Toronto sketches 11: "the way we were"

Mike Filey brings Toronto's history and the stories of its people and places to life.

Mike Filey's column "The Way We Were" first appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun not long after the first edition of the paper hit the newsstands on September 16, 1973. Now, almost four decades later, Filey's column has enjoyed an uninterrupted stretch as one of the newspaper's most widely read features. In 1992 a number of his columns were reprinted in Toronto Sketches: "The Way We Were." Since then another nine volumes have been published, each of which has attained great success.

Included in this latest compilation are stories about the controversial, though not altogether new, improvements to the TTC's St. Clair streetcar route, as well as accounts of such fondly remembered gasoline brands as Joy, B-A, and White Rose. Then there are those popular Great Lakes passenger ships that carried thousands to such "foreign" ports as Lewiston and Rochester in New York State. Recounting the unforgettable Toronto snowstorm of 1944 and the tragedy of the fire aboard the SS Noronic prove that not all memories are pleasant ones.