I was looking through my old scrapbooks of pictures I had, and I happened to have a few old ones of London and these were taken 13 1/2 years ago if you can believe it. My parents took these for me, because London, back in my young years, was my BIG city back then, times have changed, and so has London. I even have a couple of postcards as well. I scanned all of these.

The City Centre (notice different logos on the towers)
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663500.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663501.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663502.jpg

The Hilton was a RADISSON back in tha day. This hotel changed names four times, I think in the course of 25-30 years.
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663503.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663504.jpg

The Delta London Armouries was the Sheraton Armouries back then...
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663504.jpg

and folks, you're gonna get to see what One London Place looked like when it was under construction then!...
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663506.jpg

Talbot Centre
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663507.jpg

Looking from Dufferin Corporate Centre, when it was just built! You can see the dirt
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663509.jpg

Xerox Building on Richmond Street...
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663508.jpg

and this was London's OLD Via Rail Station/CN Depot Building, man was it HIDEOUS! Since then, it has been demolished and replaced with its current VIA station
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663510.jpg

and here's a couple of postcards for ya!

This one is from c. 1995, this is a brilliant shot of London's skyline from the east
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663511.jpg

and I like this one, Wellington/King near Galleria looking up at the City Centre in the early evening
http://www.pbase.com/jaybird287/image/41663512.jpg

man, a lot has changed since then, I'm almost glad I didn't take any pictures of how bad downtown London might have been back then, if it was bad. :)

Cool, thanks for sharing. Neat to see OLP under construction like that.

Thanks for the pics....that looks like London when I lived there last, about 1989.

awesome! i love seeing places that i've never been to before. keep the pictures coming ;)

when did the sign change from northern life to canada trust in the first picture

I believe it was in the mid-1980s when the signs on the City Centre building changed from Northern Life to Canada Trust, because the earliest I saw the Canada Trust was, I believe, in 1987.

Wow, awesome pictures Jaybird...the skyline looked so different with the different signage...and the Delta Armouries looks like a completely different building before the renovations. And the picture of OLP rising and without its glass is so very very cool. If you have any more old pics, please post them.

Ahh London...I lived there in 2000/2001 & 2002/2003 school years and I miss it! Such a good young and energetic atmosphere there. Gotta make it back one of these days for a visit.

Neat to see how the city has changed.
I've asked this question before but maybe someone has an answer..........are they ever going to do something with the huge lot on Richomd bewtween Queen & Dundas? Prime location it would be great to see something in there. Its like a gaping hole.

cool pics man, its nice to see that building u/c

Neat to see how the city has changed.
I've asked this question before but maybe someone has an answer..........are they ever going to do something with the huge lot on Richomd bewtween Queen & Dundas? Prime location it would be great to see something in there. Its like a gaping hole.

It's just a parking lot with a Sammy's Souvlaki stand there right now. I haven't heard anything about it, but I use that parking lot all the time when I go to Laser Quest, downtown, Knights games, or anything like that for fun times there.

jaybird, whats the pop of the city and the metro?

reminds me of ol' Rochester NY in a way.

Thanks Jaybird

I find it so odd that such a prime peice of real-estate at basically Rich/Dun is still empty. I think it would be ideal for an office tower or even retail/restaurants.

jaybird, whats the pop of the city and the metro?

reminds me of ol' Rochester NY in a way.

The metro is like 460,000, not sure about the city though.

The city is 355,000 I think.

whats going on with that lot where the ridout was, its a wery good location for an apartment building. knowing london it wont be condos

Actually, that's the exact reason why the ridout was torn down...new Condos are going up on that site.

ssiguy2 nailed the city population right on the head, it's 355,000, BuffCity,

and 450,000 in the metro area, which includes Strathroy to the west and St. Thomas to the south. BTW, you're not the only one who compares London to Rochester, NY, btw. I did a vs. thread in the city vs. city which is probably long gone now, and both cities do have similarities, with the only difference being Rochester's metro has more than double London's population. Both have rivers running through their downtowns, have considerably modern-looking skylines, both have good hockey teams this year (in AHL and OHL), both have similar sized arenas, and there are plenty of fun things to do in both cities. Both cities also have good universities, (don't know about Rochester, but London does), and both are in prime locations. :)

lucky, i know there was talk of future development, but has anything been proposed?

