Birdwalking on the Danforth

As a kid growing up in Scarborough, an eastern suburb of Toronto, it was a long way to downtown, but I loved to go there just to look around. I never had any money to spend, but you can do a lot of window-shopping on an empty wallet.

If I had any money, I'd catch the Danforth bus at Warden Avenue and Danforth Road and ride it to the Luttrell Loop, where the bus route ended and the streetcar route began. I'd then transfer to the Bloor streetcar that traveled west on Danforth Avenue to Bloor and Yonge Streets, where I would transfer to the Yonge subway line to go right downtown.

Most of the time, I didn't have the bus fare, so the feet worked just fine. It was a good one-hour walk, but when you're a kid, an hour can be an eternity. The walk was always interesting and exciting because I was an avid window shopper and there were so many store fronts along the way.

The route took me from my house on Warden Avenue, along Danforth Road, and west to Danforth Avenue, both named after Colonel Asa Danforth. Colonel Danforth was an American Revolutionary War veteran, engineer, and road builder from up-state New York. In 1797, he was contracted by the government of Upper Canada, to clear a road from the end of King Street in the village of York, the original Anglo name for Toronto, to Trenton, Ontario; a distance of about 170 km or 106 miles. At that time, York acquired the dubious reputation of being a dirty quagmire due to it's unpaved streets which turned into rivers of thick muck after a rain storm, hence it became known by the nickname Muddy York.

Danforth completed the construction within a year, well ahead of schedule. Upper Canada was a fledgling British colony, whose affairs were administered by Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe. He became our first Lieutenant Governor, being appointed by the Parliament in England, the mother country. The route was originally known as the Dundas Road after a prominent British colonial official. Simcoe, founded York in 1793, which in many of its incarnations has been known as Muddy York, Hog Town, because farmers used to herd their pigs to slaughter down the main street, and finally Toronto.

To get out of paying the bill, the oligarchic government of Simcoe proclaimed that Colonel Danforth's work was inferior and he was not due his $90 per mile fee. He returned to his home and was never heard from again in these parts.

In later years, Colonel Danforth's work was recognized as a feat of engineering that opened up the territory east of York and facilitated commerce between Kingston, the seat of power in Upper Canada, and points east. The Dundas Trail became the Danforth Trail, and eventually it was officially renamed Danforth Avenue. Near Warden Avenue, Danforth Avenue forks, and the north stretch becomes Danforth Road running northeast. At the eastern outskirts of Toronto, there is a road called Colonel Danforth Trail, which is part of the original road constructed by the Colonel. There is also a park in the same area that hugs Highland Creek that bears his name.

The Dundas Trail was a corduroy road. A corduroy road is a road that is not much more than a dirt track, paved with logs laid across the width of the road, giving it a corduroy appearance and ride that was detrimental to wagon wheels. Considering the fact that in the 1700's, Ontario consisted of dense pine forest, it made perfect sense to use the available natural resources to pave the highway. It saved time and money and made use of all those trees that were felled to clear the right of way. There are still spots in the old Danforth Road that have the original paving logs buried under modern roadway. They are occasionally turned up when road crews excavate for road improvements.

A few blocks west of Warden Avenue, Danforth Road ends at Danforth Avenue, which is the main east-west route east of Don River/Don Valley, which divides Toronto in two. I always liked walking the Danforth because of the variety of sights to take in.

At the union of the Danforth's, sat a City Service gas station, painted green and white. Old fashioned gas pumps with round glass lights stood proudly in the centre of the lot. Just around the bend was a Loyal Order of Moose meeting hall. On Friday and Saturday nights, the moose would gather there to conduct the official moose business of beer drinking. During the summer, the windows and doors were left open, out of which thick clouds of cigarette smoke billowed along with the sour odor of Dow, O'Keefe and Red Cap.

