Articles by Simon Wallace

The Outsider's History of Early Toronto (and Where He Had Sex)

When Gay Toronto lacked for safe private spaces, and how it was shaped by official morality, crusading cops and the arrival of new amenities.

Low Life

By Simon Wallace | July 20th, 2011

Even when Toronto was better known for being good, there was one place you could go to be bad: the saloons of St. John's Ward. — Read More

THE SPRAWL

City of Chance

By Simon Wallace | June 15th, 2011

When Ernest Hemingway lived in Toronto he observed that it was “a famous betting town.” He wasn't kidding. When Toronto was good at being bad. — Read More

THE SPRAWL , HISTORICAL

Whiskytown, Part II

By Simon Wallace | June 7th, 2011

What whisky made, beer tore apart. Blame the 20th century and urbanization for the city losing its title as the world capital of spirits. — Read More

THE SPRAWL , HISTORICAL

Staging Cultures

By Simon Wallace | June 1st, 2011

Images of school pageants show how Toronto might've seen the world, circa 1930. — Read More

THE SPRAWL , HISTORICAL

Whiskytown

By Simon Wallace | May 31st, 2011

Booze runs in our blood: How Toronto became, for a little while anyway, the capital of spirits. — Read More

THE SPRAWL , HISTORICAL

Poultry in Motion

By Simon Wallace | May 26th, 2011

Next month city council could repeal a three-decades old law prohibiting urban chicken coops. Thank Kensington Market and Protestant social mores for banning henhouses in the first place. — Read More

THE SPRAWL , HISTORICAL

Toronto's Dead Men on Campus

By Simon Wallace | May 24th, 2011

Today we might donate our bodies to science, but in 19th century Toronto medical students and researchers pursued some unseemly methods to procure their dead. — Read More

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