Filth and Shoeshine: The Toronto Punk Repository

The Filth and Shoeshine Repository brings together rare and under-documented artifacts from Toronto’s early punk rock scene, centering on its raw response to urban violence, youth alienation, and queer and feminist resistance. The collection centres around the 1978 single Shoeshine Boy/Killer Bees by The Curse, exploring the sonic and visual landscape shaped by the city’s shifting streets, subcultures, and politics. The record itself was a visceral response to the brutal murder of Emanuel Jaques. This tragedy exposed deep social antagonisms in downtown Toronto.

This exhibit is deeply rooted in geography, visualizing how each artifact relates to specific locations across the city: Yonge Street, where Emanuel Jaques was murdered; Club David’s, a hybrid punk and queer space where The Curse performed; and other ephemeral venues that briefly hosted this radical musical resistance. These spatial connections help illuminate the cultural, political, and emotional geographies of Toronto’s punk underground.

The Filth and Shoeshine Repository seeks not only to preserve music history, but a cultural testimony to the city’s hidden topographies of resistance, where punk claimed space for the marginalized and excluded youth, while amplifying their voices to an ear-shattering roar.