In other words, Bell defeats the purpose of surname suppression by mixing in every variant of a surname in strict, mindless alphabetical order. Then the Joneses start up again with Jones, Barbara keep looking and you eventually hit Jones, Brian. The next listing you see, unaccountably, is Jones-Ball, N. You follow all the As and Bs down the Jones column until you hit Jones, B.W. It’s much more sensible, but good sense is not what prompted Bell to use “surname suppression”: Without it, a Bell PR person told me, the Toronto White Pages might have ballooned into a two-volume doorstop.īut surname suppression is another example of Bell’s uncanny ability to blow a good idea. Instead, the first instance of a surname is shown (in capitals), with all the given names associated with that surname in an indented list below (in upper- and lowercase). At any rate, the 1995 Toronto White Pages incorporate a New York-style change: Surnames are not repeated endlessly down columns. I would have to funnel my questions through a PR apparatchik who knows nothing about typography. Once the precept of this story sank in with the Bell crowd, I had to contend with the fact that Bell’s phone-book designers do not talk to the media. Any logo that requires explanation is a failure, and what’s it doing on the cover of the phone book? Bell is, after all, a widely despised monopoly, so why stuff its logo in our faces every time we look up a number? Just as an example, this year’s hoplessly misguided, self-aggrandizing cover features the new New Age-y Bell logo and a wordy bilingual description of what the logo means. Over and over again, as I telephoned through the vast labyrinth that is Bell and its Yellow Pages subsidiary Tele-Direct, whenever I stated that I was researching a story on the graphic design of the White Pages I was invariably asked, “You mean the covers?” Bell minions seemed unable to understand that the inside pages of a phone book have to be designed to them, only the covers matter, and only then as marketing vehicles. The first obstacle in discussing the graphic design of the White Pages is getting that concept into the heads of Bell nabobs. Indeed, Bell’s new Toronto White Pages offer a lesson in how an ill-conceived set of design “improvements” can make a telephone book illogical and difficult to use. ![]() Since nearly everyone uses it – except for the impatient, who spring for directory assistance, and some disabled people – phone books need to be taken more seriously as graphic-design statements. We’ve all heard the joke that runs along the lines of “Ooh! That Denzel Washington! He’s so dreamy I’d pay to watch him read the phone book!” Graphic designers – and their clients – abet that reputation: Only expensive, “important” books are considered worthy of good design.īut in a country where 99% of households have a telephone, the everyday White Pages are the most widely-distributed books in the land. In conventional wisdom, the phone book is a quintessential symbol of boredom. You can try looking up numbers at Canada411. ![]() ![]() The Toronto City Directory 1884.You have not found the searchable telephone directory for the city of Toronto, obviously. You can use the intersecting streets (here in italics) to find your property, even if the street numbers have changed since the year the directory was published. Later directories list the head of household’s occupation as well. This directory entry shows only the “head of household” (usually male) at an address, rather than all members of a family. This entry illustrates the complications that arise with common names, as well as an intriguing number of occupations held by women. Mary Brown, widow of Thomas, owned a house (“h”) on St. For example, Lotty Brown, a paper maker, was a boarder at 131 Jarvis Street. This directory entry reveals details about Toronto citizens’ lives. Beginning in 1930, suburban areas are part of the main listings.Īfter 1983, the directories were published in separate “central,” “east,” and “west” volumes, though not every volume was published in every year. Starting in 1873, outlying “suburban” (now urban) areas, such as Parkdale, are listed in appendices. The earliest directories contain information on only the original City of Toronto.Abbreviations used in the directories are explained in an index near the front. ![]()
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