Just down the road almost kitty corner, sat Oakridge Public School backing on to the main CN railroad line running out of Toronto. Oakridge was the perennial rival of Warden Avenue Public School, my school through all of the primary grades. They believed they were superior to us because their school was much older, and of course we knew otherwise since ours was much newer and more modern than theirs. Sports and academic trophies invariably switched hands on a year-to-year basis between the two rivals. Oakridge was an old-fashioned two-story school with separate entrance designations engraved in stone for boys and girls. The school was segregated from the surrounding community by a tall, black wrought iron fence, fashioned with deadly spikes adorning the top rail, more befitting a time long past where schools were more like prisons than institutions of learning. Acres of asphalt surrounded the school except for a small grassy sports field at the back of the property along the fence that separated it from the tracks. It backed right up to the railway tracks.

My father, who attended Oakridge, told me of sitting at his desk, staring out the tall windows, watching steam engines chug up the grade from Union Station, labouring under the weight of a long line of coal cars. Many times he was snapped out of his lapse of daydream by the crack of a wooden ruler across his knuckles. A lapse in concentration was an invitation to the teacher to vent his wrath upon a wayward student. Steam engines were being used when I was a boy and had had not yet been completely pushed aside and relegated to the scrap heap by less romantic diesel locomotives. The school is now long gone and the property is now a community parkette.

A little ways past Oakridge School, the Danforth starts to make a transition from a street of detached buildings and strip malls, to a thoroughfare lined by wall-to-wall storefronts, most with apartments above. There are still a few vacant lots, used car lots, corner gas stations, auto body shops, and stand alone buildings that are home to hardware stores, variety stores, clothing stores, new and used appliance store, to mention a few.

Darrigos fruit market occupied the corner of Danforth and Byng Avenue. It's street front sides were dark green, wood framed, sliding glass doors that were moved out of the way to turn the store into an open-air market with large sloping vegetable bins that were right at the sidewalk. On summer days, the sweet aroma of the produce drifted up and down the Danforth. The workers took great pride in their ability to pile the produce bins dangerously high with many fresh fruits and vegetables that to WASP ears had strange, foreign sounding names, such as rapini, escarole, arugula, and radicchio. Darrigos catered mainly to the Italian and Greek enclaves that were growing fast within the community, much to the chagrin of the long time residents of Anglo descent. Even though Scarborough was a white bread, meat and potatoes, blue-collar suburb, and a lot of the produce at Darrigos catered to the ethnic communities, most people shopped there because the quality of the produce was far superior to that available in the local Dominion and Loblaws store.

Bananas were a real treat when I was a kid. When bread was eleven cents a loaf and eggs were twelve cents a dozen, a pound of bananas at five cents a pound was a luxury. I can remember having ten cents in my pocket on a lucky day and spending it at Darrigos for two pounds of beautiful ripe yellow bananas. I'd eat every last one and end up with a major bellyache, but they were a treat that was well worth the agony suffered.

The Mansion House was a little further on. The Mansion was a men's beverage room. There was a side door with a small sign hanging above it that said, "Women's Entrance." Yes, that is what it said, and that is what it meant. Back then, when a sin was a sin, a man was the boss, and the little lady stayed at home to look after the kids, any woman who was brazen enough to enter a drinking establishment unaccompanied by a male companion, had to use the side door. Not only could she not use the main entrance, she had to partake of refreshment in a separate ladies room, which ironically, was not off limits to the fine upstanding gentleman who frequented the establishment without their wives.

A little way along was another purveyor of sin, the Brewer's Retail store. This was where beer was purchased in Ontario, and still is to this day, only now it is handled in a more civilized fashion. My dad would fill out a form with his brand preference, sign his name, and take it to the cashier who shouted the order through a microphone to the handlers in the back room. A minute later, a case of beer magically appeared through a hole in the wall and clattered noisily along a conveyer belt of spinning rollers into the hands of my father.

Down the road, two blocks, was Victoria Park Avenue, the border between Toronto and Scarborough. Victoria Park was named after Queen Victoria. Those who lived east of Victoria Park were pejoratively referred to as Scarberians. If you lived west of Vic Park, you were civilized.

