Toronto Gone – Toronto Stock Exchange, 1981

In the fall of 1981, I photographed the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) for a school project at Ryerson. I spent three or four mornings on a viewing platform that looked down on the trading floor, trying to capture the activity and mood of the place. I remember borrowing a 300mm lens from the school–the longest lens I have ever used. The focus was so critical and as the lighting was relatively dim, I had to push the film to get adequate depth of field. I was satisfied with the results and produced a slide show programmed with a Wollensak, using the Beatles’ “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” as a soundtrack.

Looking back at these images after almost forty years, they look like relics of a different era. There are big clunky monitors, rotary phones, and paper slips strewn everywhere. There is almost a complete absence of women (they are still a minority, making up an estimated 10 to 15 percent of traders). A few women are visible, however, changing numbers on the boards, but not doing any trading. Traders are buying and selling on the phone, as well as yelling and using hand signals–a beehive of activity.

The Toronto Stock Exchange was on Bay Street in those days, in the elegant art deco building it occupied for sixty years–1937 to 1997. It then moved to the Exchange Tower on King Street, and is now the TSX. The trading floor has been replaced by an electronic trading system; gone are the men in suits, frantically yelling and gesturing. Most major exchanges in the world have also abandoned the “open outcry” method, except for the United States, where several exchanges (including the New York Mercantile Exchange and New York Stock Exchange) remain old-school.

Stephen Simpson in Investopedia talks about the pros and cons of open outcry trading. “Certainly computers are faster, cheaper, more efficient and less error-prone with routine trades – though the error rate in open outcry trading is surprisingly low. What’s more, computers are at least theoretically better for regulators in creating data trails that can be followed when there are suspicions of illegal activity. That said, electronic trading is not perfect and open outcry has some unique features. Because of the human element, traders who can “read” people may be at an advantage when it comes to picking up non-verbal cues on the motives and intentions of counter-parties. Perhaps analogous to the world of poker, there are some players who thrive as much on reading the players as playing the odds – and electronic trading removes those signals from the equation.“

The series “Toronto Gone” puts a focus on things that have disappeared–buildings, businesses, parking lots, cars, people that used to be a part of the city in the 1980s and 1990s prior to the condo boom, and before the widespread use of computers and cell phones.

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