Trading Spaces

For a time, it was known simply as “the skyscraper.” At 180 feet, it was twice as tall as the stately King Edward Hotel around the corner, though still shorter than the clock tower at Toronto City Hall. Built with 1,700 tons of steel, millions of rivets, and 10,000 barrels of Canadian Portland cement, and with innovative heat-activated doors on each floor and its own standpipes, it was considered fireproof. Some celebrated its rise above Hogtown, while others lamented the scourge of monstrous structures it portended.

Edmund Burke, the president of the Ontario Society of Architects, “deplored the fact that Toronto has at last been invaded by its first skyscraper,” the Globe reported on January 17, 1906, one month after the Traders Bank of Canada moved into its new $750,000 headquarters at 67 Yonge Street. Burke and his colleagues were even more irritated by the firm tapped to design the building, Carrère and Hastings, which had previously overseen the New York Public Library Main Branch at Bryant Park. “An American architect secured the contract,” Angus Claude Macdonell, the local member of Parliament, complained, “and at 5 per cent, he gets about $35,000.” No Canadians were invited to even submit plans for consideration.

Once it got going, the tower rose by a floor a week, though the speed came at a cost. An engineer was severely scalded by a dislodged boiler injector. A young bricklayer from Italy was fatally struck in the chest by a wooden plank as it hurtled down one of four elevator shafts. Another worker was killed by a moving counterweight after stepping out of the freight hoist. A telegram messenger boy, passing on his bicycle, sustained a neck injury when he was hit by falling debris. An ironworker on the eighth floor stumbled backwards, only to escape death by somehow catching hold of scantling on his way to the ground, in a scene reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion.

Despite the losses, and over the objections of the mayor and the fire chief, the Traders Bank Building was the Commonwealth’s tallest until 1911, when it was surpassed by the Royal Liver Building in England. And notwithstanding those critics who predicted “the modern ‘skyscrapers,’ with their frowning steel frames . . . are all destined to crumble away,” the French-inspired Beaux Arts landmark continues to stand proudly, though it has long been dwarfed by its neighbours.

Even with $32 million in total assets, the Traders Bank could occupy only a handful of floors in its new building, and so it introduced to Toronto the leasing of office space by the square foot. “The advantages of such a system are many,” the Daily Star explained in June 1906. “Experts agree that the new Traders’ Bank building is bound to be a financial success, and agree that more buildings of this nature are needed to relieve present congestion.”

Over the years, businesses leasing space at 67 Yonge have specialized in everything from religious tracts and boats to shampoos and mines. And beginning this month, the list of tenants in the fifteen-storey heritage property will include the Literary Review of Canada.

The magazine has grown since our last move, in the fall of 2019. More pages, more books under review in print and online, more readers around the country and around the world. And, crucially, more staff. Although our team remains quite small, we will benefit from another desk or two — plus much-needed additional shelf space — as we enter our thirty-fifth year.

I am biased, of course, but the importance of a publication like ours has never been greater. “A review can help a wandering reader locate that particular title that changes a mood, or a life,” the Washington Post observed in August, shortly after the Associated Press announced its plans to abandon book reviews. “It can encourage a debut novelist to write again — and a publisher to take another chance.” Especially given the geopolitical moment and the continued tsunami of American preoccupations on our screens, in our feeds, and in our bookstores, Canadian authors and Canadian houses deserve such encouragement.

While I am proud of the magazine’s recent growth and convinced of its role in Canadian letters, I am by no means blind to the fact that print publications face numerous headwinds, including ongoing uncertainties surrounding Canada Post. And so, as we unpack our boxes and set up our computers in our larger yet decidedly modest space, I invite you to help us continue thriving, no matter what comes our way.

Buy a gift subscription or renew your own. Have a look at our rate card and book an ad. Or consider making a donation to the charitable non-profit that publishes Canada’s best literary magazine. In the meantime, we’ll be reading, writing, and editing from the heart of downtown Toronto, with the entire country in mind.