Kensington Market

Rifke (Rosalie Wise Sharp) grew up in North Toronto in a household very different from those of her peers. Her family's traditional Yiddish customs and hard life style made her feel like she was born into the wrong family. Over the course of her life - and its many experiences that range from despair to incredible wealth - Rifke realized the spartan lifestyle of her parents did wonders to stretch her mind, her creativity, and the importance of remember one's roots. 

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.

If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn’t food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of supermarkets, immigration, the role chefs can and should play in society - how a city nourishes itself makes a statement about the kind of city it is.

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.

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.

This collection of stunning photographs and inspired commentary documents the lives of Italian immigrants to Toronto. Award-winning photographer and cultural historian Vincenzo Pietropaolo has spent much of his life taking pictures inside the tightly knit Italian-Canadian community. While the images in this book are part of the fabric of life in Toronto, they transcend the specificity of place to evoke the lives of immigrants in cities around the world.

With Toronto, Ontario as a featured example, Life in a Residential City provides insight for children into living in the housing zone of a big modern city. With a focus on where people live as opposed to where they work, this book explains the many different areas of a city that make living possible, including the people, the traffic, the roads and the buildings.

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.

In 1855, Willowdale's post office opened in Jacob Cummer's store on Yonge Street. Today, streets in Toronto's community of Willowdale are peppered with the names of the early farm families of North York, such as the Shepards, Finches, and Kennedys.

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.

Making the Scene is a history of 1960s Yorkville, Toronto's countercultural mecca. It narrates the hip Village's development from its early coffee house days, when folksingers such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell flocked to the scene, to its tumultuous, drug-fuelled final months. A flashpoint for hip youth, politicians, parents, and journalists alike, Yorkville was also a battleground over identity, territory, and power.

On December 22, 2022 as eastern Canadians were getting ready for the holidays, a bizarre weather system brought crippling freezing rain to central and eastern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Over 300,000 people lost power in Toronto alone and 70,000 were still without it on Christmas morning. Officials estimate that 40% of power lines in the GTA were affected and more than 20% of Toronto’s tree canopy was destroyed.

March 6, 1934. Hundreds gather outside City Hall to celebrate the Toronto Centenary. In the crowd, pickpocket Mona Kantor and her partner, Chesler, are ‘in the tip,’ finding easy pickings among the jostling masses. Eli Morenz, city man for the Daily Star, is covering the festivities and uncovering the pickpocket racket working the scene. A surreptitious photo and some keen research lead him to an underworld dive in Kensington Market where Toronto’s pickpockets converge – and to Mona.