Bribery! Corruption! Fist fights on the steps of City Hall. Thunderings from the pulpits! Mass meetings, petitions, rallies, unrest in the streets! The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company is a lighthearted, impeccably researched excursion through the thickets of chicanery, hypocrisy and sanctimony that were the special marks of High Victorian Toronto. The story is simple: big-money interest who owned Toronto's street railways wanted to run streetcars on Sundays. They claimed this would be a boon to the working man on his day of rest, but it was clear that profit was their real motive. Respectable leaders of Toronto society were adamantly opposed; Sunday streetcars were a desecration of the Sabbath, the work of the Devil. But ultimately, the robber barons won and the cars ran on Sunday-just as the first great bicycle craze began. Everybody bought bikes-some of them from the Methodist Bicycle Company-and the Sunday streetcars were virtually empty. Revenge is a rollicking good story peopled by flamboyant characters with Good and Evil fighting it out in public view. Richly illustrated with cartoons and photographs from the period, it is an exuberant refutation of the notion that Canadian history is dull. With a new introduction by the authors, the attractive Wynford edition brings this award-winning classic to a new generation of readers.

The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday Streetcars and Municipal Reform in Toronto, 1888 - 1897 (Wynford Books)

History

Nelles, H.V.

Armstrong, Christopher

Americas

Oxford University Press

"Rivers have been studied from many perspectives, but too often the relationship between nature and people, between rivers and the cultures that have grown up beside them, have been separated. The River Returns illuminates the ways in which humans, both inadvertently and consciously, have interacted with nature to create Alberta's legendary Bow River."--BOOK JACKET.

The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow

Evenden, Matthew

McGill-Queen's University Press

Alberta's iconic river has been dammed and plumbed, made to spin hydro-electric turbines, and used to cleanse Calgary. Artificial lakes in the mountains rearrange its flow; downstream weirs and ditches divert it to irrigate the parched prairie. Far from being wild, the Bow is now very much a human product: its fish are as manufactured as its altered flow, changed water quality, and newly stabilized and forested banks. The River Returns brings the story of the Bow River's transformation full circle through an exploration of the recent revolution in environmental thinking and regulation that has led to new limits on what might be done with and to the river. Rivers have been studied from many perspectives, but too often the relationship between nature and people, between rivers and the cultures that have grown up beside them, have been separated. The River Returns illuminates the ways in which humans, both inadvertently and consciously, have interacted with nature to make the Bow.

In the final years of the nineteenth century, Toronto architects started to consider how their city, through progressive architecture and urban planning, could be made "modern." Making Toronto Modern constructs Toronto's architectural past to create a compelling narrative of how new ideas about modernism were debated, received, and embodied in new buildings. Through a close examination of political debates, architectural journals, and home design magazines, Christopher Armstrong describes the competing motivations and ideals that influenced the ways in which the city was built. He shows how radical architectural ideas from Europe began to influence Toronto architects and planners in the 1920s, but that the city's residents proved cautiously conservative about modernism. It was not until the prosperous 1950s that the Modern Movement gained wider acceptance through the work of a new generation of practitioners and by the time Viljo Revell's dramatic New City Hall opened in 1965, it was clear that popular attitudes had undergone significant change. The book profiles major public buildings, university commissions, commercial buildings, and a range of residential architecture - from the homes of the city's richest businessmen in the early twentieth century to modernist works such as the Betel, Horne, and Fraser residences sixty years later. Extensively illustrated with period photographs, many previously unpublished, this broad overview fills a major gap in Toronto's architectural history. A reminder of what is at stake in the reception of new architecture and the factors that shape the development of contemporary architecture, Making Toronto Modern is critical to understanding how Torontonians came to see themselves as living in a world-class city attuned to the avant-garde.

Making Toronto Modern: Architecture and Design, 1895-1975 (Volume 13) (McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History)

Arts & Photography

Architecture

Armstrong, Christopher, Nelles, W. V.

Southern Exposure: Canadian Promoters in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1896-1930

Nelles, W. V.

