It's probably the biggest and
awesomest Toronto history event of the year: Doors Open. For one
weekend, dozens of our city's most interesting and historically
important buildings will be open to the public, letting you check out
our heritage totally free of charge. And it's happening this very
weekend, May 26 and 27.
You'll find the full list of participating buildings here.
There's an app you can download, too. And our Editor-in-Chief will be tweeting and
instagramming from the places he visits. You can follow him on his history-of-Toronto accounts @TODreamsProject.
This year, as you might expect, he's especially excited to check out some of the buildings that have played a role in events written about on the blog. St. James Cathedral, a central landmark in the story of the founding of Toronto, the War of 1812 and the battle to establish true Canadian democracy, is on the list. (You can read a post about its history on Torontoist here.) So is Mackenzie House, the home donated to our first mayor and pro-democracy revolutionary William Lyon Mackenzie once he was finally able to return from exile. (You can read about his failed uprising here.) You'll also be able to visit Osgoode Hall, the law school designed by William Warren Baldwin, another one of our earliest pro-democracy advocates (pun very much intended), which is also where escaped slave Thornton Blackburn worked as a waiter to raise the money he needed to start Toronto's first horse-drawn cab company. The oldest surviving church in Toronto, Little Trinity, which Blackburn helped to establish, will be open too. (We wrote about Blackburn's story here.) Then, of course, there's Fort York, the military base that has been here since 1793 — the first part of Toronto ever built. And Regis College at U of T, which was once the Christie mansion, where the son of the famous cookie baron is said to have kept his mistress imprisoned in a secret room. (That weird story is here.) Plus there's the Tollkeeper's Cottage. (Torontonians have always hated road tolls.) Ooh and the gorgeous old Winter Garden Theatre, which actually looks like a garden. And that grand palace of public works infrastructure, the R.C Harris Water Treatment Plant. We could go on and on.
Sooooooo yeah. Lots and lots and lots of stuff happening. Take a little time to check it out and learn about the history of your city firsthand.
This year, as you might expect, he's especially excited to check out some of the buildings that have played a role in events written about on the blog. St. James Cathedral, a central landmark in the story of the founding of Toronto, the War of 1812 and the battle to establish true Canadian democracy, is on the list. (You can read a post about its history on Torontoist here.) So is Mackenzie House, the home donated to our first mayor and pro-democracy revolutionary William Lyon Mackenzie once he was finally able to return from exile. (You can read about his failed uprising here.) You'll also be able to visit Osgoode Hall, the law school designed by William Warren Baldwin, another one of our earliest pro-democracy advocates (pun very much intended), which is also where escaped slave Thornton Blackburn worked as a waiter to raise the money he needed to start Toronto's first horse-drawn cab company. The oldest surviving church in Toronto, Little Trinity, which Blackburn helped to establish, will be open too. (We wrote about Blackburn's story here.) Then, of course, there's Fort York, the military base that has been here since 1793 — the first part of Toronto ever built. And Regis College at U of T, which was once the Christie mansion, where the son of the famous cookie baron is said to have kept his mistress imprisoned in a secret room. (That weird story is here.) Plus there's the Tollkeeper's Cottage. (Torontonians have always hated road tolls.) Ooh and the gorgeous old Winter Garden Theatre, which actually looks like a garden. And that grand palace of public works infrastructure, the R.C Harris Water Treatment Plant. We could go on and on.
Sooooooo yeah. Lots and lots and lots of stuff happening. Take a little time to check it out and learn about the history of your city firsthand.
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Photo: Inside St. James Cathedral (by Adam Bunch)
Posted by Adam Bunch, the Editor-in-Chief of the Little Red Umbrella and the creator of the Toronto Dreams Project. You can read his posts here, follow him on Twitter here, or email him at adam@littleredumbrella.com.
Posted by Adam Bunch, the Editor-in-Chief of the Little Red Umbrella and the creator of the Toronto Dreams Project. You can read his posts here, follow him on Twitter here, or email him at adam@littleredumbrella.com.
This post originally appeared on the Toronto Dreams Project Historical Ephemera Blog, which tells stories about the history of Toronto. You can read more highlights from it here, or visit it yourself here.
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