WHEN KIDS WERE WILD
Wilkins Avenue, Corktown, Toronto, 1968
‘When Kids Were Wild’
Street Shots of Children in Toronto’s Cabbagetown in the Mid 1960s, with others from Camp Fundale, Jackson’s Point, and the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)
Jackson’s Point, Ontario, 1968
Cabbagetown, 1968
Canadian National Exhibition, 1968
Wilkins Avenue, Corktown, Toronto, 1968
In 1965 Shelly walked into to the National Film Board with an envelope of his photographs, and left with another envelope containing an assignment: to photograph children and youth in Toronto, the city in which he grew up.
He went on to be the photographer for the Ontario Department of Education Youth Branch.
The photos were never published and the lost negatives were finally contacted and printed in 2003-2004.
Shelly’s June 2019 show at the Toronto Jewish Community Centre (JCC) featured the first public exhibition of these historic photographs… of ‘When Kids Were Wild.’
To contrast those images, the show featured photographs taken in the summer of 1966 when Shelly revisited his childhood day camp, Camp Fundale, at the North Branch of the JCC.
In Shelly’s words, “It’s sweet to look back at all the kids, poor and not so poor, waifs and elegant young gallants with their girlfriends. It is touching to see the innocence and openness of the youth of those days. Not a cell phone in sight…”