Volunteer Eric Morse continues his exploration of the archives of Seven News, a community newspaper covering Cabbagetown in the late 1970s and early 1980s when this area was in the city’s Ward 7.
No, it wasn’t the day Mel Lastman called out the army. That was January 14, 1999. But on January 26-27, 1978, Toronto and environs got socked just as hard. Seven News doesn’t name the date, but other references confirm it. Your correspondent, who lived in Ottawa at the time, happened to be in town that pair of days, and recalls it as “the night the CN Tower didn’t blow over’, that being still a major downtown neurosis in those days a year and a half after its completion. Seven News, a weekly paper, ran this stirring front-page shot of Cabbagetown under the storm in its early February edition.
“You’re not alone.” The saga of Nellie’s continues with a touching article by Janet Howard about a fundraiser to help repay the CMHC loan to purchase their premises on Broadview. “Nellie’s Hostel will survive because we all have the sneaking feeling that we are not quite safe without it.”
Cabbagetown Boxing Club cleaned up at the Golden Gloves Tournament at the King Edward Hotel. Later Canadian champion John Raftery makes his appearance in this piece by Ken Hamilton.
Toronto Free Theatre produced a first play by Erika Ritter, who at the sime was a struggling writer trying to deal with the CBC. Reviewer Seth Borts thought its theme – a struggling young writer trying to deal with the CBC – was a touch overspecialized, but pronounced it well worth seeing. Really, the rotary phone in the foreground of the publicity shot is worth the price of admission all by itself!
For this week’s long read, your correspondent confesses sentimental bias – he has lived next door to 306 Seaton St. and across from 287 (now Number 9 recording studio) for the past 31 years, (as frightening as that may seem), and Page 3 features a major spread by George Rust D’Eye on the history of the street. This was the period when gentrification of Seaton Street was just getting under way.
The full stories introduced above are available at http://www.connexions.org/SevenNews/Docs/7News-Volume08-Number17.pdf . The PDF archive is a remarkable achievement by Connexions, a collective dedicated to preserving social activism, of which 7 News is surely a shining example.