Toronto life

I was at the North York Centre library today, and found some old Toronto Life magazines from the late 1960s. Some of the more interesting items that I found in these magazines include:

• A June, 1967 article entitled “Where would Canada be without Toronto to hate?” Some things change, and some things stay the same.

• A February, 1968 profile of Mel Lastman, back before he entered North York politics:

  But do you know Mel Lastman? Probably not. Mel Lastman is a shy, self-effacing appliance dealer until he steps into a phone booth and emerges as (Shazam!) The Bad Boy.

• A November, 1966 portrait of Barbara Amiel.
• The society pages always described married women using their husband’s names, as in “Mrs. John Smith”.

But what caught my attention the most was an ad in the May 1967 issue that advertised a new luxury apartment complex. The ad featured a drawing of a charming executive couple, and this copy:

Are you old-fashioned enough to accept the idea of a morning stroll to the office? You’ll meet an awful lot of people doing exactly the same thing. You know, they smile a lot more too.

The apartment complex offered the following amenities:

• Private health club and gymnasium
• Tennis, squash and shuffleboard courts
• Indoor pool in each building
• Own shopping centre
• 20 acres of parkland
• Two outdoor Olympic-size pools
• Artificial skating rink
• A full-time recreation director
• Putting green
• Adult-only living (no children allowed)

And what was this New Utopia, you might ask? None other than St. James Town.

I sometimes wonder whether the huge condominium blocks currently being put up are running the risk of a similar fate.

This caught my attention

Something just caught my attention: according to the Globe, a survey of 10 major urban centres indicated that the average homeowner spent more than $11,000 on renovations in 2006. The total was over $17.3 billion in renovations spending.

Most people who renovated apparently did so because they wanted to “add value or to prepare to sell the residence.”

Hmmm

A sign that the housing boom in Toronto has reached an extreme: somebody is building luxury townhouses across the street from the Connaught streetcar loop (on Queen Street). According to the sign, these houses will cost about $450,000, despite the fact that they will be right next to a site on which streetcars will be whining and screeching 24 hours a day.

The positive explosion of condos and townhouses (or, as they’re usually called, “townhomes”) must mean that there are a whole lot of people with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend. Which leads me to my next question: where did I go wrong?