Photo: That Old Familiar Union

Given how things have been going recently, I thought it might be instructive to dig into my archive for a photo of Toronto gone by--not far gone by, mind you, but yesterday is no more changeable than 10,000 BCE. For me, some of the differences between Toronto of the recent past and Toronto of the present were made more stark from my time away in Vancouver--there was no gradually getting used to any changes as they happened for me.

Take Front Street. When I left in 2010, it was a fair, streaming road below Union Station's graven frontage, busy with taxis and buses and pedestrians and food carts all through the day and much of the night. When I got back in 2012 it was more appropriately "Front Trench," as the ongoing rehabilitation of Union Station has left it cordoned off, split up by temporary fences, and otherwise hardly there at all. It's the same way today.

Here, from the archives, is what Front Street and Union Station looked like in March 2010. Remember that? There's actually architecture behind those tarps they've put up!

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