The Toronto Historical Board Heritage Resource Centre at 205 Yonge Street is the main office of the THB and the site of ongoing lecture series, workshops and temporary exhibits that celebrate our past. The building is the restored 1906 Bank of Toronto designed by prominent Toronto architect E. J. Lennox. The Banking Hall, a large multi-purpose space, is available for private and public functions.

Mackenzie House, the 1859 home of William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. This gas-lit Victorian row-house was the last home of Mackenzie and his family and features a fully-functional, re-created 19th-century printshop, much like the one he used to publish his famous newspapers.

Spadina was home to four generations of the Austin family for more than 100 years. Today, this magnificent estate is filled with original material. Spadina's six-acre grounds also feature one of Toronto's finest Victorian and Edwardian gardens.

Colborne Lodge - a restored 1830s Regency-style cottage, was the home of John George Howard and his wife Jemima. Howard was a prominent architect, city surveyor, engineer and artist. The house features many original furnishings and there's an adjacent coach house and display gallery.

Founded in 1793, this restored fort is a designated National Historic Site and Canada's largest collection of original War of 1812 buildings. Highlights include gunpowder magazines, blockhouses, barracks, officers' quarters, costumed staff and period demonstrations. We're continuing on-going restoration of this historic site to ensure all the buildings survive well into the 21st century. Most recently Blockhouse Number 2 was covered with authentic whitewashed horizontal weatherboards which is both more in-keeping with it's earliest days.

In 1928, architect Murray Brown designed a classically proportioned building with an Art Deco interior for the Third Church of Christ Scientist. The octagonal foyer is specifically mentioned as a reason for including the building in the City of Toronto Inventory of Heritage Properties; most listings emphasize exterior features.

Since 1984, the City of Toronto has been seeking a new use for the former CPR John Street Roundhouse, located southeast of Sky Dome. Railway heritage advocates have lobbied for the creation of a railway museum to celebrate the importance of the railways to Toronto, and indeed, Canada. The City, however, has never expressed a willingness to use public money for that purpose.

Toronto is a modern city that is still very much in touch with its past. We have historic houses, buildings and whole neighbourhoods that were built more than a century ago. Heritage Toronto believes that the historic buildings around us provide continuity, insight into our communities, and an enriched quality of life. They help give Toronto a distinct identity.

Heritage Toronto maintains the City of Toronto Inventory of Heritage Properties - a list of some 4,000 buildings, structures and sites that, on the recommendation of Heritage Toronto, City Council has agreed should be recognized for their historic and/or architectural importance.

The main focus of the exhibition is the development of the stockyards and meat-packing district at St. Clair Avenue West and Keele Street, from incorporation in 1900, to the last auction in 1994, to redevelopment as a "big box" retail centre for the new millennium.

The Ontario Stock Yards was once the largest cattle auction centre in North America. Its adjacent meat packing industry was a major economic community, providing 10,000 jobs to the local economy. Today, the last traces of it are quickly being obliterated.

Historical photographs from local collections, including the City of Toronto Archives, are showcased, along with contemporary photographs by Vincenzo Pietropaolo, a former City of Toronto planner for the Stockyards District and currently an award-winning documentary photographer.

The exhibition is a millennium project of the West Toronto Junction Historical Society, co-curated by Diana Fancher and Vincenzo Pietropaolo, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts Millennium Fund, the McLean Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council, and the City of Toronto Economic Development, Culture and Tourism Department, among others.

Fittingly, this exhibition appears at the Market Gallery, located in the St. Lawrence Market. The St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood is where Toronto's food industry, including livestock, officially began in 1803. As early as 1877, the City of Toronto had grown to such an extent that bringing livestock to market at Front and Jarvis Streets was no longer practical. It wasn't until 1903, however, that the city's livestock market was established in the Junction.