[URBAN NOTE] "Yorkdale’s 50th anniversary a reason to celebrate — and remember"

[rfmcdonald]

In today's Toronto Star, fashion journalist Jeanne Beker celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Yorkdale Shopping Centre, one of the largest malls in Canada and at the time one of the most forward-thinking. Jeanne Beker has fond memories of her youth.

For the record, Yorkdale is also aging and in need of revitalization. On this theme, see also my 2005 reflection on Yorkdale as an arcology and my 2009 imagining of Yorkdale as an artifact of a future that didn't quite happen.

With the first section of the Spadina Expressway construction underway just a couple of minutes from my house, Yorkdale became our new shopping mecca, and while my mom went for groceries at the big “jet-age” Dominion store, (which boasted an underground conveyor belt that carried your purchases to a pick-up station in the southwest parking lot) I’d window shop, exhilarated by all the sparkling new stores and thrilled that, finally, Eaton’s and Simpson’s — those two downtown institutions — were both practically in my own backyard.

Then there was the fact that Yorkdale actually housed cinemas! Famous Players’ Yorkdale Theatres was the first dual auditorium facility of its kind, and the first cinema in Canada to be located in a shopping centre. Heading out to Yorkdale in our 1959 Chrysler Imperial for a movie and shopping on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon brought new meaning to weekends, and provided welcome new oomph to my previously drab suburban world.

In many ways, Yorkdale helped define the ’60s for me, and I had at least a few “coming-of-age” experiences there. Watching Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965, the year I officially became a teenager, felt like a rite of passage. And then there was the afternoon I went shopping for my first bra, at a store called Young Canada. The coveted undergarment was dubbed a “training bra,” and was comprised of a flat band of jersey in the front, attached to those very grown-up bra straps I yearned to show off under my white shirts. After the life-changing purchase, I cruised through the glorious corridors of Yorkdale, proudly clutching my Young Canada bag, and feeling as though I’d finally arrived.

Within a couple of years, my girlfriends and I were organizing group outings to the shopping centre, thanks to the Dufferin bus. If we weren’t taking in a movie, or ordering “Kishka à la Tony”— described on the menu as “stuffed derma with brown gravy” and priced at 45 cents — at the Noshery Encore restaurant, the lure of all the costume jewelry and cosmetic counters at our beloved Yorkdale provided us with hours of entertainment.