Back Lane Studios

We’re embarking on an ambitious new project at Back Lane called Mapping our Memories, and we would love you to join us. Our plan: Collect seniors’ memories and link them to digital maps. This Mapping our Memories project was inspired by our friend Lois Broad, 95, and her stories about Growing up in the Junction. We have scheduled two new workshops at the studio for this summer —  memoir-writing and video-making for the 55+.   More details here. This program is supported by the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP).

For our next Extraordinary Women event, Sunday, Oct. 27, 12:30 pm at the Revue, we’re featuring the remarkable new documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, followed by a Q&A.

Jackie was a transgender soul singer when voices like hers were silenced and marginalized. Yet, she ruled the nightclub scene in Toronto, and she was the first Black performer to top the charts in 1960s Toronto and have her songs played on stations like CHUM. But in 1971 she mysteriously vanished, disappearing from public view for 40 years.

For our Q&A, we’re thrilled to have one of the film’s directors Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, trans activist Susan Gapka, and musicologist Rob Bowman, whose recorded phone interviews with Jackie underpin this film.

Watch the trailer.  Read more about the event and our guests here.

Tickets: $17.50, general; $14.50 students and seniors. Buy here through the Revue. 

Save the date for the next in our Extraordinary Women series Sunday, Nov. 17, 12:30 pm at the Revue: Loving Highsmith, a doc about writer Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train).

Read more about the show here.

On Sunday, May 26, we welcomed Lillian Jackman to the studio. A former club dancer and, with her husband, an owner of nightclubs in New York, Montreal and Toronto, she was our special guest for a screening of the NFB film Show Girls, a wonderful little documentary about three women who sang and danced in the Montreal clubs back in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Lillian grew up in Little Burgundy, Montreal’s Black community, where she was friends with the children of one of the women featured in the film, and took tap dancing at a school run by another of them.

Thanks for coming, Lillian! This was the second time she joined us at a Back Lane Studios’ event. She was also one of our panelists for our screening of the Anthony Sherwood’s documentary Music — A Family Tradition at the Revue.

Welcome to OldTO. It’s an interactive map featuring a wealth of digitized historic photos from the City of Toronto Archives.

Are you interested in what your neighbourhood might have looked like? Do you want to revisit downtown before all of the condos went up? Have a look at the map and see. There are thousands of images, some dating back to 1856.

The map was originally created by Sidewalk Labs, the Google affiliate that was planning a downtown development in Toronto’s Portlands. Sidewalk abandoned its project in 2020 and eventually stopped hosting OldTO. However, they kindly left the source code freely available.

At Back Lane Studios, we were sad to see OldTO vanish. One of our main projects is our Mapping our Memories endeavour. This photo map parallels this interest, and we are thrilled to be able to restore it.

We will be forever grateful to software developer Michael Lenaghan for his terrific work bringing this mapping tool back to life! (Check the browser you use to access oldto.org. Try Chrome if you’re having problems.)

Diana Nazareth was back at our studio Sunday, Sept. 22, to offer another of her informative and fun smartphone photo sessions. She reviewed phone settings and explored the many features smartphones are offering.

Diana, who moved out of Toronto earlier this year, will be back in November to offer another program at the studio. The fee is $35. Please send us an email if you would be interested (ellen@backlanestudios.ca) or call 647-313-1654.

This Back Lane Studios’ book, compiled during Covid lockdowns, is a collection of recipes and stories about seniors’ favourite childhood foods illustrated with wonderful family photos. We are grateful to everyone who contributed. Not only does it offer some classic comfort food dishes, but it also offers some fascinating glimpses of history. It would make a great gift! To order, please email us: info@backlanestudios.ca. The book is $20, plus $8 to mail if we can’t deliver in person!  Meanwhile, read several food stories here, and watch some video versions!