Jerome Markson, a memorable mentor of modern architecture

After two decades of writing for the Globe’s real estate section, it’s time I admit something: I never studied architecture. Not formally, anyway. I am an art school kid – Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts – who abandoned fine art for English lit at university. But I was always at the library, borrowing books on Toronto architecture. It’s how I was able to point out the TD Centre to teenage friends and say: “Famous German architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, did that.”

By my early 20s, I had educated myself about our homegrown architects. I’d started with Don Mills’ Macklin Hancock (an urban planner) and Douglas Lee. And then: John C. Parkin, Peter Dickinson, Eberhard Zeidler, Irving Grossman, Raymond Moriyama and Jerome Markson.