Zoom Presentation #2: Using the City Directories

If you’ve ever dipped into the City Directories, looking for a place where someone used to live, the name of a store or a workplace, or perhaps you just wanted to clarify the address of a place you remember, then you know how useful these massive books are for historical research. Retired Chief Curator Wayne Reeves  presented his second Zoom workshop about City Directories on Tuesday, April 22, 2025.. His aim is to help us become better  researchers of Toronto history.

The Toronto City Directories were published from 1833 to 2001. They are among the most valuable tools for exploring Toronto’s past. In his presentation, Wayne introduced their history, outlined what we can find in them at various times and showed us how to enhance  our searches by consulting and cross-referencing information available in the different sections. He also discussed abbreviations, which changed over time, and threw in some caveats about dating the information in the directories.

To review his presentation, here is a link to the PowerPoint he used. A video of his workshop will be online soon.

Zoom Presentation #1: Finding Archival Photos Links

If you’ve been participating in any of our Mapping our Memories programs or our earlier video-making workshops, you probably spent some time on line looking for photos.  If you’re continuing to do any historical, property or family research, here’s an opportunity to sharpen your photo sleuthing skills.

Wayne Reeves, recently retired as chief curator for the City of Toronto, shared his expertise in navigating photo archives in a Zoom presentation, Tuesday, March 11, at 7:00 pm.  Here is a link to a PDF of his PowerPoint presentation or click on the image of his presentation below.  Here is a link to his Zoom presentation available on YouTube. 

While working for the city, Wayne put together many exhibits and displays. Read about some of his projects here.

The photo, left, from the Toronto Archives, is of the building on the northeast corner of Front and Yonge Sts., where the TTC offices used to be located. We found this photo to illustrate the memories of Betty Ferrie who came to Toronto from her family’s farm north of Pickering just after World War II. We learned of her story when we interviewed her for our  book We Are What We Ate: Favourite Childhood Foods. The housing shortage was so severe in Toronto after the war that Betty was forced to share a bed with a woman she didn’t know.

Find her story here.