Earlier this year, TPL's Special Collections accepted a donation of photographs from Toronto-based documentary photographer Peter MacCallum. MacCallum specializes in documenting urban spaces. His photos capture industrial sites, street scenes and other architectural features in cities. Spectators of event on Elizabeth Street, Toronto. Peter MacCallum, approximately 1970. View on our Digital Archive. About Peter MacCallum […]
One of the many treasures located in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre is a collection of vintage food and cigarette cards, ephemeral artifacts from a time when smoking was much more commonplace than it is today (food, on the other hand, is still quite popular). In 1875 an American’tobacco company named Allen & […]
One of the highlights in our Special Collections is an assortment of various editions of Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine, which stands to this day as one of the most popular and successful books ever published in Canada, although the author was not himself Canadian. Originally serialized in a Parisian newspaper throughout 1914, Hémon's novel – […]
The Danforth Music Hall is celebrating its 100th birthday this weekend, making it (along with Massey Hall, The Horseshoe and Grossman's Tavern) one of Toronto's oldest buildings still operating as an actual concert venue. Originally known as Allen's Vaudeville Theatre, it was one of the last old-style vaudeville houses to be built in the city; […]
All eyes in Toronto are, of course, currently riveted on the Raptors, but game seven of the Stanley Cup finals between the St. Louis Blues and the Boston Bruins (boooooo!) goes down tonight, which means somebody's going to hoist the Cup this evening. It doesn't get much better than when the finals come down to […]
I just finished reading Adam Bunch's The Toronto book of the dead (eBook), and above and beyond enjoying it as an interesting work of local history, I also found it engrossing on a professional level because many of the people who feature in these darker moments in Toronto's history are names I recognized from the manuscript collection in the Special […]
Earlier this year, acclaimed Canadian glass artist Sarah Hall donated her archives to the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana's manuscript collection, located in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library. Hall has been an internationally-recognized artist specializing in large-scale art glass installations and solar energy projects since […]
Earlier this year, acclaimed Canadian glass artist Sarah Hall donated her archives to the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana's manuscript collection, located in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library.
This blog post is based on a talk I gave about the history of baseball in Toronto. That talk highlighted rare and historical items from many areas of our Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, which includes books, ephemera, art, manuscripts and newspapers. 19th century items The oldest item I discussed was an 1876 copy of Bryce's […]
Last Saturday, July 21st, I led a Discover Special Collections talk about the history of baseball in Toronto. It was one of the presentations we host in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Centre on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library at 2:00 on the first three Saturdays of every month about different topics […]