Toronto Ghost Signs

This sign is just down the street from Ryerson University. The company was in business at this location from the late 1920's to the early 1960's.

When I was a child, there were a whole bunch of firms that specialized in obscure things having to do with printing, photo manipulation and typesetting. They inevitably were housed in grimy old buildings, exteriors blackened by coal fumes. I picture crusty, cynical men in advanced middle age, cigarettes sticking out of the corners of their mouths, working away in dusty old rooms on arcane bits of machinery that required several years' apprenticeship to learn to operate.