Tag: bloor st. cinemas

Toronto Cinemas3 Comments

A Victory Bond rally at the Midtown Theatre

Eric Veillette

Cinemas were often a choice neighbourhood site for Victory Bond rallies during both World Wars. In the above photo, members of an unidentified regiment are lined up in front of the Midtown Theatre (now the Bloor Cinema), then owned by 20th Century Theatres. Although I haven’t been able to properly date the photo, it was taken some time after the all-star flick Stage Door Canteen ended its two-month run at the Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre in September, 1943. Big thanks goes to Christina Stewart of the CNE Archives for unearthing this photo, which is also one of the rare shots … Continue reading A Victory Bond rally at the Midtown Theatre

Toronto Cinemas6 Comments

Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Runnymede

Eric Veillette

By the mid 1920s, after the construction of great vaudeville and movie houses like the Toronto Pantages and Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre, North American theatre designers sought more cost-effective ways to attract theatre-goers. What resulted was the Atmospheric style. Iconoclastic and progressive, it took theatre-goers out of the tired palatial setting and brought them into another world altogether, one where the ceiling wasn’t a ceiling, but a night sky with flickering stars. In Toronto, one could consider the Winter Garden Theatre, covered in leafy greens and vines, to be a proto-Atmospheric, but the first true Atmospheric in Canada was Toronto’s … Continue reading Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Runnymede