Photographer’s 1970s Pictures of Toronto Capture a Changing City

Oct 22, 2026

A person with long dark hair lies resting on a concrete ledge next to a trash bin while a man in a suit walks past in the background. — Photos by Brian Condron.

More than half a century after they were captured on the streets of Toronto, photographer Brian Condron’s remarkable black-and-white photographs, most of them previously unpublished, are collected in a new book, Toronto in the Seventies: Photographs by Brian Condron.

Condron’s photography offers an intimate portrait of a city at a moment when its meatpacking and smoke-belching identity was quietly giving way to the hyper-diverse global metropolis it would become.

A group of people stand inside a subway car, with a woman in a striped coat looking toward the camera near the open doors.

Two men in suits stand on a sidewalk, both looking through binoculars, while a person walks in the background.

A view from the back seat of a streetcar looking out through two windows at a city street with cars and buildings.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Condron roamed “Toronto the Good” with a Leica camera, documenting everyday moments that most people rushed past. With curiosity, wit, and empathy, he snapped office workers, children, subway commuters, people having lunch, and total strangers experiencing fleeting moments of connection.

Thousands of Condron’s negatives languished for decades, surviving moves in Toronto from house to house, two dusty home renovations, and a six-week overseas voyage in a shipping container to Australia. A lifetime after they were first snapped, Condron recently returned to these photographs to discover a visual record of a population in flux: an era when social change, increased immigration, and gender politics sent the booming city hurtling toward the future.

An elderly man in a dark coat and fedora sits on a subway train holding a shopping bag, positioned in front of a poster of a man's profile.

A person with a large afro and a leather jacket stands on a sidewalk, shouting and gesturing with both middle fingers, while another person stands nearby smiling.

A woman in a "Pleasure Land" shirt and a man with a cigarette walk along a busy city sidewalk past parked cars and storefronts.

Featuring a foreword by acclaimed Toronto writer and musician Dave Bidini, Toronto in the Seventies is a time capsule that reveals the complexity and spirit of regular Torontonians in the midst of unprecedented urban transformation.

A man in a studded vest and sunglasses walks a small black puppy on a leash down a city sidewalk past several men in suits.

A man in a suit carrying a briefcase and smoking a pipe walks past a woman on a city street.

A person with dark hair sits in the passenger seat of a car, smoking a cigarette, with a flame decal visible on the door.

The rear view of a Toronto Transit Commission streetcar, numbered 4426, shows four passengers sitting inside, with city storefronts and street signs visible in the background.

Brian Condron was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1949. He picked up a camera at the age of eighteen after seeing a touring National Film Board exhibition, Call Them Canadians. From that time on, photography has been his passion and his professional life.

After studying the photographic arts at Sheridan College and York University, Condron pursued an interest in black-and-white social landscape photography, exhibiting and later working as a newspaper and magazine photographer, including with The Financial Post.

In 1990, Condron immigrated to Australia, where he worked for The Australian newspaper and BRW magazine. These days, Brian Condron lives just outside Brisbane with Desley, his wife. He continues taking pictures and has recently returned to exhibiting.

Toronto in the Seventies: Photographs by Brian Condron (Figure 1 Publishing) is priced at $35 / $40 CAD.

Image creditsPhotographs by Brian Condron

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