Very nice. Compared to this city, it was even bigger back then.

when was it bigger?, i dont think that london lost population ever, infact i think that it has been growing, fast and slow since it was incorporated as a city, and even before then

I think he means the metropolitan area, K-W recently surpassed London as the tenth largest metro area in Canada. London, indeed, has not lost population since it began its huge growth. I remember in like the 1980s, when the population was, I think, 280,000, now it's 350,000, and I don't think St. Thomas or Strathroy were included in the metro area then. K-W does have a considerable amount of advantages, though, which is why it is growing faster than London is right now. Although, still, K-W, does not feel like the tenth largest city metro area in Canada, or even look like it.

when was it bigger?, i dont think that london lost population ever, infact i think that it has been growing, fast and slow since it was incorporated as a city, and even before then

I think he meant that London (metro) was bigger than Kitchener (metro). Over the last few years, metro Kitchener has surpassed metro London in population. The Kitchener area is growing at about twice the rate of London.

I posted before reading your post Jaybird.

^ that's ok.

i see, he was reffering to "this city" as kitchener, my mistake.
how fast is StThomas growing? is it growing as part of the london metro? is it attracting more commuters or is it just experiencing growth as a seperate town based on more employment in the st thomas immediate area?

is dorchester growing at all? it is very close to east london, but east london is the only area not really growing in the whole city

^ that's ok.

It's funny that we nearly said exactly the same thing - and I hadn't read your post.

does anyone find it funny that nobody that has posted on this thread actually lives in london, except LUCKY24 who appears to live in toronto as well

Yeah, Lucky goes to Western as you may or may not know. Or WENT to Western, I think he is done now for the year. Blitz goes to school in London but is a Windsorite, a PROUD Windsorite.

St. Thomas is growing at a pretty good click right now for a city of over 30,000.
Population increased from 1996 to 2001 from 31,407 to 33,236, an increase of 5.8%. Currently, the population is now over 36,000, I think, so despite its dumpy downtown (which needs a lot of work), St. Thomas is growing pretty darn good right now. Now if only they could get most of that increase in population downtown. I think, however, a new 2,300 seat small arena is being built in downtown St. Thomas, which might help. But other than that, St. Thomas has succumbed to big box stuff. I think St. Thomas is both experiencing more London commuters and growth as a separate town. A lot of people I met from St. Thomas treat it that way, like a separate town on its own.

Don't know about Dorchester. Thames Centre's population (where Dorchester is in), is now 12,500, increase of 2.9%, and North Dorchester (where Dorchester used to be until amalgamation), increased to over 9,000, an increase of 4.7%. That is about as big as my muncipality I live in (West Perth) is.

thanks for the info, where did you find those numbers?

I think Strathroy/Caradoc is growing at a decent clip as well.

I found the St. Thomas numbers on this page:
http://www.citypopulation.de/Canada-Ontario.html

I found the Dorchester/Thames Centre populations on Statistics Canada:
http://www.statcan.ca/

btw, for the St. Thomas numbers, for a lot of the places there, the populations are probably inaccurate or not correct for some places and some say the population stayed the same, but I think that's because no info was updated for those places.

Strathroy's proper population is now over 13,000 and growing. And Strathroy-Caradoc's population is probably over 20,000 now. Those are from Statistics Canada. It was under 18,000 in 1996.

cool, thanks man ill take a look at that

* Lives 10 minutes from St. Thomas*

what do you mean? who lives there?

One London place would be the 50th tallest building if it were in Toronto... :eek2:

probably, but it works well as a trademark tower for london,