Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)

Since the election of Mayor David Miller in November 2003, Toronto has experienced a wave of civic pride and enthusiasm not felt in decades. At long last, Torontonians see their city as a place of possibility and potential. Visions of a truly workable, liveable and world-class city are once again dancing in citizens? heads.

A spaceship hurtles towards the moon, hippies gather at Woodstock, Charles Manson leads a cult into murder and a Kennedy drives off a Chappaquiddick dock: it?s the summer of 1969. And as mankind takes its giant leap, Jordan May March, disabled bastard and genius, age fourteen, limps and schemes her way towards adulthood. Trapped at the March family?s cottage, she spends her days memorizing Top 40 lists, avoiding her adoptive cousins, catching frogs and plotting to save Yogi, the bullied, buttertart-eating bear caged at the top of March Road.

What is the ?Toronto look?? Glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes, and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine.

City Hall proclaimed 2006 the Year of Creativity. ?Live With Culture? banners flap over the city. And across the city, donors are ponying up millions for the ROM and the AGO. Culture?s never had it so good. Right?

Along the Shore examines the Toronto waterfront, past and present, through the lens of four lakefront communities and districts ? the Scarborough shore (including the Bluffs), the Beach, the Island, and the Lakeshore (New Toronto, Mimico, Humber Bay, and Long Branch). Each retains a direct and immediate connection with Lake Ontario and the natural world.

Another brilliant part of the Wow! Canada series, Only in Canada is a funny, fascinating and fact-filled example of what makes Canada interesting. Told through the hilarious voices of Moose and Goose, the readers are taken on a journey through Canada and all of the interesting, weird, strange and educational facts that define the nation. 

For a quarter century, Glenn Cochrane, of CFTO's six o'clock news, left viewers with a smile by scouring the city for the genuine eccentrics and landmark fests that put Hogtown on the map.

Learn the history behind this national holiday, celebrating the birth of a nation by Canadians from coast to coast. See the many different ways in which this multi-cultural nation recognizes this occasion with fireworks, music, food, a day-off work, and other special events.

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In Becoming Modern in Toronto, Keith Walden shows how the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, from its founding in 1879 to 1903 (when it was renamed the Canadian National Exhibition), influenced the shaping and ordering of the emerging urban culture. Unlike other studies of its kind, it fully integrates experiences on and off the fairground by viewing the fair as a microcosm of developing structures in the city and surrounding rural areas.

A story told through the perspective of 12-year-old Guy and his family, this Wow Canada! 10th Anniversary book takes us on a journey throughout the country and its many splendors. Guy and his family travel across the country and discover hidden gems and informative fact about Canada and all that it has to offer.

Unbuilt Toronto explores never-realized building projects in and around Toronto, from the citys founding to the twenty-first century. Delving into unfulfilled and largely forgotten visions for grand public buildings, landmark skyscrapers, highways, subways, and arts and recreation venues, it outlines such ambitious schemes as St. Alban's Cathedral, the Queen subway line and early city plans that would have resulted in a Paris-by-the-Lake.

On August 1, 1933, two young women, the famous aviatrix Grace O'Gorman and the inexperienced Willa Briggs, take off in a tiny Moth biplane to break the world flight endurance record. Their plan: to circle above the city of Toronto for twenty-five days.

The Second World War had been under way for a year when Marie and John Williamson welcomed two English brothers to join them and their two children in their small house in north Toronto for the duration of the conflict. Marie wrote over 150 letters to the boys? mother, Margaret Sharp, imagining that she could make Margaret feel she was still with her children. She shepherded the boys through education decisions and illnesses, eased them into a strange new life, and rejoiced when they embraced unfamiliar winter sports.

Mike Filey?s column ?The Way We Were? first appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun not long after the first edition of the paper hit the newsstands on September 16, 1973. Now, almost four decades later, Filey?s column has enjoyed an uninterrupted stretch as one of the newspaper?s most widely read features. In 1992 a number of his columns were reprinted in Toronto Sketches: ?The Way We Were.? Since then another nine volumes have been published, each of which has attained great success.

Twenty-five fascinating images that offer a 360º panorama of the Toronto's downtown in 1856-57 mark the beginning of the use of photographs to document Toronto's growth, its achievements, its great civic works, and its citizenry. Since 1856, the City of Toronto has been commissioning photographs to document and to promote it.

This book, published to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the city's incorporation, brings together more than 100 of these images, selected by city archivists from their collection of hundreds of thousands.

The voice of Rachel through her school project on Candian symbols sheds light on Canada and its unique national identity. Part of the Wow! Canada series, That's Very Canadian is an investigation into what makes Canadians what they are. From offical symbols to unoffical understandins, Rachel looks at what makes this nation a nation. 

This is the story of a city and how it grew from an unknown and sparsely populated place to the sprawling, colorful metropolis that more than three million people call home.