On the southwest corner was the old Nash/Rambler car plant. Nash's were stubby little utilitarian cars that were inexpensive basic transportation for residents of the suburbs who were up to their necks in mortgage payments living the national dream. Nash Motors was taken over by Studebaker, which in turn was swallowed up by American Motors, and then Chrysler absorbed the entire conglomerate and killed off most of the old models. The building was a turn of the century factory occupying four square blocks of real estate. It was two stories of dark red brick perforated by narrow windows that were whitewashed to discourage prying eyes. In the sixties, car production ceased, the plant was abandoned, sold, and leveled to make way for a suburban indoor shopping mall, imaginatively named Shopper's World. This was the first time that the T. Eaton Company, a century old department store establishment, opened a store outside of the downtown core.

Across the street was a landmark of my youth. Next to a tire store that prominently displayed the Michelin Man, sat a stand-alone sports store. Back then, long before big-box, jack-of-all sport stores were a twinkle in someone's eye; a sports store was a shop that catered to wannabe great white hunters. This was a place of wonder and mystery that captured my attention and imagination every time I passed by. I was always compelled to stop, and stare through the windows into an exotic and mysterious world. On one side of the main door, in a tall display window stood an enormous stuffed grizzly bear, paws stretched upwards, vicious claws bared, mouth agape in a perpetual salivating snarl, revealing long ferocious fangs that looked as if they could shred tires. Next to the beast was the gun that supposedly brought about it's undoing. The bear was so tall that the muzzle of the weapon came only to mid thigh. Looking at the bare brought shivers to my spine.

If the door was open, you could get a glimpse of an umbrella stand framed in the arch of two massive ivory tusks, standing in front of the main counter. It was made from the front foot and foreleg of an African elephant. I could have hid in it. In the other display window was a large gun. Not just any large gun, but an elephant gun. To a young kid, this was a very important distinction. Not just any gun could bag an enraged, charging elephant. It had to be an elephant gun. This was not a gun. In they eyes of this kid, it was a cannon.

If you pressed your face against the window and tilted your head just right, and squinted, to peer past the assortment of hunting paraphernalia like hip waders, camouflage jackets, gun cases, ammo boxes, duck decoys, and razor sharp Bowie skinning knives you got a glimpse of the trophy heads hanging above the counters. Occasionally you would get a glimpse of the owner, who was always decked out in his pith helmet and safari duds. He was portly, wore a thick, full, white beard, and wore round spectacles. He looked every bit the part of a great white hunter, except for one small anomaly. He was short. So short, that he was not quite the dashing image one had grown to expect of a fearless big game hunter who antagonized Tarzan in countless Saturday matinees.

A block further west, was New-Era Furniture. New-Era should be in the dictionary under the definition for eyesore. New-Era was a large, multi-storied glass fronted attempt at modern store design that took up a good part of a city block. The huge display windows were an exercise in tacky-tacky-tacky. Gaudy room settings consisting of living room sofas covered in garish satin floral prints standing in front of coffee tables the size of football pitches, kitchen sets in chrome with high back, squeak when you move, stick to your skin, plastic covered chairs, and bedroom suites that looked as if they were a designed for a medieval torture chamber in the Italian-French Provincial style. The accent pieces were just as loud and crass. There were table lamps with shades that had scenes of water flowing over Niagara Falls that became animated when the light was switched on. There were the obligatory black velvet Elvis and velvet Flamenco dancers, card playing dog pictures, and countless plaster statues and busts of famous people, mythical figures, animals, and Greek columns.

Across the street taking up a city block was the Luttrell Loop. This was the demarcation between the real city of Toronto and the beginning of the suburbs. The loop was the end of the line for the Bloor Street, Kingston Road, and Gerard Street streetcar lines, and the beginning of the bus routes to service the eastern boroughs. Streetcars would come in from the west and make the sharp turn into the loop, their steel wheels screeching the cry of the banshees in protest of their sudden change in direction.

