I remember a few years ago some guy was selling NOS crimefighters on Kijiji for extra cheap. In the description I specifically remember the guy saying he bought them from Princess Auto at one point which I thought was bizzare, but this confirms it. I wish they did big stuff like this nowadays!

I'm probably gonna really break some rules here, but I'm still in the market for one of these! If anyone has a bowl they'd be willing to sell, please let me know. Thanks!

(I bumped this post to avoid making another with the exact same purpose...)

Social media..? No thanks, this site is about as social as I get 

Can't blame you there.
The only social-media site I use is YouTube (I know 'google' but there are no real alternatives)
I pretty much avoid FB & Twitter.
I don't do Amazon.
And Micro$oft, I flat-out gave a network block to not only the main *.microsoft.com domain, but all the others they own that I know of....

The very worst social-media-thing though IMO is TikTok.

Removed a 500w floodlight from the back of the house this evening (a 1xF32 fluorescent was also removed on the weekend.)

I do like HPS, although I guess it could be nostalgia for me too. I have always liked the warm orange glow, seeing HPS NEMA security lights in yards, or cobra heads on roads. Since growing up that's what I remember the most. I don't remember MV being around much by then, and it was mostly relegated to applications such as yard blasters by then. So MV was around, but HPS was much more common.

HPS is still actually quite common in my area for roadway lighting. I'd say it's 60-40 with HPS vs LED. MV is around but still mostly residential yard blaster type lighting or on some commercial buildings, and a few roadway lights. MH is still fairly common on buildings and for parking lots.

So I was looking through some vintage Princess Auto catalogues and found out that Princess Auto sold GE 175w MV Crimefighters that were government surplus from 1976 to 1992.

Fall 1976 (page 27)
Spring 1985 (page 88)
Fall 1992 (page 104)

I guess this explains why there are GE Crimefighters scattered around Canada on private properties. Princess Auto is odd store, I guess it's like a combination of Harbor Freight and a surplus retailer. They must have have a ton of these Crimefighters to have sold them for so many years too.

In a catalogue from 1972, they sold 100w and 400w clamshells along with a 300w incandescent mini gumball that looks like a Powerlite model.

Link (page 85) 

Yep, that looks like a Thorn Alpha 4? There also used to be one at Hwy 9 and Mount Hope Road which I took a pic of a long time ago. Back in 2015 I tried to go after these two fixtures, but the lady on the phone (who was really helpful) said they had no idea who owned the poles?  Eventually in 2018 or so, the one on Mount Hope Road was replaced with a Cooper HPS fixture. Kinda ticked me off too, I hate seeing SOX fixtures being scrapped when I knew I could've had (or did have) a chance at saving them. I now treat all SOX sightings as an immediate "GET ON THEIR ASS NOW" calling routine.

Some nice shots of them on the B-roll in that CBC video but I wonder if anymore videos of a nighttime drive of them exist.

As for that last remaining SOX fixture on the Gardiner. I believe Priestly Demoltion handled the demolition of that ramp so I wonder if any of the luminaires ended up at their salvage yard up in northern Vaughan.

Yeah, I noticed the SOX at the former Philips HQ at 601 Milner but they got LEDized before I managed to snap a picture of them. There's also a random SOX 180 light in Caledon. I think it's a Thorn model which was used as spot replacements on parts of the Gardiner. 

Unfortunately it seems like that "Night Walk" video is the only video of them in existence.

Thankfully those aren't the only videos of them in existence, doing some deep searching on YouTube eventually yields some cool daytime footage of the SOX lanterns. However finding other footage of a drive at night is nearly impossible.
Closest I could find was this CBC news report on when they considered shutting them off... it has some really neat B-Roll footage: https://www.cbc.ca/archives/toronto-highway-lights-1.5888202

Also I found out about that last standing SOX fixture on the Gardiner a couple months ago, and I was gonna have a try at saving it. However when I did eventually decide to research it a but more last week, I realized they JUST demolished the F*****G ramp. Talk about bad timing haha!

I also knew about the old SOX fixtures at 601 Milner Avenue in Scarborough (old Philips electronics headquarters) for a long time, and even went to see them at night at one point. They were the same as the Gardiner fixtures, and were in the process of replacing them with LED. They eventually did change them all out with LED in 2019 (which pissed me off) but we had already moved across Canada, therefore being unable to know/do anything.

Yeah, I was just going to comment that I got a very strong old school Gardiner vibe from that first video. Those SOX lights there used to fascinate me as a kid. Unfortunately it seems like that "Night Walk" video is the only video of them in existence. Unfortunately video technology in the 1980s was rather primitive in terms of resolution compared to today.

Even driving down the modern Gardiner with it's HPS lighting has a nice nighttime vibe to it. Fortunately they haven't LEDized the Gardiner yet.