Nostalgia
Nostalgia feels like a luxury right now. A half decade into the Covid pandemic and the after effects it has created, and the whole world has shifted and frayed.
We are not doing well. We are not okay.
I took photos of Honest Ed’s for these watercolours around 2009 or so, a few years before it was announced that the historic store that promised more-for-less was to be razed to make way for condos, but the writing had been on the wall for a while.
Mirvish Village and all its artistic history was also on the chopping block, along with the weird little alley under the Honest Ed’s elevated walkway that ran between the labyrinth of shopping above. The alley had hosted The Fringe Festival “Fringe Club” for years. It was a fun little secret space inviting theatre wanderers in with beers and carnival games, funnelling them to the small performance space in the second story of a house behind Ed’s.
To see what Toronto has become in the last ten or fifteen years has been depressing. An unstoppable condo boom has created a city for the wealthy with many small, entrenched community spaces disappearing rapidly.
A city needs to renew… we know this is true. There is no stopping it. But, staring down the barrel of Covid repercussions there doesn’t seem to be much left for the little people… the artists, musicians, authors, creators and other workers that make the city vibrant, interesting and functional.
Toronto, what is going to be left of our city?