Red Rocket is the affectionate name Torontonians have for their streetcars. Back in the fifties and sixties, the two-toned cream and maroon streetcars were already antiquated behemoths; many of them having been relocated from Atlanta when that city tore up its track. You could always tell an Atlanta streetcar, by the two holes in the backrest of the seat across from the rear doors. These were the boltholes that once held a sign that informed black passengers that they must sit to the rear of the sign. Beside the driver stood a floor-to-ceiling pole that had a knurled ring engraved on it part way up from the floor. The marking was a reference point for the driver to judge how old a young passenger was. If the top of the passenger's head was above the marking, said passenger was older than twelve and paid the adult fare. It wasn't very fair but it served the TTC well.

During the summer, the streetcars were noisy, stuffy, and hot. During the winter they were, damp and cold. They lumbered along narrow rails embedded in the road and swayed from side to side and lurched forward and backward when they stopped and started. The severity of the lurch was in direct proportion to the skill of the operator. Stopping these monsters was a two-fold operation and was accomplished by the electric motors and brake large pads that dropped to the rails and assisted in slowing the movement of the car. During the winter, sand was dropped from hoppers under the car and landed on the slippery tracks in front of the wheels to give them traction while negotiating the many hills in the city.

On occasion, the streetcar would stop suddenly, and the interior lights would go out and the sound of the electric motors would cease. The driver would climb down from his pedestal seat, manually open the doors and run to the back of the vehicle. There he would manhandle the trolley back onto the overhead wire to re-establish electrical contact by pulling a guy rope that was connected to the end of the long electric wand.

At one time, Toronto was crisscrossed with streetcar lines. Most of them have now been torn up and replaced by smelly, noisy diesel buses. Progress, no matter how dubious, marches on and cannot be halted by simple common sense. Sadly, modern streetcars, that are larger, noisier, and costlier to run, and are less reliable than the old clunkers have replaced all of the old rockets.

A favourite summertime tradition at the Luttrell Loop was ice cream from St. Clair Dairies, but nobody was adverse to a triple-decker ice cream cone in the deep freeze of a Canadian winter. They served the best, hand dipped ice cream cones in every flavour imaginable. You could order a cone with as many scoops as you wanted, each in a different flavour, only limited by the depth of your pocket book and the effects gravity has on melting ice cream. I've tempted fate on few occasions, sometimes with success and other times with disastrous results. My favourite was a triple scoop, with chocolate, vanilla, maple walnut, and a handful of paper napkins, although I was not inhibited in experimenting with other combinations trying every flavour at last once. During the summer months, after Sunday dinner, my parents would take all six of us for a walk to the Luttrell Loop to get a cone, a single scoop, but on a special occasion, a double.

Down the road, a couple of blocks is Dawes Road, a minor north-south route that ends at the railway tracks, a block south of the Danforth. At the end of the road sat a feed mill, a carry-over from when the area was mostly farmland. I guess they just forgot to move when the farmers left. The dark gray, barn board buildings were decapitated and looked as if they would collapse in the next thunderstorm. I had been in them a few times with my cousin, when he was there to buy birdseed for his flock of racing pigeons.

Narrow rickety stairs with no handrails climbed up four or five floors to the top of the silo. There were rows of large hoppers that contained a wide assortment of seeds and feeds to be trucked to not so nearby farms. Cats and kittens were everywhere for obvious reasons, but by the look of the place, they were ineffectual in their duties.

A little bit further along, Main Street intersects the Danforth. This was a very busy and confusing corner. Overhead there's a spider web of hydro, telephone, and streetcar wires. Two streetcar routes turned south here and the main route continues west towards Bloor Street and downtown downtown. Main Street, at one time was the main street of the hamlet of East York that had grown up on the outskirts of Toronto.

