In the early 1950s Ontario was a very different place than it is today. Canada was emerging from the effects of the Second World War. The baby boom was gathering momentum and that was motivating a building boom.

We played host to a new Queen at the same time the world was growing nervous with the onset of the cold war and the new fear of nuclear weapons. The space race was about to begin, as was the cultural revolution of the sixties. Major events were shaping and changing the province in dramatic and far-reaching ways: Hurricane Hazel; the Avro Arrow; the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the construction of highway 401, were some of the big events that made news at the time.

• In-patient treatment is believed to be the only way to manage tuberculosis throughout the first half of the 20th Century and the age of sanatoria in Canada peaks with the 19,000 patient beds, up from 9,000 in 1938.

• Through the fall and winter of 1953-54, large bottles of the poliovirus are sent in station wagons from Toronto to drug companies in Detroit and Indianapolis to help in the production of vaccine to help control the Canadian epidemic.

• James Watson and Francis Crick discover the three-dimensional structure of DNA: a double helix.

• New Zealander Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay are the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

• Joseph Stalin Dies. It is announced: "The heart of the comrade-in-arms and continuer of genius of Lenin's cause, of the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, has ceased to beat."

• On June 19 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's, who had been found guilty of relaying U.S. military secrets to the Soviets, were executed. They were the first U.S. civilians to be sentenced to death for espionage.