Sandford Fleming revolutionized how we think about time, but made questionable romantic decisions.
Passion, scandal, heartache and longing – those words might not be the first that spring to mind upon laying eyes on the Toronto skyline.
Adam Bunch is working to change that with The Toronto Book Of Love (Dundurn, 501 pages, $21.99), an expansive city history that revisits the names behind many local landmarks and street signs through the lens of marriages, affairs, love letters and jealous rivalries.
A city of 19th- and 20th-century building facades propping up glass-encased condo towers, Toronto has a reputation as being dismissive toward its history. And on the surface, it’s not hard to understand why: The modern city was a stodgy, Protestant town with the legal codes governing private goings-on inherited from the colonialist British.