In the mid-70s I was a frequent passenger on buses coming and going from what was then the Toronto Gray Coach Terminal. As a student and a fledgling photographer, I was drawn to this beautiful Art Deco building with its moody timeworn aura; to the people waiting for their own departures, for a loved one’s arrival … or just hanging out there for other mostly inscrutable reasons.
In an era long before cell phones made image-making so all-pervasive, I stayed in the station for hours at a time, taking pictures with my Leica M4. These photographs carry a lot about that moment in both the history of this city and of photography itself. In the years since, Toronto has evolved as a vital, often life-changing hub for arrivals and departures of an ever-increasingly diverse population. Now decommissioned, the bus terminal at Bay and Dundas will no longer be part of those stories.
At the time of these photos, I wrote in my journal that the people passing through the bus station – waiting, coming, going – were like notes in a perpetually performed musical composition. That music is ongoing, but in other cadences and idioms and in other places.
