Toronto Since 1918

An Illustrated History

by James Lemon

In Toronto Since 1918, first released in 1985, author James Lemon explores seventy years of Toronto's development.
During the twentieth century Torontonians have gone from pitying Cabbagetowners to envying them, from watching Lionel Conacher at a sandlot to watching the Blue Jays at the SkyDome. This book chronicles the immense changes that Canada's largest city has undergone in this frenetic period.
In 1918 Toronto was a provincial city with a half-million inhabitants, overwhelmingly British, Protestant and Tory. Today the city is undeniably world-class, its three million inhabitants gathered from all over the polyglot globe. Despite this metamorphosis, however, Toronto's resilient social fabric endures. Urban planners consider Toronto "the city that works"; other Canadians know it works, sometimes perhaps too hard and too well.
Toronto Since 1918 gathers the manifold strands of this great urban tapestry, bringing the city to life with an incisive, engaging text illustrated with more than 150 historical photographs.

About the Author

JAMES LEMON, a native of a small town in southwestern Ontario, is Professor Emeritus in Geography, University of Toronto. After earning his PhD in historical geography at the University of Wisconsin in 1964, he taught at UCLA before coming to Toronto in 1967.

He is the author of The Best Poor Man's Country: Early Southeastern Pennsylvania. That book won the American Historical Association's Beveridge Prize for the best book in American history 1972. He is also the author of Liberal Dreams and Nature's Limits: Great North American Cities since 1600. One chapter in the book focuses on Toronto leading up to 1975. He is currently writing a book dealing with Canada's past, present and future. Sometime activist in Toronto''s public realm during the reform era, Jim Lemon was chair of the Annex Residents Association 19711973 and of the Confederation of Resident and Ratepayer Associations 1973. He ran in provincial and federal elections. From 1976 to 1978 he served on the Toronto Board of Education, deciding then that he was not cut out to be a politician. When not writing he gives occasional lectures and seminars, and in warm weather grows vegetables and flowers on his Annex space.

Reviews

"Excellent ... a well-researched and well-written chronicle of a big Canadian city's growth."
Canadian Geographic
"Toronto Since 1918 will be indispensable to those who claim to know their city."
Toronto Star

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