¢ Boom Times Cabaret, Heart of the Junction Talk Show
¢ Legends of the Junction Walking Tours
¢ West Toronto Junction Historical Society Tent
¢ Historic Games
¢ "Minerva Reid: First Lady of Medicine" comic book
¢ Fire Station #423 Display
¢ Vintage Fire and Police Vehicles
¢ Historic Prints
¢ Vintage Costumes for Photography

History as it should be lived! The Boom Times Cabaret, Heart of the Junction Talk Show is a unique mix of historical re-enactment, community involvement and contemporary entertainment that has been growing over the course of the Centennial Year and culminates at the 2008 Junction Arts Festival. The Cabaret will be held over two days with six- 20-minute performances, from September 6-7, 2008 at the High Park Avenue "Historic City".

Historical characters from the Junction's original Boom Times return to help celebrate the birth of the city in personal anecdote, monologue, sketch and song and welcome the community from the new Boom Times. Neil Ross is Junction Journalist A.B. Rice (1858-1950) reborn to host the affair welcoming great storytellers from Junction history and the current 'hood. Dr. Minerva Reid and the Boom Times Band led by vocalist/composer Samantha Martin take the audience back to an earlier roots sound with original songs and recitations including Every Time I Hear the Bell I Feel the Spirit, Last Call (Before the Junction Goes Dry) and the soaring blue anthem Junction Bound.

Each performance also features Special Historical Guests/Actors, including: the First Mayors of the Junction, Legendary School Principal Miss Mary Cherry, former North West Mountie, Chief of Police Josiah Royce, Abraham Tanenbaum, founder of the Junction synagogue who built a fortune in the Junction, and Mary Brown, a local storekeeper returned to reveal the Junction's Underground Railway connection. Prominent performers will be WTJHS president Gib Goodfellow as Junction Mayor GW Clendenan, Junction historian Madeleine McDowell as Elizabeth McCallum, and Councillor Bill Saundercook as the first and last Mayor or "Junction City" W.A. Baird.

LEGENDS OF THE JUNCTION WALKING TOURS
The West Toronto Junction Historical Society invites you to experience "Junction City" through the eyes of the men and women who built it. A historical walking tour will leave the WTJHS tent at Historic City and proceed back in time to rendezvous with historical characters along the route who will give participants a first hand account of their lives and times in the thriving railway town. An unprecedented opportunity to speak directly to history and get to know characters one would normally only meet in books. Tours leave Sat, Sept. 6 at 11:30, 3:30 and 5:00 pm and Sunday, Sept. 7 at 11:30 and 3:30 pm.

WTJHS will also be offering Historic Games for children and period costumes for photos at Historic City. Historic Games will be introduced by historical characters legendary School Principal Mary Cherry (Kristen Buckley), who unlocked the Junction School playgrounds for after school and the Junction's first midwife Edith Shore Holroyd (Cara Reeves). Prizes awarded at Historic Games will include a lavishly told 'Minerva Reid, First Lady of Medicine' comic by Junction artist Agata Plocinski, a winner in the Local Option Schools Contest.

Representatives of Fire Station #423 will regale listeners with stories of the first Junction firemen who were also expected to wrangle escaped cattle from the Union Stockyards and of their daring exploits as the first fire station from outside the city of Toronto to respond to the Great Toronto Fire of 1904. The display features fascinating artefacts including a fire truck from the Junction's past parked next to a vintage police car.

Neil Ross, host of Boom Times Cabaret, Heart of the Junction Talk Show and Chair of the WTJHS Centennial Committee says that "Historic City is a true merging of story and place. We are situated under the eaves of old Avenue Hotel that closed the night 10, 000 men surged into the Junction for Last Call. Immediately behind us runs the track of the old Carlton Race Course where they held the first Queen's Plate. All around us are characters from the Junction's Boom Times, who have returned through the miracle of Quantum Metaphysics to speak directly to the Junction of today. This is a unique, interactive, historical, musical comic dialogue which may welll give us a rollicking insight into our future."

BOOM TIMES CABARET, HEART OF THE JUNCTION TALK SHOW
Historic City 344 High Park Avenue and Dundas Street West 1:00 p.m. 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Sat. & Sun. Sept.6 & 7th.
Sponsored by Mariposa County Artist, Michael Reeves, Mr. Joey Tanenbaum, Tim and Sue's No Frills, Merrilees Railroad Supply Company, Canadian Rogers Eastern, Mr. Scott Rogers, Martin's the Flower People, Secured Courier, Rue Morgue, Victoria Lofts, Cornerstone Antiques, Martino Brothers, the Junction Forum for Art and Culture and the Institute of Canadian Popular Culture.

LEGENDS OF THE JUNCTION WALKING TOURS 11:30 a.m. 3:30 p.m. 5:30 p.m. Saturday Sepember.6th.
11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sunday September 7th.
Sponsored by Toronto Community News and the Toronto Transist Commission.