The only notable landmarks at this intersection was the long bridge that climbed up over the railway tracks and the Main Street rail station, and the pinball parlour right at the bridge. Dozens of real pinball machines lined the walls of this dingy place. They flashed their gaudy lights, made all sorts of loud noises, to entice you to lose your nickels and dimes. They clattered, they banged, they rang, and they thumped under the enthusiastic manipulation of pinball experts. Each machine had a different painted, brightly lit glass panel that advertised the game you could lose your money in. Everyone had a favourite machine that they were good at playing, and it was a major disappointment when your machine was occupied.

Invariably, a cop would drop in and chase the underage kids out into the street with a stern warning that if he caught you there again, he would run you in. A quick reprimand to the owner, a sly wink and he was off to walk his beat, never turning around to see you sneak back inside.

A block west of Main Street was City Buick, which was the largest car dealership in Toronto at the time. Acres of new cars sparkled in the sunshine. They had a full time staff that only washed cars. I spent many hours walking through the lot drooling over the latest models in convertible and two-door trim, never giving a four-door a second glance. I dreamed of the day I would have my driver's license and never thought twice of how I would ever pay for such luxury.

Across the street was George Davy's used car lot adorned with strings of colourful pennants and blinking lights. Davy's didn't have an indoor showroom, but that didn't take away from the allure of the establishment. He had neat rows of shiny pre-owned cars in every make and model. The tires had been painted shiny black and the wide white-walls were shoe polished to look pristine white. For the longest time, they had a powder blue Packard Clipper prominently displayed at the front of the lot so anyone walking the sidewalk saw it. If I was to buy a used car, this was going to be the baby. I was sorely disappointed, almost broken hearted when one day when I stopped to have a look at my Packard, I discover that it had been sold. I think I can honestly say that I have only seen one powder blue Packard Clipper since that time. I like to think that it was the same car.

The next main intersection on the Danforth is Woodbine Avenue. Woodbine took you downhill to the Beaches area of Toronto, now a very upscale neighbourhood, with resale priced of housing way up in the stratosphere. Back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Beaches were where the Toronto elite maintained weekend and summer residences. Mother and the kids would be sent to the Beach and father would come for the weekend.

At the foot of Woodbine Avenue, sat Woodbine Race Track, occupying a piece of real estate the size of a small town. When a new horse racing facility was opened in northwest Toronto it was renamed Greenwood Race Track. When Woodbine was being built at turn of the century, my grandfather drove his horse-drawn cart up Yonge Street to a sod farm in Richmond Hill, cut sod into large squares, loaded his wagon and returned to Woodbine. He did this everyday until he had sodded the inside and outside paddocks in a carpet of lush green grass. There is nothing really unusual about this, as that is the way things were done. What fascinated me about this tale was the fact that one of my grandfather's arms was useless, having being damaged in an accident in his youth, and he did all of this work by himself.

Woodbine Avenue is a transition point on the Danforth. The flavour of the street begins to change. The sense of small town main street is fully evident. The shops are a bit more upscale, with fewer car lots, service stations, and vacant lots. It is now fully wall-to-wall buildings abutting wide sidewalks. All of the stores have brick facades and large display windows on either side of glass entranceways. The street will be like this for the next several miles, all the way to Bloor Street and on to the western part of the city.

Back then there were no shopping malls so to speak of. There were a lot of strip malls in the suburbs, and a few big box stores like GEM and Towers and large grocery stores like Loblaws and Dominion, but for the most part, shopping was done at the mom and pop stores in your community, or you traveled right downtown to shop at the big Department stores like Eaton's or Simpson's.

The next main stop is Greenwood Avenue. The street hasn't changed very much and is still pretty much Anglo-Saxon in its flavour and there are no notable landmarks to mention, except for one, Mr. Winkler's music studio. This is where I took violin lessons from Mr. Winkler every Saturday morning to learn how to make a violin screech.

