Workers Monument at Simcoe Park

Neighbourhood: Financial District · Address: Simcoe Park, 200 Simcoe St, Toronto, ON · Hours: Always open · Price Range: Free

Why Visit

The Workers Monument is one of Toronto's most emotionally direct public artworks — a bronze sculpture of a worker falling from a scaffold, commemorating thousands of workplace deaths and injuries, installed in the heart of the Financial District as a deliberate challenge to the business community.

What Makes It Unique

The combination of artistic quality, political courage, and strategic placement makes this one of the most effective public monuments in Toronto. The monument does not comfort or console — it confronts.

Typewriter King feels less like a store and more like the inside of someone’s beautifully overstuffed brain. You step in from the Yonge Street area and the city noise drops off fast, replaced by the soft clatter of keys being tested, the metallic ping of a carriage return, and the quiet, industrial little sounds that make you suddenly aware of how alive old machines can feel. The space is cramped in the way places become cramped when every square inch is being put to work. Shelves, counters, window ledges, corners, and the odd sliver of floor space are all stacked with typewriters in every colour, shape, and level of dignity: black office standards, sleek Hermes portables, green-and-cream Olivettis, dependable Royals, battered Remingtons, and plenty you’d only know if you’ve spent too much time comparing typefaces and ribbon spools. It’s messy, but it’s the good kind of messy — the kind that tells you people are actually using the place, not just photographing it.

The first thing that hits you, after the sheer number of machines, is that this isn’t a nostalgia shop built around a mood board. It’s a real repair shop. The owner has been fixing typewriters since 1968, and that fact changes everything about how the place feels. Some machines are polished and ready for a new home. Some are sitting open on the bench mid-revival, with their covers off and their insides exposed like they’re in the middle of a very patient surgery. There are parts trays, tools, ribbon spools, cases, manuals, and the faint smell of oil and old metal. If you ask a question, you usually get a straight answer, not a sales pitch. Which models are best for daily writing? Which ones hold alignment? Which brands are harder to service now? Why does one key stick while another rings out clean? He knows this stuff the way a mechanic knows engines, and he’s happy to talk about it if you’re genuinely interested.

A lot of people wander in without really planning to buy anything, and honestly that’s part of the fun. Students, writers, collectors, design people, parents showing their kids what a keyboard used to look like, and random passersby all end up lingering longer than they expected. You’ll see someone test a portable on the counter, pecking out a few lines with that careful, slightly awkward concentration that comes from using a machine for the first time. You’ll see another person arrive with a family typewriter wrapped in an old towel, hoping it can be brought back to life. Sometimes there’s a little crowd around the workbench, all watching a machine get tuned up or trying to guess whether a particular model is worth saving. It’s the sort of place where conversations start because somebody notices a rare keyboard layout or an especially clean case, and then suddenly you’re all talking about ribbon types and carriage tension like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

If you’re looking to buy, the range can be surprisingly approachable. Machines start around $50, which feels pretty reasonable once you see how much care has gone into some of them. That’s one of the things that makes this place different from the more polished vintage shops that sell “typewriter-inspired” décor and call it a day. Here, the machines are the whole point, and they’re treated like working objects, not props. You can actually ask whether something is good for real writing or just nice to look at, and that matters a lot more than whether the paint is pretty. If you want a souvenir but don’t want to commit to hauling home a whole machine, the owner will type a custom message for free, which is exactly the kind of small, odd, generous detail that makes a place stick in your memory. It’s charming, a little old-fashioned, and somehow perfect for a shop like this.

The best way to go is on a weekday, and preferably earlier in the day if you can swing it. That’s when the place feels most open for conversation, and you’re less likely to be waiting around while someone else spends twenty minutes deciding between two similar portables. Weekends can get busy in that slow, stop-and-start way that makes a cramped shop even more cramped. There’s only so much room to stand, and if three people are all trying to test machines at once, you’ll feel it. A weekday visit gives you more space to look closely, ask questions, and actually hear the differences between models when they’re being typed on. If you’re serious about buying, bring patience. You may want to try several machines before you settle, and it helps to know that not every typewriter is suited to every writer. Some have a lighter touch, some feel heavier and more deliberate, and some are better if you’re the kind of person who wants to sit down and write pages at a stretch. The owner can help you sort that out, but you’ll get more out of the visit if you’re willing to linger.

The neighbourhood around Yonge and Church-Wellesley also adds to the experience in a way that’s easy to miss if you’re rushing past on the way somewhere else. This part of downtown is busy, mixed-use, and always in motion, with office workers, shoppers, residents, and people drifting through between errands. Step into Typewriter King and it feels like the pace shifts immediately. It’s a smaller, more intimate kind of Toronto than the city outside, one built on persistence and repetition rather than trendiness. You can stop in before or after grabbing coffee nearby, or pair it with a walk through Church-Wellesley if you’re making a little afternoon of it. The shop fits the area in that slightly defiant way older specialist businesses sometimes do: it’s stubborn, useful, and not trying to be cute. In a city where so many storefronts get remade every few years, that alone makes it worth paying attention to.

What really sets Typewriter King apart from other places is that it still has an actual purpose beyond selling a mood. A lot of retro spaces trade on memory, but this one trades on skill. The repair knowledge is the product as much as the machines are, and you feel that the second you watch someone diagnose a problem with a typebar or explain why a certain model has become difficult to source parts for. The shop doesn’t pretend every old typewriter is a treasure. Some are better than others, some need work, and some are there because they’ve earned their keep and are ready to keep going. That honesty is refreshing. You’re not being sold a fantasy version of the past; you’re being shown the real, mechanical, slightly fussy thing. For writers, that’s part of the appeal. For collectors, it’s a chance to talk to somebody who actually knows the field. For everybody else, it’s just deeply satisfying to see old objects being treated like tools instead of relics.

If you do go, give yourself more time than you think you need. The shop rewards looking closely. There are hundreds of machines, and every visit seems to reveal something you missed the last time: a rare layout, an unusually pristine case, a bright red portable tucked behind a heavier office model, a machine with an especially nice touch, or one that’s been repaired just enough to remind you how durable these things can be. Don’t be shy about asking what’s been serviced, what’s ready, and what still needs attention. If you’re planning to take one home, ask about ribbons, cases, and whether the machine has been tested recently. And if you’re only browsing, that’s fine too. Plenty of people leave with nothing more than a free typed message, ink-smudged fingers, and a much stronger appreciation for the fact that some corners of Toronto still run on expertise, patience, and a refusal to let useful old things disappear.