronto City Hall and Square competition was the largest competition of its era. It attracted over 500 entries from architects across the globe, even more than the 1956 Sydney Opera House competition. Finnish architect Viljo Revell's winning scheme became an icon for the city of Toronto and presented a vision for the future of civic buildings and public spaces worldwide. However, little attention has been paid to the other entrants and the subsequent impact of this competition on Canadian architectural culture. This book discusses the impact of this competition on the design of public institutions and urban public spaces in Canada, and reflects on the value of architectural competitions as modern architecture developed in the mid-20th century. -
Doors Open Toronto
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ISBN: 9780676974980Publication Date: 2002-05-07With a Foreword by Anne Michaels This spring, 80,000 people will take to the streets to explore exciting city spaces that are too often closed to them. They will be taking part in the Doors Open festival, a weekend-long celebration of Toronto’s civic culture and history through 100 of its finest and most important buildings. Generously illustrated with some 200 photographs and sidebars, and accompanied by seven hand-drawn maps, Doors Open Toronto is the essential book for anyone who cares about the city they live in, for lovers of secret places, for adventurers at heart. 2.5 million people live in Toronto, but how many know the stories of their city? In this accessible, lively literary companion to the Doors Open Toronto festival -- now in its third year -- irrepressible city advocate and former mayor John Sewell takes us on a tour of the places in Toronto every citizen or visitor should explore. Step inside the old Don Jail, with its rotunda ringed with serpents and gargoyles, once home to the infamous bank-robbing Boyd Gang, until they escaped -- twice. Go to the original Don Mills to see where the lumber was sawn for the Simcoe’s 1795 country home, Castle Frank, and the paper produced for William Lyon Mackenzie’s newspaper, The Colonial Advocate. Or explore the Chapel of St. James-the-Less, with its cemetery established in response to the cholera epidemic of 1834 that killed 10% of the city’s population. Doors Open Toronto illuminates these wondrous places and nearly one hundred more, bringing life and meaning to the streets we walk down every day. The Flatiron (Gooderham) Building, the old Don Jail, Osgoode Hall, Enoch Turner School House, One King West, Hart House, University College, St. James’ Cathedral, Gooderham & Worts Complex, George Brown House, R. C. Harris Water Filtration Plant, The Elgin and Winter Garden theatres, the Canadian Opera Company, Union Station, The Arts & Letters Club, Commerce Court North, the Design Exchange, St. Paul’s Basilica, Canada Life building, and many more… -
Full Frontal T. O.
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ISBN: 9781552452578Publication Date: 2012-07-24Winner of the 2013 Heritage Toronto Award of Excellence Shortlisted for the 2013 Toronto Book Award The Toronto streetscape: how it looks, lives and changes over time, documented in over 400 photographs. For over thirty years, Patrick Cummins has been wandering the streets of Toronto, taking mugshots of its houses, variety stores, garages and ever-changing storefronts. Straightforward shots chronicle the same buildings over the years, or travel the length of a block, facade by facade. Other sections collect vintage Coke signs on variety stores or garage graffiti. Unlike other architecture books, Full Frontal T.O. looks at buildings that typically go unexamined, creating a street-level visual history of Toronto. Full Frontal T.O. features over four hundred gorgeous photos of Toronto's messy urbanism, with accompanying text by master urban explorer Shawn Micallef (Stroll). -
A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto
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ISBN: 9781553654445Publication Date: 2010-07-29A pocket guidebook to the extraordinary architectural revival in Toronto over the last two decades. Over the past 20 years, there has been a resurgence of city building in Toronto that has not been seen since the buoyant optimism of the 1960s. The cultural renaissance has increased awareness of design and of the market for cultural tourism in Toronto. A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto provides a perspective on this process of cultural and architectural transformation, and the selected projects reflect contemporary tendencies, aspirations and attitudes towards city building. Following the same format as the other two guidebooks in the series -- Montreal and Vancouver -- each project is featured on a two-page spread with a concise, descriptive text, project information, photographs and drawings. The projects are organized by neighbourhood and allow the reader to take a self-guided tour. Maps at the introduction of each neighbourhood provide context, and an index provides easy referencing of projects throughout. The Guidebook provides a comprehensive look at contemporary architecture in Toronto and is sure to contribute to the Canadian and international dialogue on the design of our cities. -
Hurricane Hazel
