Ward & Patch Sports

The history which lurks in unlikely places is amazing. After paying a visit to the soon-to-be-shuttered Zellers over at the Galleria, I headed west along Dupont/Annette Street and saw an incredibly-preserved piece of sporting goodness.

Just east of Jane Street, in the Baby Point neighbourhood, Annette Street hosts a number of locally-focused shops such as florists, dry cleaners and restaurants. Until fairly recently, one such shop was Ward & Patch Sports. The store was located at 777 Annette Street since 1950 and catered to the athletic needs of active west-enders until relocating to Richmond Hill as The Goalie Crease in 2010. The new shop caters specifically to hockey goaltenders and are one of the few retailers in the world with such a specialization.

As you can see in the above photos, Ward & Patch had somewhat of a wider range of products, from hunting and fishing gear to electronics, specifically radios, from all the big names like Admiral and Rogers. Yes, that Rogers.

On the day of my visit, renovations were underway to convert the space into another neighbourhood institution, a hardware store. The sign was going up for auction.

Here is what Ward & Patch looked like when the Google Street View car paid a visit in July 2009.

Photos taken on May 25, 2012 on Annette Street in Toronto, Ontario 

Lowell Arizona

Along the Mule Mountains in southern Arizona there lies a series of abandoned mines which had been providing copper and gold to an ever-expanding United States since the late 1800s. The city of Bisbee, Arizona was established in 1880 to provide services and housing to the workers and owners of the adjacent Copper Queen Mine. One of the communities within Bisbee is Lowell, the main street of which houses various relics of the mining past as well as such community services as a food co-op, auto repair shop and (which town doesn't need one of these) a soil remediation office. The photos of the mine cannot begin to show just how large and how deep the holes in the ground are. You can see exposed copper which has patinated after years of exposure to the elements. You can also see the hills coated with heavy metals which are by-products of the intensive mining which went on for nearly a century, finally ceasing in 1975. Since then, Bisbee has flourished as an artists community and probably the least "red state"-ish place in Arizona.

Photos taken on January 8, 2012 in Lowell (Bisbee), Arizona.

Don Mills Centre - 2006

Coles closed.

Best job ever - Summer 1988 at Music World

Walking in climate-controlled comfort. How gauche.

You were here.

Don Mills Montage in situ

Coming Soon?

nee Eaton's

Photos taken in April and May, 2006, prior to the world's longest redevelopment project, World Trade Center excluded, at former Don Mills Centre, North York Ontario.

"....just to check out the late night... record shop..."

And much like the Pavlovian canine referred to in the song which contains this post's title, when I heard that they were turning Sam The Record Man's spinning neon records back on one last time for Nuit Blanche, I was there.




Oh well, I guess I'll always have Belleville.



Video and first four photos taken early in the morning of October 5th, 2008 at Yonge and Gould Streets, Toronto, Ontario. Last photo taken on Saturday, August 2, 2008 at the Quinte Mall, Belleville, Ontario.

Mainly Because of the .... Name?

Well, it's starting. More rebranding in the name of a streamlined corporate identity. This time, it's the Metro chain of supermarkets which, having taken over the former A&P Canada, are now starting to rebrand Dominion, A&P, The Barn, Ultra (which itself was a holdover from the former Miracle Food Mart chain) and Loeb stores under the "Metro" banner.


I've been reading numerous blogs and rants about the sense of this move and of course, I think that the person who came up with this idea is sharing the same frontal "Loeb" as the guy who decided to rename virtually every upper-middle scale department store in the U.S. "Macy's"

Arrogant & Petulant, this move has been seen by some as an attempt by them damn Frenchies to colonize the Ontario grocery landscape. Of course, these people neglect to mention that the biggest of the big, Loblaws (headquartered in Brampton, ONTARIO), has been colonizing Quebec's grocery landscape for years now. Sure, you still see the occasional Provigo around, but for the most part, it's "Loblaws", complete with the defiant "s" at the end (albeit sans apostrophe) across Quebec. Of course, the granddaddy of the Quebec chains, Steinberg (and its "colonial" brand Miracle (Food) Mart) is long gone and largely forgotten by anyone under 40. We also cannot forget the maritimers who brought the name "Sobeys" to us at the expense of Food City and, for the most part, IGA. Breathing down all their necks is the ultimate example of marketing-by-steamroller, Wal-Mart and their not-as-good-as-they'd-like-you-to-think Supercentres. Forget it, Zellers. The lowest price may be the law, but by my book, if you sell crap, I don't care how cheap it is. If I want Giant Tiger or Dollarama, I'll go there, not to a store that's so desperate for a reinvention, I'm actually GRATEFUL that Lord & Trailer got its grubby hands on it. But I digress...

Regardless of origin, how a company can simply toss away a brand which has over 80 years of equity behind it is puzzling. I'm still calling The Source "Radio Shack" (which of course was a forced name change), and The Bay Queen Street store "Simpsons". Whatever the name of the locally Metro-owned full-service supermarket in my neighbourhood is called, most people I know will still call it "expensive". And for that reason, I think I'll stick to No Frills.

Photos taken near Major MacKenzie Drive East and Bayview Avenue, Richmond Hill, Ontario and Eglinton Avenue East and Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario on Friday, September 26, 2008.

Return To Lower Bay Station

As part of this year's Doors Open, the TTC let the public pay a visit (in earnest this time) to the Lower Bay subway station to see what only film and maintenance crews have been able to see for the past 40 years. To be frank, it wasn't as exciting as I'd anticipated, but the displays, old brochures and video footage of some of the movies filmed down there made for an informative half-hour or so.

Probably the most interesting thing about the station was the state of disrepair the "Bay-Yorkville" signs had become and thus, that is the focus of this post.

Would it be bad punmanship to call this a "Bay Window"?

This was one of the better looking signs on the platform

For those days when the station is in a New York state of sign

I don't normally hang out at the "Y"....

Damaged signs weren't only underground, as evidenced by the Bellair Street exit.

Photos taken Saturday, May 26, 2007 at (or above) Lower Bay Station, Toronto, Ontario.

A Pizza History

Whist riding the venerable VIVA bus up Yonge Street, I've noticed the transformation of an old Pizza Hut north of Steeles, near Glen Cameron Road. I remember it well since my parents took me there for dinner for my 21st birthday oh-so-many years ago. But that's not important right now, what IS important is that the building's pizza incarnation stretched way back before being part of the American chain. It would appear, by the very faint logo that's been whitewashed, that is was once Frank Vetere's (Deep Dish) Pizza. Most of the former locations were converted to Pizza Huts in the mid-80s, but I'll always remember the location near Yonge and Carlton (the former Harvey Wallbangers) the fondest. Big mugs of Coke, deep cheesy pans of pizza. What more could a kid want?

Across the street is a sign which advertises the businesses in the adjacent strip-plaza. I'm thinking that some bored suburban kids had some time on their hands and decided to do a little anagramization:
Poor Al.

At least they left the other side alone....


Photos taken April 16 and 18 at Yonge Street and Glen Cameron Road in Thornhill (Markham), Ontario.