The Battle of Vimy Ridge is remembered as one of the pivotal points in Canadian history. It is often said that it was the moment Canada came of age. But as historian Jack Granatstein points out the truth is much more nuanced.
Former East York mayor Alan Redway doesn’t mince words when it comes to his feelings about the 1998 amalgamation of six municipalities into the current City of Toronto.
“Amalgamation has caused destruction for Toronto,” he told those attending a forum Tuesday evening at the S. Walter Stewart library branch at 170 Memorial Park Ave.
It’s small, black and bound with leather. A couple of pages are torn, and there are a few ink smudges here and there, but most of the work inside consists of scribbles. It sometimes even gets lost. Cavel Janel has carried this journal around since she was a teenager, and last month she took it to a library in Toronto. “It has all of my best and worst work in it,” Janel said. “I take it with me wherever I go. Whenever I feel like I have an idea about a story, I know I can just take it out and write in it.”
According to last year’s statistics, 1.1 million people borrowed electronic books from the Toronto Public Library. Compare that to the 32 million traditional printed books borrowed and you can see the number is substantially smaller.