Time Capsule For The Ages - The Ghost of Honest Ed

Bathurst and Bloor Underground. See You In 100 Years.

By Stephen Weir

A time capsule to mark the role that the Bathurst Bloor Annex Corridor has played in the history of Caribbean and African peoples in Toronto is soon going to be buried in the ground in a busy city construction site. 

“ This is another way that we as a community can mark our history,” explained Itah Sadu, the owner of the A Different Booklist.  “This area, around the intersection of Bathurst and Bloor, has a real history – here we can trace our peoples right back to the Underground Railroad!”

For now the time capsule sits in the front window of the Bathurst St bookstore and cultural space. And, as customers and the curious come inside, everyone is encouraged to sign small pieces of paper and place themselves inside equally small bottles and put it into the waiting plastic box time capsule.

The Different Booklist is a fitting place for the Time Capsule to be created. The store features books written about and for the diaspora. It has a large open space that is constantly in use for book launches, meetings and community events.

The time capsule will be buried early in the spring in a construction site across the street.  The developers of the land that once housed a strip of Caribbean and African businesses (and the Honest Ed department store) have agreed to bury the box before new buildings are erected.

“Drop by, put your name in a bottle,” Sadu invited this Caribbean Camera writer. “Who knows, maybe in a hundred years someone will open the capsule, take out a bottle and wonder who Stephen Weir was! “ So I did.