Asked by a visitor what is the best way to see Greater Parkdale, I replied, on your back in an ambulance. I was serious, of course. At street level, transient franchise shopfronts bear no architectural relation to the older buildings they have been stuck on. But from a reclining position, only the unmodified upper storeys can be seen, yet nothing above the second or third (thus deleting most of the appalling highrises). The city thus retains something of its fine and fusty Edwardian provincial order. Prone in this way, one might drive for miles through repulsively glitzy shopping districts, without seeing what’s been added since the Great War.
David Warren, “The scandal of interiors”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-01-25.
