I'm so Hood: Toronto in Literature

The great and good Toronto Public Library recently introduced a cool new feature on their website.

Toronto in Literature: Book Lists by Neighbourhood gives info – with a convenient map – on published fiction in their collection that takes place in Toronto neighbourhoods. And woo-hoo! My mystery novel The Glenwood Treasure (published some years ago) is included on the list for books set in Rosedale.

The truth is, all of my novels previous to the current one take place in the city of Toronto, because I’m a born and bred Torontonian. The hoods I’ve called home are Harbord & Ossington (where I lived from birth to age 5, long before the area was considered hip), Rosedale (age 5 to 20, AKA my formative years, hence I set a book or two there), Trinity-Bellwoods, the Annex (in two different locations), Summerhill, Deer Park, Rosedale again as an married adult with young children, and now that my kids are grown and gone, my husband and I have settled in Moore Park.

I can tell stories about the Toronto of old that I grew up in: about riding the new Bloor subway line from end to end soon after it opened and getting a souvenir transfer at each station, about the corner store by the CPR railroad tracks where I went on Saturdays to buy a bag’s worth of penny candy for 10 cents, about running up and down the stairs that encircle the totem poles at the Royal Ontario Museum on Saturday visits, and about shopping at Eaton’s College and Simpson’s department stores(say what?). And I can heartily recommend Lost Toronto, by William Dendy, a wonderful book (available at the library, natch) that contains fascinating pictures and stories about buildings in Toronto that no longer exist, including the abandoned Belt Line train station in the Moore Park ravine that I lovingly referenced in The Glenwood Treasure.

I also invite anyone interested in hearing more about North Rosedale to come to the free Heritage Toronto walking tour of the neighbourhood that I will be leading on Saturday September 27, 2014, beginning at Chorley Park (another site written about in Lost Toronto) at 1 pm. For more information about this tour and the many other informative tours run by Heritage Toronto, click here.

The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.