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ISBN: 1550025260Publication Date: 2004-08-03On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel battered southern Ontario, leaving in its wake a terrible toll: thousands homeless, million in property damage, and, worst of all, 81 people dead. Hazel destroyed bridges, submerged towns, and drowned unsuspecting Ontarians in their homes and cars. Raymore Drive in Weston was decimated when the Humber River swelled by eight feet, taking the lives of 32 residents in only one hour. In Etobicoke, five volunteer firemen drowned while trying to reach marooned motorists. Towns and villages from Toronto north to Timmins felt Hazel's fury. After the storm, people walked the now-surreal streets of their towns: cars upside-down and wrapped in power lines, iceboxes and dead cows hanging from trees, houses flattened, toys and furniture floating down the street. On the 50th anniversary of the storm, Jim Gifford has captured that fatal night in the voices of those who survived it, from residents who lived along the surging Humber River to a policeman who rescued families from their rooftops to firemen and Boy Scouts who searched for victims along the riverbanks. Including more than 100 never-before-published photographs, Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Centurydocuments one of the worst natural disasters in Canadian history. -
Lawren Harris: in the Ward
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ISBN: 9781550960631Publication Date: 2009-04-01Bringing to life a snapshot of early North American urbanization, Lawren Harris' modernist poetry and urban paintings are featured together for the first time in this unique historical journey. Including previously unpublished poems, this compendium offers a new view of his artistic period preceding the Group of Seven and presents an exciting window into Canadian urban space at the turn of the century. The juxtaposed poetry and paintings compliment each other to provide a unique view into the artistic workings as Harris confronted Toronto's cold underbelly--searching for a metaphor for the poverty that he encountered in the Ward's world. -
Kensington
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ISBN: 9781550463385Publication Date: 2000-09-01Since the late 1800s, the Kensington area of Toronto has witnessed the dreams and struggles of successive waves of immigrants. This remarkable book examines the lives of the European Jews, Italians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Portuguese, Asians, Blacks and other groups who came to Kensington and made it their home, their workplace, their village. -
Multicultural Cities
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ISBN: 9781442630147Publication Date: 2016-03-10What defines a multicultural city? Policy? Geography? Demography? In Multicultural Cities, Mohammad Abdul Qadeer offers a tour of three of North America's premier multicultural metropolises - Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles - that demonstrates the critical qualities that make these cities multicultural. Guided by the perspective that multiculturalism is the combination of cultural diversity with a common ground of values and institutions, Qadeer examines the social geography, economy, and everyday life of each metropolitan area. His analysis spans the divide between Canada, where multiculturalism is official government policy, and the United States, where it is not. A comprehensive investigation of how some of today's leading majority-minority cities thrive, written by a keen observer of North American urban life, Multicultural Cities is an important complement to any discussion about how cities can and should accommodate diversity. -
Newspaper City
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ISBN: 9781442646797Publication Date: 2017-04-07In Newspaper City, Phillip Gordon Mackintosh scrutinizes the reluctance of early Torontonians to pave their streets. He demonstrates how Toronto's two liberal newspapers, the Toronto Globe and Toronto Daily Star, nevertheless campaigned for surface infrastructure as the leading expression of modern urbanity, despite the broad resistance of property owners to pay for infrastructure improvements under local improvements by-laws. To boost paving, newspapers used their broadsheets to fashion two imagined cities for their readers: one overrun with animals, dirt, and marginal people, the other civilized, modern, and crowned with clean streets. However, the employment of capitalism to generate traditional public goods, such as concrete sidewalks, asphalt roads, regulated pedestrianism, and efficient automobilism, is complicated. Thus, the liberal newspapers' promotion of a city of orderly infrastructure and contented people in actual Toronto proved strikingly illiberal. Consequently, Mackintosh's study reveals the contradictory nature of newspapers and the historiographical complexities of newspaper research. -
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Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy
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ISBN: 9781039000797From the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything. When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city's woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs' pitch for the long-forsaken property--with Doctoroff as the urban-planning company's CEO--Sidewalk's bid crushed the competition. But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff's team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company's vision for the high-tech neighbourhood--and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city's corridors of power and activism. To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech's digital might into the physical world around us. With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O'Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech. -
