05/04 Toronto Then

April and May are not busy flying seasons, so I’ve mostly been staying close to home since they put us on call during slower times. I would complain about being bored, except to be honest I’m grateful for the opportunity to walk around and get to know my city. I recently came across both the Flickr and Facebook pages devoted to pictures of Toronto in years past, and became kind of obsessed with imagining what it would have been like for my Grandparents when they first moved here in the late 1940′s. I remember my Grandmother telling me they used to spend Sundays – their only day off – at Sunnyside when the weather was nice, so my favourite pictures tend to be the ones of the beach and amusement park that used to be there before they built the Expressway. It looked like such a fun place, with crowds of people and old rickety-probably-unsafe looking roller coasters (and all those people wearing boater hats!). There is still a beach, and a pool there, and the building still stands. Last Summer when my Sister visited we took a picture in front of it and gave it to her and I think it made her really happy.

It’s probably overly nostalgic of me, but sometimes it makes me so sad that everything in this city gets taken over by newer, shinier, taller versions of buildings and signs and buses….Something about the way the streets look sort of unadorned even when the buildings are all so detailed and ornate just makes me like them so much more.

About these ads