Volunteer Eric Morse has been mining the archives of 7 News, a community newspaper published in what was then Ward 7 within East Toronto, including Cabbagetown. Here’s his report on the Sept. 10, 1977 edition.
In the September 10, 1977 issue of 7 News, excitement was palpable in the run-up to the second-ever Cabbagetown Festival, which was held a couple of weeks later than now. There was as yet no parade, and the advertised program tended rather more severely to the cultural side of the street than it does now, nor is there yet any mention of the ancient rite of community bonding now called the Cutting of the Cabbage.
A burning chronological question (of the sort that causes amateur historians nervous breakdowns, and drives the pros to drink) intrudes itself. Our BIA is advertising the 2017 festival as the 41st and neighbourhood blogger Doug Fisher, formerly Executive Director of the BIA, upholds this reckoning as orthodox. The 1977 editions of 7 News are resolute in calling the 1977 Festival the first. The September 1976 issue goes on to muddy the waters nicely by referring to an Upper Parliament Festival but in the same article refers to “last year’s festival”. 7 News also reports that another festival was held at Parliament Street Library on August 27 for the younger set.
The seemingly never-ending war for pay equity was being fought in an article by Alderman Janet Howard (Ward Seven had two; Howard and John Sewell; the article also mentions Ward Six Alderman, the late Dan Heap, who later trounced Liberal nominee Jim Coutts in the Spadina byelection of 1981). The particular issue was over a disparity in pay for female public health nurses with the City of Toronto.
Get a load of these dinner specials at the Parkway Tavern, at 488 Parliament St., most recently the home of the Flying Beaver Pubaret.
And Carlton Foods at 493 Parliament was that decade’s incarnation of a long line of greengrocers and cafés on the northeast corner of Carlton and Parliament until the current TD Bank building replaced the old premises.