Toronto Between the Wars
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ISBN: 9781552978993Publication Date: 2004-07-03Winner of Heritage Toronto's Award of Excellence, Book category in 2005. The pace of life in Toronto picked up after 1919 and never slowed down again. During the 1920s and '30s, Toronto went through massive changes that affected the physical and the social life of the city. In these two decades between World War I and World War II, Toronto was finding its place in the swiftly changing world of the twentieth century. Toronto Between the Wars features 180 archival photographs of Toronto during this fascinating period. Each picture is accompanied by a captivating story about some aspect of life in the city. During this period, cars became commonplace, the downtown skyline changed as new skyscrapers were built, and women's roles changed dramatically. Then the Depression sent the economy into a tailspin, unemployment became rampant and poverty took its toll. People struggled to afford the basic necessities and lived under the shadow of a growing threat of another war in Europe. The text reveals little known facts, such as how a leading retail family kept their interest in a major downtown property secret for twenty years. Photographs capture unguarded moments with startling immediacy: a tired but happy group of disheveled merrymakers waiting for a bus; two women in flouncy bridesmaid dresses; an old man cleaning the statue of Queen Victoria; and children buying fish from an itinerant fishmonger. With intriguing pictures and absorbing text, Toronto Between the Wars offers a rare opportunity to observe life in Toronto during a critical time in its history. -
The Ward
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ISBN: 9781552453117Publication Date: 2015-06-23The story of the growth and destruction of Toronto''s first ''priority neighbourhood.'' From the 1840s until the Second World War, waves of newcomers who migrated to Toronto - Irish, Jewish, Italian, African American and Chinese, among others - landed in ''The Ward.'' Crammed with rundown housing and immigrant-owned businesses, this area, bordered by College and Queen, University and Yonge streets, was home to bootleggers, Chinese bachelors, workers from the nearby Eaton'';s garment factories and hard-working peddlers. But the City considered it a slum, and bulldozed the area in the late 1950s to make way for a new civic square. The Ward finally tells the diverse stories of this extraordinary and resilient neighbourhood through archival photos and contributions from a wide array of voices, including historians, politicians, architects, story-tellers, journalists and descendants of Ward residents. Their perspectives on playgrounds, tuberculosis, sex workers, newsies and even bathing bring The Ward to life and, in the process, raise important questions about how contemporary cities handle immigration, poverty and the geography of difference. -
The Ward Uncovered
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ISBN: 9781552453698Publication Date: 2018-07-17In early 2015, a team of archaeologists began digging test trenches on a non-descript parking lot next to Toronto City Hall -- a site designated to become a major new court house. What they discovered was the rich buried history of an enclave that was part of The Ward -- that dense, poor, but vibrant 'arrival city' that took shape between the 1840s and the 1950s. Home to waves of immigrants and refugees -- Irish, African-Americans, Italians, eastern European Jews, and Chinese -- The Ward was stigmatized for decades by Toronto's politicians and residents, and eventually razed to make way for New City Hall. The archaeologists who excavated the lot, led by co-editor Holly Martelle, discovered almost half a million artifacts -- a spectacular collection of household items, tools, toys, shoes, musical instruments, bottles, industrial objects, food scraps, luxury items, and even a pre-contact Indigenous projectile point. Martelle's team also unearthed the foundations of a nineteenth-century Black church, a Russian synagogue, early-twentieth-century factories, cisterns, privies, wooden drains, and even row houses built by formerly enslaved African Americans. Following on the heels of the immensely popular The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood, which told the stories of some of the people who lived there, The Ward Uncovered digs up the tales of things, using these well-preserved artifacts to tell a different set of stories about life in this long-forgotten and much-maligned neighbourhood. Contributors include Abbey Flower, Sarah Hood, Ron Williamson, Cheryl Thompson, Peter Popkin, Arlene Chan, Karolyn Smardz Frost, Simon Rogers, Liz Driver, Vid Ingelvics, Bethany Good, Adrienne Chambon, Kathy Grant, Guylaine Petrin, Craig Heron, Tom Porawski, Wayne Reeves, Wenh-In Ng, Ellen Scheinberg, Nicole Brandon, Rosemary Sadlier, Matt Beaudoin, Natasha Henry, and Heather Murray.
