[OBSCURA] The Madonna of College Street

[rfmcdonald]

The Madonna of College Street a photo by sevres-babylone on Flickr.

Part of the fun of this photo comes from the sandwiching of layers of neighbourhood and pop-cultural identities.

sevres-babylone's photograph--taken by "the traffic lights at Borden; right near the Bellevue Ave fire station, a couple of blocks east of Bathurst", right about here--was taken in Little Italy, the erstwhile heart and historic nucleus of Toronto's Italian Canadian community. The Madonna? An iconic element of the Roman Catholicism of the southern Italians who settled in this neighbourhood after the Second World War, a badge of identity. Back in the 1950s, one only would have hoped that College Street would have found a Madonna.

Now? College Street, no longer much of a Little Italy, is increasingly becoming another club district. Madonna? She's a pop star of the past, this image on a torn placard taken from the cover of her 1986 album True Blue.

College Street still has its Madonna; but what a College Street, and what a Madonna.