Photographs of Yonge Street looking north from Erskine Avenue taken over a century apart.
Toronto. As we have said many times, archives and libraries are a great source of photographs depicting local history. A few photo enthusiasts take an old street scene and re-photograph it today from about the same location and with a similar field of view.
George Dunbar, who sent us the photos at left is himself an enthusiast of “Then and Now” photos.
Picture the person standing here at Yonge and Erskine a few blocks north of Eglinton in 1907. He imagines what the city is like in about 100 years – bigger, buildings and businesses abound, homes built just back of Yonge.
The grocery store he sees across the street has been transformed into a bank today. The street car has disappeared. Yonge is both paved and wider for the many automobiles and buses that now use the busy roadway. Vehicles like the automobile were few and far between in 1907.
Note: The post title is from the trio of Michael J Fox “Back to the Future” time travel movies beginning with the original released in the summer of 1985.
