Today, in Toronto, the
Grey Cup will be awarded for the 100th time, to the
CFL champion. What is it? What is the history? Who is playing? Why was someone riding a horse in the best hotel in town?
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posted by Homeboy Trouble
on Nov 25, 2012 -
95 comments
A woman wanting a mans-style hair-cut was
denied one by a Toronto barber because his religion forbids him from touching a woman he is not related to. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is expected to hear the issue if
mediation fails, as a
competing rights issue where there is a conflict between two individuals exercising their rights. The
OBA (warning, cheesy music autoplay) defends some Barbershops as a men's-only space tradition dating back to Ancient Greece, while others point to womens-only spaces like
spas that are allowed to continue to operate while discriminating against men.
posted by saucysault
on Nov 15, 2012 -
239 comments
The Caretaker of Dreams Wins The first time the rainbow mysteriously appeared on a tunnel visible from the Don Valley Parkway, the North York parks department painted over it.
But the guerrilla mural artist — known as “the Caretaker of Dreams” — persevered, eventually winning them over.
Now, 40 years later, the city has officially restored the psychedelic mural that has brought smiles to countless grim commutes — just as the artist intended.
posted by modernnomad
on Nov 3, 2012 -
25 comments
Our study, “Bicyclists’ Injuries and the Cycling Environment” (the BICE Study),
examined which route types are associated with higher and lower cycling injury risk. It examined the association between bicyclists’ injuries and the cycling environment (e.g., route types, intersection types). Taking place in Toronto and Vancouver between May 2008 and November 2009, the participants were adults who were injured while bicycling and who attended hospital emergency departments for treatment. Five hospitals recruited participants, 690 in total.
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posted by Blasdelb
on Oct 31, 2012 -
91 comments
Guerrilla art group hacks dozens of Astral info pillars. The city's new, redesigned info pillars that have been rapidly popping up around Toronto have made plenty of enemies: road users claim the large, flat sides block sight lines, pedestrians say their positioning blocks sidewalks, and many others are concerned about the large amount of space given over to advertisers. A team of artists,
cARTographyTO, hacked into roughly 35 of the signs' ad spaces over the weekend and installed maps, artwork and other visual displays.
posted by netbros
on Jul 10, 2012 -
50 comments
If you've ever wanted to know the history of each of Toronto's streetcar lines, how to identify different TTC subway trains, the chronology of Toronto's Christmas-painted buses, or really anything else you can think of (and more) about Toronto's transit system:
Transit Toronto is an unofficial but fantastically detailed site about the TTC.
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posted by andrewesque
on Jun 28, 2012 -
30 comments
From 1968 to 1975,
Rochdale College existed as co-op housing and as an experimental college, affiliated with the University of Toronto. Before it closed, it was the largest free university in North America.
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posted by frimble
on Jun 12, 2012 -
13 comments
Gary Webster is the general manager for the
Toronto Transit Commission. Last year, Mayor Rob Ford (
previously), after cancelling the Transit City light rail expansion in favour of a subway into Toronto's east end (
also previously), asked Webster to prepare a report on the viability of such a subway line. Webster did so, and gave his honest opinion, which was that the Sheppard subway was not economically viable. Ford
buried the report, and after the
Toronto Star discovered its existence, Ford then requested that Webster speak to City Council about the pros and cons of subways and light rail. Webster advised against subways as City Council
overruled Ford and reinstated a light rail-based transit plan. Ford's allies on the Toronto Transit Commission then petitioned for a
special meeting to fire Webster (despite severance clauses that could cost the city more than a million dollars).
They
voted 5-4 to fire Gary Webster this afternoon. (Torontoist's
liveblog of the meeting.)
posted by mightygodking
on Feb 21, 2012 -
89 comments
Through a Glass, Smartly Larry Sherk is one of the world's foremost brewerianists, a collector of beer stuff who over 40 years has amassed the country's second-largest private collection of beer labels (about 3,000), many of which date to the late 1800s.
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posted by modernnomad
on Feb 4, 2012 -
4 comments
FML Listings posts incredulous commentary about outrageously overpriced real estate listings in Toronto. Look at the run-down bungalows -- in
North York! -- listed for a million dollars and despair. Canada's
housing bubble, on full display. Via
Maclean's.
posted by mcwetboy
on Jan 30, 2012 -
74 comments
"In 1999, Toronto-based photographer
Jeff Harris began taking a photo of himself each day as an alternative to all those diaries he started but couldn't keep up. But what began as a self-portrait project has evolved considerably in its 13 years. Harris' photographs aren't the typical, self-portrait vanity projects that crop up on YouTube now and again. Instead, he used the project to inspire him in his daily life, to go out and do something that would get him off his couch....This story becomes even more incredible as it progresses, but it's difficult to explain without cheapening it."
* So
watch it now [video || 05:26].
posted by ericb
on Jan 6, 2012 -
22 comments
Humble & Fred do a podcast. Big deal, you say? The bigger story is that they're fairly well known mainstream radio guys in the Toronto area, who have been in the business for decades, but after some recent firings have decided to give full time podcasting a try. And they're making a pretty big splash so far.
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posted by antifuse
on Dec 21, 2011 -
21 comments
The history of Toronto in photos is 90 some odd posts linked to provide a thematically organized visual overview. The vast majority of the photographs featured derive from the Toronto Archives. Should you be interested in a less visually oriented take on Toronto history, there is also the
Nostalgia Tripping series, which was designed to be a bit more about storytelling than just the photos.
posted by netbros
on Dec 5, 2011 -
20 comments
The
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party was a popular children’s birthday-party venue that was run out of several locations in North Toronto in the 1980's. Whisked away in a hearse, throngs of elementary-school children were led through a "magical underground kingdom" by teenaged attendants, participating in whipped-cream fights and shopping-cart bumpercars, with
no parents allowed.
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posted by murphy slaw
on Oct 27, 2011 -
29 comments
Toronto's new alt-weekly The Grid has kicked up a storm of controversy this week with their cover story
Dawn of a New Gay, which focuses on a new breed of "post-mos" who sneer at the traditional trappings of homosexuality and gay activism. Torontoist
responds, and one of the subjects of the article has
denounced his involvement in the piece.
posted by yellowbinder
on Jun 10, 2011 -
126 comments
The Complaints Choir phenomenon, started by the Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, has
spread all over the world since
last we paid it any attention, from
Birmingham to
Helsinki,
Hamburg,
St. Petersburg,
Poikkilaakso,
Bodø,
Penn State,
Canada,
Juneau,
Gabriola Island,
Sointula,
Jerusalem,
Melbourne,
Budapest,
Malmö,
Chicago,
Florence,
Copenhagen,
Vancouver (
2),
Philadelphia,
Sundbyberg,
Milano,
Åland,
Hong Kong,
Tokyo,
Rotterdam,
Basel,
Umeå,
Ljubljana,
Gdansk,
Arizona State University,
Washington, DC,
Horace Mann School,
Durham-Chapel Hill,
Auckland,
Toronto theatre students,
Kortrijk,
Cairo (
2),
St. Pölten,
Maribor,
Port Coquitlam,
Ústí nad Labem,
Columbus &
Kauhajoki (
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8). For more information, including a
9 step guide to forming your own complaints choir, go to the
Complaints Choir website. Finally, here's the
Singapore Complaints Choir, whose performance was banned by the Singapore government.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 19, 2010 -
40 comments
