A large sign advertising the long-gone Toronto Telegram newspaper on a shut Long Branch convenience store is garnering attention these days.
The desirable sign at Thomas Variety & Confectionary Store, at 3581 Lake Shore Blvd. W., near Long Branch Ave., has caught the eye of old Toronto newspaper lovers in the community.
The Toronto Evening Telegram was a conservative, broadsheet afternoon newspaper published for almost 100 years from 1876 to 1971. It had a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party at the federal and the provincial levels.

The paper competed with The Toronto Star, which supported the Liberal Party of Ontario. The Telegram strongly supported Canada’s connection with the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Empire.
The newspaper was the voice of working-class, conservative Protestant Orange Toronto. It was located on Melinda Street, near King and Bay Sts. John R. Robinson was editor-in-chief until he died in 1928.
The battle for daily newspaper readership then was fierce and they employed dozens of newsboys to hawk the publications on city streets for five cents a copy.
The Tely, as it was dubbed, gained notoriety for scuttling away by ambulance South Etobicoke swimmer Marilyn Bell after her 1954 historic Lake Ontario 26-mile swim to a downtown hotel so she could not be interviewed by The Star and rival dailies.

Former Toronto Star, Tely and Toronto Sun reporter Cal Millar joined The Telegram in 1967.
” … it was the tail end of the newspaper war, the business was still highly competitive, ” Millar told the South Etobicoke News. “You were expected to have a better story than the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail with exclusive material that only readers of the Tely would see in print. ”
He recalled reporters were expected to beat the opposition to the scene of news events and garner as much information as possible before the Tely’s deadline.
The paper in its heyday had bureaus across Canada and abroad in Moscow, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, London and Paris.
A day after The Tely sadly shut down, on November 1, 1971, some former Tely staffers led by Doug Creighton, Peter Worthington and Don Hunt introduced The Toronto Sun, a tabloid that was heavy on local crime news and its use of photos. It was a success and is still in publication today.