Coxwell Avenue is next. On the northeast corner sat the best little cinema in east Toronto. The Prince of Wales cinema had an old-fashioned marquee with marching-ants lights that announced the latest feature. I always looked forward to when I could afford to go to the Saturday afternoon matinees at the Prince when they showed a double-bill that was preceded by half a dozen cartoons, a newsreel, and a short. You could stay and watch it twice if you chose, all for twenty-five cents admission, a nickel for a pop and a dime for a big bag of popcorn. We always arrived early so we could go up into the balcony and get the best seats in the house. I took my first date to the Prince and we sat in the last row in the balcony.

The street makes another transition after Greenwood Avenue. The flavour is beginning to change as the Danforth approached Little Italy. Little Italy later moved to College Street and the Greek population moved in to transform the neighbourhood and fill the street with the smells of Athens. When the area was of Italian flavour a number of the restaurants and shops had small sliding glass windows opening onto the street, with a small counter behind. This is where you could buy a cup of gelato, that delightfully cool confection I like to believe was created by the Gods, but in actuality it was invented by Bernardo Buontalenti around the year 1660. Gelato, the Italian ice that is so refreshing and invigorating on a lazy, steamy, summer's afternoon in the city. My favourite flavour is lemon, which was made with real lemons and would make your lips pucker before it even came in contact with your tongue.

The smells of Little Italy were incredible. Butcher shops, fruit markets, and fresh pasta shops were in abundance. Women and men's clothing shops were everywhere, selling the latest Italian fashions made of the finest fabrics. Everywhere, there were children playing on the sidewalks and small groups of little old men participating in animated conversation. Many of the stores had benches out front, and little old ladies, some with bambinos on their knees, always occupied them. They were always dressed in black with scarves covering their heads, even on the steamiest August afternoon. They would be deep in conversation, just as animated as the men.

This was the double-parking zone of Toronto. There was never a spot at the curb to park so they were just left in the road while the owners carried on with the business at hand much to the frustration of other motorists who expressed their dissatisfaction with lots of horn honking and hand gesturing. Altercations never resulted from the infractions and the police seemed to turn the other way, probably due to the fact that double-parking was a part of life in Little Italy.

Every parkette and empty lot on this part of the Danforth had been turned into a bocce ball court. During the summer, it was the favourite sport of the community, except for the days when soccer games from Italy were being broadcast on the short-wave radio. On those days, there were radios everywhere blaring the game in a tongue that was spoken far too fast for non-Italian ears.

Little Italy was my favourite part of the Danforth. The Italian community was separate from the wasp community, and wasp prejudices about dirty dp's abounded, but I was always fascinated by the people and their customs, and realized very early on that these were the hard working people who were literally building our city.

The Danforth ends at Broadview Avenue, on the eastern side of the Don Valley, a deep ravine that severs Toronto in two. It turns into Bloor Street on the other side of the Bloor Viaduct, a bridge designed by a genius. Officially it is know as the Prince Albert Viaduct but nobody calls it that. It was designed by Edmund Burke and built in 1919. Burke had the foresight to envision a city connected by a series of subways. He designed the bridge with this in mind and incorporated a lower level to the bridge to take the trains. When the subway was extended east and west along the Bloor/Danforth line in the late 60's, the lower level became the train right of way.

Broadview Avenue hugs the eastern crest of the valley and twists and turns with the river, starting a bit north of the Danforth and ending at Eastern Avenue to the south, one of the old industrial areas of the city.

When you crossed over the viaduct you were transported into a different world. The scenery changes from solid rows of shops to spacious areas of grand homes and then it abruptly changes again into a canyon of glass and concrete. The neighbourhood of Rosedale is on the west bank of the valley and on the north side of Bloor Street. It is a community of old mansions owned by the old money rich of Toronto.

Overlooking the valley on the south side of Bloor is Castle Frank, the summer home built by Upper Canada's first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, and his wife, Elizabeth. The house is situated on the crest of the valley and affords a panoramic view of the river and woodlands below. This was and still is the best piece of real estate in all of Toronto.

