Donald Jones' walking tours of Toronto have drawn crowds of up to 5000 at a time. His 'Historic Toronto' column in the Star has proved one of the city's most widely read newspaper features. Now for the first time he has gathered together some of his personal favourites – stories of triumph and treachery, the celebrated and the notorious. The result is a richly entertaining collage of amazing and amusing tales of the city and its people.

Here we learn that the first airmail plane in Canada landed in Toronto so loaded with liquor it could barely fly. We find out how a forgery by John Strachan brought tens of thousands of immigrants to the city. Jones recounts the visits to Toronto by great writers, including Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens, and tells of Torontonians who made international names for themselves, like Bea Lillie and Elizabeth Arden.

Old mysteries still unsolved are reconsidered: Was the founder of Upper Canada College the real hero of the battle of Waterloo? How did Prince George, remembered in the name of the Princes' Gates, really die? Did Toronto's Captain Roy Brown in fact kill the Red Baron during 'the most controversial 60 seconds in the history of aerial warfare'?

At the heart of his stories are people. Some of their names have been forgotten and deserve to be remembered: Dr. Anderson Abbott, Canada's first black doctor, who was greatly admired by Lincoln; Margaret Saunders, whose book Beautiful Joe has sold 7 million copies to date; and Ernest Jones, who helped Freud escape from Austria and the Gestapo.

Old Toronto comes vividly to life in these tales. For the hundreds of thousands of Star readers who love Donald Jones' columns, here is a collection of the best. And for those who have yet to discover the delights of his perspective on the city, Fifty Tales of Toronto provides a marvellous introduction to its history.

Donald Jones (1924-1999) was a Star columnist and historian. He wrote nearly 1000 stories of Toronto in the Star over the years. For his articles and his walking tours he received a Toronto Historical Board Award of Merit and a Heritage Canada Award.

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