Just the Usual Work: The Social Worlds of Ida Martin, Working-Class Diarist

Abstract

would be familiar in New York or indeed Tokyo. Ross tells the story well. Illustrations help bring things alive, and the outlines of successive narratives emerge clearly. As a geographer, I would have liked some maps—of the street itself, with building footprints, and of its setting. A more serious limitation is that Ross makes little attempt to compare Yonge Street, and Toronto, with their Canadian and American counterparts. He knows, and cites, a wider literature, but the narrative remains local. Toronto was unusual. Using data reported by Jeffrey Patterson (1993), I estimate that between 1948 and 1973 Toronto spent only $7 per person of federal urban renewal funds, the lowest of any major Canadian city. Only Vancouver rivaled this; the figures for Montreal ($11), Ottawa ($34), Hamilton ($46), not to mention Saint John, New Brunswick ($180), were higher. Moreover, unlike Hamilton, for example, those funds were mostly spent on public housing projects away from the city’s core. These, and other, comparisons would have helped clarify the distinctiveness of Toronto’s experience. But it’s always easy to quibble. I’m thankful for what Ross has given us. Now, we need more historical studies of Canadian downtowns, and especially of ones like The Heart of Toronto, that are well-informed and solidly grounded in the particularities of an urban place.