Bloor Street makes a jog at Parliament Street and with the change of direction, the scenery changes again from open space to big money sterile. Parliament Street runs south through Cabbage Town, a part of Toronto that acquired its name from the cabbages the turn of the century immigrant residents use to grow on their front lawns, and the smell of boiling cabbage that permeated the air. Cabbage Town is an old residential area consisting of beautiful old Victorian houses on small lots interspersed with tiny streets lined with run down tenements. Cabbage Town is now a trendy place to live with most of the houses rescued from the wrecking ball and renovated by upscale owners.

I lived in Cabbage Town, on Flagler Street in the early 50's and was there in 1954 when Hurricane Hazel struck Toronto with all its fury. I remember the water coming right through the walls and the streets being covered in thick mud after the water subsided. The Riverdale zoo had flooded and some of the animals had escaped from their enclosures. We were warned not to go near the park, but being kids with no fear, the adventure was too compelling to pass up.

Bloor Street continues, straight as an arrow past tall insurance company buildings to Yonge Street and then on to West Toronto. Yonge Street is the main street of Toronto. It was where everything happened. Everyone went to Yonge Street to shop for records at Sam The Record Man and A & A Records. Yonge Street was the Simpson department stores.

Sam's was the best place to buy records. He had three floors crammed with every kind of music. If it was in the music catalogue it was in Sam's store. The store was an institution on Yonge Street. A & A's was number two and sometimes I would go there to buy records when Sam's was sold out. A & A's was just a store, but Sam's was an event. At night, their huge colourful signs competed for attention and were as bright and gaudy as any in Las Vegas. Sam was always in the store sitting on a stool by the window directing the sales staff and greeting the customers.

I always went to Sam's to buy 45's for 69 cents and pick up a free copy of the CHUM chart, a weekly pocket size flyer issued by 1050 CHUM, the rock radio station of Toronto at the time.

Residents of Toronto were either an Eaton family or a Simpson family. The T. Eaton Co. and the Robert Simpson Co. were the two main department stores in the city and store loyalties were very strong. My family was a Simpson family.

They occupied two old buildings on Yonge Street, on opposite corners of Queen Street. The subway stop was between both stores. When you left the subway platform you had two choice; right for Eatons or left to Simpsons.

One of my fondest memories is the smell of lavender at Christmas time. Vendors would sell their wares from wicker carts with wicker canopies filled with loose lavender that they packed into little wicker baskets. As soon as you stepped out of the subway car, the air was heavy with the sweet scent of fresh lavender. To me that is one of the smell of Christmas.

When you entered either store from the subway, you entered through their bargain basement. The goods were just piled on tables in no particular order or size. It was every shopper for themselves. If you were looking for a size eight shoe, chances are you would find the mate buried on another table.

A feature that every anticipated every year was Christmas Toyland. Both stores converted one entire floor to toy display and sales. Eaton's had an elevated model train that traveled around the entire floor. Santa always sat on his throne at the centre of Toyland and long lines of kids waited to give Santa their wish list and have their picture taken on his knee.

Parents would drop their kids off at Toyland and go about their Christmas shopping while the kids inspected and played with all the new toys. None of the sales people complained or stopped the children. It was part of the Christmas tradition in Toronto.

The Simpson's windows were an anticipated Toronto event at Christmas. On the day of the Eaton's Santa Claus parade, which was a major event, Simpson's unveiled their Christmas windows. Simpsons chose a new theme every year and all of the big display windows on Yonge and Queen Streets were decorated accordingly. Each window filled with animated puppets and toys represented a different part of the theme. People would crowd in front of the widows, sometimes taking up the whole sidewalk from curb to glass to get a glimpse of what was behind the glass. For some reason it always snowed on that day, mostly just a few flurries, but it snowed. That was the day that the Christmas season had officially arrived in Toronto.