This blog originally appeared in Ryerson University Magazine

No visitor to Ryerson since January could miss the gaping hole at Yonge and Gould Streets where the dignified - but neglected - former Empress Hotel once stood.

Perhaps you recall the upstairs bar from your student days. An example of "demolition by neglect" followed by arson, the Empress loss raised the profile of architectural preservation.

There are many reasons to preserve buildings. Many people with no knowledge of architecture or local history enjoy looking at and using older buildings. Variety and complexity are added to streetscapes by structures from various eras. Heritage buildings provide spaces for work, cultural activities and residences that are quite different in form and ambience from contemporary buildings.

Normally - or normally in our era of climate change and ever-advancing springs - the first of the trout lilies begins blooming around April 15. Last year according to the date stamps on my photographs, I'd first seen one blooming on April 12. They might have been out at the same time this year, but if they were I couldn't see them under all the stubborn snow.

The successful commercialization of synchronized sound films in the late 1920s was arguably the medium's most important technological achievement since its invention. But often neglected is how the costly conversion to sound systematically put thousands of silent film musicians out of work.

In Toronto, sound films first arrived at the Tivoli, at Richmond and Victoria Sts., when the Fox Movietone film Street Angel premiered on October 5, 1928. As Luigi Romanelli's  orchestra sat silently in the pit, the whirring strings and woodwinds from New York's Roxy Orchestra emanated from loudspeakers in the Famous Players theatre.

If you're anywhere near my age--and for the sake of my ego, let's pretend that you are--then you remember back in the old days when you needed to actually go to a library in person and look something up in a book when you wanted to learn about it. This involved something called "card catalogues," which contained many small pieces of paper that told you where on the shelves you needed to look. Very likely, you spent an unbelievable amount of time and small change standing next to a photocopier, copying a report or an article out page by page. Nowadays you can download anything in a fraction of the time, for free, and while listening to a book or a song to boot, and Natural Heritage information is no exception.

Perhaps not the close-up Gloria Swanson had in mind when she called out her famous line in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, the above photo was taken during the silent star's visit to Toronto in July of 1950 -- one of the 34 stops in her publicity tour for Paramount's Sunset Boulevard.

Although the film would not premiere in Toronto until the following month, Swanson's two-day stop was a busy one.

On Monday, July 3, she met with Mayor Hiram McCallum at City Hall, inspected the construction of the Yonge St. subway, visited Paramount's Bond St. office, had tea at Eaton's Georgian Room, took the stage at Shea's for the CJBC radio broadcast "Opportunity Knocks," then went over to the Toronto Men's Press Club.

Of all the wild critters universally beloved by children, the one you have the greatest chance of seeing in the winter time is the squirrel. They run, they play, they chatter, they stand adorably on their hind paws with their front paws held in front of their bellies like small furry beggars. They're small and easily won over with a couple of peanuts. They're also a lot tougher than they look, remaining active and outdoors throughout a Canadian winter. This might have something to do with all that black fur.

Counterintuitively, much of the protection for Natural Heritage in Ontario is driven by the Planning Act's Provincial Policy Statement, better known for driving urban density levels, development charges and zoning--but Natural Heritage is defined ecologically, rather than culturally:

2.1 Natural Heritage

2.1.1 Natural features and areas shall be protected for the long term.

2.1.2 The diversity and connectivity of natural features in an area, and the long-term ecological function and biodiversity of natural heritage systems, should be maintained, restored or, where possible, improved, recognizing linkages between and among natural heritage features and areas, surface water features and ground water features.

2.1.3 Development and site alteration shall not be permitted in:

1. significant habitat of endangered species and threatened species;
2. significant wetlands in Ecoregions 5E, 6E and 7E1; and
3. significant coastal wetlands.

Talking pictures settled permanently in Toronto in late 1928, but it was far from the first time Hogtown movie-goers were exposed to the concept that the flickers needn't be silent.

In November of 1924, four years before the Tivoli and Uptown Theatres were wired for all-talking pictures, those attending the premiere of Elinor Glyn's His Hour at Shea's Hippodrome were treated to short subjects from radio pioneer Lee de Forest's Phonofilm, a sound-on-film process.

D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation is one of the most racist films ever made -- a declaration not lost on Toronto audiences when it premiered at the  Royal Alexandra Theatre on September 20, 1915.

The film, a revisionist account of the American Civil War, the Reconstruction period that followed and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan -- all of which vilified the African-American population -- played at Bell Lightbox earlier this week as part of their Essential Cinema programme.