Business & Money

Univ of Toronto Pr

Blue Skies and Boiler Rooms describes the evolution of the securities market in Canada from the onset of trading, through the boom of the 1920s and the depression of the 1930s, to the outbreak of the Second World War. 
The book documents the problems of fraud, misrepresentation, and manipulation of prices which plagued the securities industry from the outset and which eventually led to market regulation, first by the stock exchanges and later, after the First World War, by governments. Some people argued that regulation to prevent abuses should be modelled on the American 'blue sky' legislation, so named after the promises of smooth-talking con men in fly-by-night operations who victimized the unwary with sales pitches offering shares in virtually anything, even in 'the blue sky above.' Such legislation became necessary as shady types marketed shares of doubtful value through 'boiler rooms,' which used high-pressure mail and telephone selling methods to separate people from their money. 
This is a tale well told, with a splendid cast of crooks and raffish characters. It is also an in-depth study based on extensive primary research that captures the distinctiveness of the development of the Canadian securities market. Armstrong's book shows that today's Bre-X saga is only the latest in a series of episodes in which investors have fixed their hopes for quick and easy profits on speculative mining stock. It will be welcomed by students and scholars of financial, business, and economic history.

Blue Skies and Boiler Rooms: Buying and Selling Securities in Canada, 1870-1940

Economics

Bribery! Corruption! Fist fights on the steps of City Hall. Thunderings from the pulpits! Mass meetings, petitions, rallies, unrest in the streets! The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company is a lighthearted, impeccably researched excursion through the thickets of chicanery, hypocrisy and sanctimony that were the special marks of High Victorian Toronto.  The story is simple: big-money interest who owned Toronto's street railways wanted to run streetcars on Sundays. They claimed this would be a boon to the working man on his day of rest, but it was clear that profit was their real motive. Respectable leaders of Toronto society were adamantly opposed; Sunday streetcars were a desecration of the Sabbath, the work of the Devil. But ultimately, the robber barons won and the cars ran on Sunday-just as the first great bicycle craze began. Everybody bought bikes-some of them from the Methodist Bicycle Company-and the Sunday streetcars were virtually empty. Revenge is a rollicking good story peopled by flamboyant characters with Good and Evil fighting it out in public view. Richly illustrated with cartoons and photographs from the period, it is an exuberant refutation of the notion that Canadian history is dull. With a new introduction by the authors, the attractive Wynford edition brings this award-winning classic to a new generation of readers.

The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday streetcars and municipal reform in Toronto, 1888-1897

Peter Martin

Pine Hill Farm, West Gwillimbury Township: A typical example of immigration into Canada in 1819

Tecumseth & West Gwillimbury Historical Society, assisted by the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture

When Toronto’s New City Hall opened in 1965, it was an iconic modernist symbol for what was still a sedate and conservative city. Its futuristic design by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, composed of two curved towers flanking a clam-shaped council chamber, remains as strange and distinctive today as it did fifty years ago.
In Civic Symbol, Christopher Armstrong chronicles the complex and controversial development of this urban landmark from the initial international competition to the many debates that surrounded its construction and furnishing. Armstrong catalogs the many twists and turns along the path from idea to reality for the extraordinary building that Frank Lloyd Wright claimed future generations would say “marks the spot where Toronto fell.” Lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, plans, and drawings, Civic Symbol is the essential history of this iconic Canadian building.

Civic Symbol: Creating Toronto's New City Hall, 1952-1966

University of Toronto Press

With its dramatic landscapes and rugged beauty, Alberta's Bow River valley has inspired generations of artists. The Painted Valley : Artists Along Alberta's Bow River, 1845-2000 brings together a collection of works by local and visiting artists from 1845 to 2000 that captures the many moods of the river and its valley from its source high in the Rocky Mountains down to the city of Calgary and eastward across the open prairie. Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles have selected works from a number of Alberta museums and national collections, which depict the Bow River and its valley, representing a broad array of historical periods, artistic styles, and points of view. From European topographers and military artists to painters commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway, from the Group of Seven to modernism and abstraction, these pictures of the Bow valley tell us much about changing attitudes toward nature and the environment as well as the evolution of an artistic community in western Canada.

The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta's Bow River, 1845-2000

History & Criticism

University of Calgary Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Armstrong, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Armstrong, Christopher

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Armstrong, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday Streetcars and Municipal Reform in Toronto, 1888 - 1897 (Wynford Books)

The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow

The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow

Making Toronto Modern: Architecture and Design, 1895-1975 (Volume 13) (McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History)

Southern Exposure: Canadian Promoters in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1896-1930

Blue Skies and Boiler Rooms: Buying and Selling Securities in Canada, 1870-1940

The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday streetcars and municipal reform in Toronto, 1888-1897

Pine Hill Farm, West Gwillimbury Township: A typical example of immigration into Canada in 1819

Civic Symbol: Creating Toronto's New City Hall, 1952-1966

The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta's Bow River, 1845-2000