Book ~ "Full Frontal T.O.: Exploring Toronto's Architectural Vernacular" (2012) Shawn Micallef and Patrick Cummins

From Goodreads ~ For over thirty years, Patrick Cummins has been wandering the streets of Toronto, taking mugshots of its houses, variety stores, garages, and ever-changing storefronts. Straightforward shots chronicle the same buildings over the years, or travel the length of a block, facade by facade. Other sections collect vintage Coke signs on variety stores or garage graffiti.

Full Frontal T.O. features over three hundred gorgeous photos of Toronto's messy urbanism, with accompanying text by master urban explorer Shawn Micallef.

Patrick Cummins has photographed Toronto's built environment since 1978 and has worked as an archivist in Toronto since 1986.

Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and a senior editor at Spacing magazine. 

I find it fascinating to see how Toronto has changed over the years.  Full Frontal T.O. is Patrick Cummin's photo diary of just that.  He has taken pictures of places over the last 30 years and goes back on a regular basis to note the changes.  Shawn Micallef provides commentary to the pictures.

I enjoyed this book because most of the pictures are of the west end of the city (which is where I live) and there are a lot from my 'hood.  I'd recommend it to anyone who lives or has lived in Toronto.

I noticed a couple errors, though ... for example, there are pictures that are noted to be on Queen Street W but are actually on Queen Street E.  Another is an updated picture of the corner Queen Street W/Shaw which was supposed to have been taken in 2001 but must have been 2011 since the County General, which is now on that corner and in the picture, only opened last year.

Book ~ "Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto" (2010) Shawn Micallef

From Amazon ~ What is the "Toronto look"? Toronto architecture is rich with superlative facts – "tallest" this, "first retractable" that – but, taken as a whole, the city’s built environment is underappreciated. Here, glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine.

Eye Weekly columnist Shawn Micallef has been examining Toronto’s architecture for many years, weaving historical information on its buildings and their architects with expansive ambulatory narratives about the neighbourhoods in which these buildings exist. Stroll collects Micallef's expanded columns alongside a number of new, unpublished essays; together, these psychogeographic reportages situate Toronto's buildings in living, breathing detail, and tell us more about the people who use them, how it feels to be exploring them in the middle of the night and the unintended ways in which they're evolving.

Stroll celebrates Toronto’s details – some subtle, others grand – at that velocity and, in so doing, helps us understand what impact its many buildings, from the CN Tower to Pearson Airport's Terminal One and New City Hall, have on those who live there.

This is an interesting account of one person's walking tours around Toronto, along with high level history of the areas and what is currently there.

One weird disappointment was in his description of being at Tommy Thompson Park (aka Leslie Street Spit) and Vicki Keith Point. He makes no mention of the automated lighthouse ... it is only one of three lighthouses in Toronto and the only active one in the city (though he'll tell you there is a Coffee Time at the corner of King/Queen/Roncie!!).