Toronto's post-war cultural metamorphosis is a story told so often it has become a cliché. It is good to be reminded—as readers of Martin Hunter’s Young Hunting and Margaret McBurney’s The Great Adventure will be—that things were never quite so simple.
Hunter is best known as artistic director at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Theatre during the 1970s, and more recently as author of Romancing the Bard, a history of the Stratford Festival. Young Hunting is the story of his upbringing in Toronto from the late 1930s to the mid 1950s, a time when the city saw an influx of rural and small-town Canadians, including his own parents: “They were eager to absorb city ways as best they could—learning to drink cocktails and play bridge—but solid country values of thrift, hard work, and moderation underlay their newly acquired sophistication.” As with so many of these newcomers, it did not take long for them to settle into a prosperous...
Mark Lovewell has held various senior roles at Ryerson University. He is also one of the magazine’s contributing editors.
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