Useful Searches
An effective search can reduce stress and frustration, and will ensure you are able to get started on your reading and writing sooner.
For this course, you might think about the following searches to get you started. For guidance on using Omni, TMU's extensive catalogue, check out our 'starting your search' page. To find useful keywords, look for the terms used in some of the more prominent publications in the field.
urban history ontario
diaries toronto
social conditions montreal
social life and customs berlin
everyday rome
quebec province pictorial works
Consider using Omni, Browse Search, Library of Congress Subject Heading:
New York (N.Y.) History
Toronto (Ont.) Pictorial works
London (England) History
los angeles calif. history
Toronto (Ont.) Buildings, structures, etc.
Historic buildings Ontario
City halls
Cities and towns, Ancient
Streets Ontario Toronto
United States History Sources
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
These remain useful sources of quick information. In addition to free sources such as Wikipedia, consider some of our licensed electronic content from publishers such as Oxford University Press, as well as printed items.
Try using Omni, Advanced Search and Subject contains: [type a topical word or words] and etiher dictionaries, or, encyclopedias
Example Subject contains searches:
- canada biography dictionaries
- cities and towns encyclopedias
- egypt encyclopedias
- europe history chronology
- united states history dictionaries
Biographical information
Consider these resources:
- American National Biography (1999, 24 vols.), and, Supplement (2002-) (for people who are deceased)
- Canadian Who's Who (for living persons; print volumes ended with 2012-13; some versions may be available online)
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography (print for those who died 1930 and earlier; online includes new entries for those who died after 1931 and some are revised entries)
- Dictionary of World Biography. Online 9th ed. (2022)
- Encyclopedia of World Biography (2004) 4 supplementary vols. also availabl
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (United Kingdom; 2004, 61 vols.) Supplements for recently deceased (2001-2004) & (2005-2008)
- Who's Who (Great Britain, for living persons)
- Who's Who in America (for living persons)
- Current Biography (1941-2015) More recent volumes available at the Toronto Pulbic Library.
- Native Peoples A to Z: A Reference Guide to Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere. 2nd ed. (2009, 8 vols.)
- Abridged Biography and Genealogy Master Index (1988)
Historical Maps and Atlases
Try Omni Browse Search, and Library of Congress Subject Heading:
- Canada Historical geography Maps
- China Maps
- Europe Historical geography Maps
- United States Historical geography Maps
- World history Maps
- World War, 1939-1945 Maps
The W.H. Pugsley Collection of Early Canadian Maps from McGill University Library
The David Rumsey Map Collection makes accessible historic maps of North and South America
The Toronto Public Library (TPL) has ongoing subscriptions to many biographical resources as well other dictionaries and encyclopedias that are not available at TMU. Many of the resources are located at the Toronto Reference Library situated just north of Bloor Street on Yonge Street.
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Oxford Reference This link opens in a new windowOxford Reference, previously known as Oxford Reference Online Premium, comprises more than 120 dictionaries and reference titles covering a comprehensive subject spectrum including: General Reference, Language, Science and Medicine, Humanities and Social Sciences, Business and Professional content.