Yonge Street in the 1970'S

Yonge Street in the 1970's

609 Yonge Street in 1970.

2010.

Yonge Street in the 1970's

Another great postcard from Chuckman's Collection of Yonge Street looking south from Elm in the 1970's before the big clean up.
From Wikipedia:

1977 Yonge Street clean-up

During the spring and summer of 1977, Toronto's city and metro councils were under pressure to do something about the sex trade and sex shops that were housed in the area along Yonge street from Queen to Bloor streets following the death of the twelve year old shoe-shine boy, Emanuel Jaques. The crisis was more political than real, never-the-less, under pressure from Toronto mayor David Crombie, Police Chief Ackroyd had to plan and implement a neighbourhood sweep on the scale of the 1968 Yorkville sweep. Like in the Yorkville "crisis", Yonge street did not pose a major policing problem. The police were not raising a fuss for something to be done, it was the politicians, this time lead by Crombie. Another factor driving this sweep was economic, as the newly opened Eaton Centre did not want this 'riff-raff' near its business establishment. So, over the course of a few months, Ackroyd – following the political directives issued by city council and the provincial government – ordered his officers to step-up their patrols on this commercial strip and forced the closure of many shops and arrested prostitutes and their clients.

A documentary was made a few years ago about the murder of Emanuel Jaques.