A picture of us: A century’s worth of painstakingly curated photos tell tales of the city

By Gerald Hannon | January 25, 2011

By Gerald Hannon | 01/25/2011

Stephen Bulger, the gallery owner and co-founder of the Contact Photography Festival, has been actively collecting photographs of Toronto for the past 15 years at auctions, in antique shops, from pickers who find quality snaps at garage sales, or directly from the photographers themselves. With his current show, Bulger, a native son, wanted to express his enthusiasm for a city that has survived everything from revolutionary war to cholera epidemics to the Great Fire to amalgamation, getting better all the while. And photography has kept track of that history. Louis Daguerre announced his development of a chemical process for capturing images in 1839, when Toronto had just turned five. As a result, our civic album starts, more or less, at the beginning. The Toronto Show is an unabashed mash note delivered via some 50 images, vintage and contemporary. Our city presents as seedy and stolid and rambunctious and glisteningly ready for a future that is, thankfully, never quite predictable. See the slide show »

ART
The Toronto Show
Jan. 20 to Feb. 26, Stephen Bulger Gallery

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Yonge Street arcades have a venerable history. Note the spittoon on the floor (bottom right)—low and shallow enough to require careful aiming (a lost art). The protective grillwork around the cashier suggests customers weren’t always well behaved, says Bulger, who snagged the photograph at an old book and paper show near the airport.

The Bank of Commerce on King West, now dwarfed by its neighbours, was, at 34 storeys, the tallest building in the British Commonwealth until 1962. This was the view from the top, looking east, in the early 1930s. The Gooderham and Worts complex (now the Distillery District) is centre right, while the King Eddie lords over downtown at bottom left. The photographer was a regular visitor to Bulger’s gallery who was too shy to show off his work while he was alive. He left Bulger 100-odd pics taken before and during the Second World War.

The Great Fire of 1904 began on Wellington Street on the evening of April 19 and went on to consume 122 buildings. No one died, but the financial losses reached a staggering $10 million. Bulger bought this photo 15 years ago, then sold it shortly afterward. Regretting his decision, he bought it back from the same man a decade later.

Bulger’s father was one of the first tenants of the TD Centre. “When I was six years old, I loved looking out his window and seeing the tiny people below,” says Bulger. “This photograph’s viewpoint is very similar to the one I used to experience in my dad’s office.”

In the wake of the Great War, the United Veterans League campaigned for a cash bonus of $2,000 per combatant. The Gratuity Boys made their case by constructing a mock foxhole in front of city hall, inviting citizens to sign their petition

Bulger is always on the hunt for contemporary photographs of Toronto in which the city is recognizable but doesn’t appear touristy. Scott Conarroe—who often takes his pictures at dawn with exposure times of several minutes—is a favourite.

“American photographer Wright Morris once said that nothing will compare with the photograph to register what is going, going, but not yet gone,” says Bulger. The “stump” at Bay and Adelaide was for years a bleak reminder of the 1990s recession—construction of what was to be a 57-storey tower got no further than the service shaft.

The identity of this dapper gentleman in the Rosedale Valley is unknown. Bulger thinks he may have owned property in the area and wanted his portrait taken to display his land; note the predecessor to the Bloor Street Viaduct in the distance.

One thought on “A picture of us: A century’s worth of painstakingly curated photos tell tales of the city”

as says:

January 29, 2011 at 10:03 am

I would like to see pics of the new city hall going up
that building was so dynamic and awesome when we first saw it and what a disappointment when you actually go inside … it is a dump

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