Toronto has grand and historical hotels (the Royal York and The King Edward are particular stand out beauties). We also have many funky art-centred spots – ranging from the sublime gallery filled Gladstone (still feels weird to say that about a place
Streetcar platform (top photo) Aside from a brief stint above highway 401 in most-curious Lastman-land (North York, pre-amalgamation – growing hyper fast), I have always lived in downtown Toronto. I’m a walking guy – no use for a private vehicle – hands-off,
There’s just no arguing it – photographers are themselves one of the very best street-photography subjects one can come across – and the juxtapositions which occur in an uncontrolled but pro ‘street shoot’ are especially deluxe. The princess here is actually a
Here’s a mostly-visual essay. When do we officially declare working-class habitat endangered, anyhow? (Not until it’s utterly extinct?) These were all caught on the fly on my lovely long city walks with Nada. Gentrification is one of those things that can sometimes
I mentioned recently how delighted I was to see boarding tech reaching the sweet levels of practicality and refinement that it’s attained of late (that spring of compliance on the long-boards – zowie!). This group really made me smile because not only
Here’s a view we don’t often get to see – the Gardiner’s bridge-like britches – excavated courtesy of the massive project to turn Loblaws old downtown distribution warehouse into a new megastore for the badly underserved lakeshore condo community – with every
Designed my Thomas W Lamb, built in 1913, the Elgin and Winter Garden are not one but two grand full-sized theatres stacked on top of one another – a design fairly common in Edwardian days, but this beauty is now the last
Another lovely thing about street festivals is all the nifty and eccentric characters one gets to see, some of them human, and some canine – but no less full of style, verve, and indeed, often hilarious achievements of attitude. It takes no
When I was a little boy, I always liked to ride in the front of the subway train so I could look out and see everything that was whooshing-by – while also pretending to drive the train (naturally). Thanks to the wide
While there are worrisome changes to the Toronto landscape, and also many new developments of promise – there are also, I’m very glad to say, many sweet things about Toronto that remain very recognizable, from when I was a kid. Ossfest itself
I am not myself religious – but I know many sweet folks who are – and I also have a great fondness for the lovely structures which have been created by extraordinary sacrifices of patience and investment, by so many congregations. Toronto,
Here is a great example of old-school made manifest in a number of ways – first off, the place was closed on Sunday – because there once was a time when we had respect for the tradespeople around us, and didn’t put
This set of photographs contains a few lovely things at once. For one, it shows how the recent attention to rehabilitating the Don river away from it’s truly horrid state a few decades ago (open urban sewer) back to a more natural
To the left, Hudson’s bay – finished in 1974 – 135 m To the right, CIBC building – finished in 1972 – 149m Still under construction, on the site of the old back-alley shop where one used to be able to get
Noam Chomsky has a lot of wonderfully productive phrases – “The threat of a good example” is one of my very favourites, because it describes something that all of us have seen, and sometimes found hard to describe to others. I remember
I really don’t like crowds (I mean REALLY) but today I not only made my way across the Harbourfront through the thickest crowds I’ve ever seen down there (counting even much-missed WOMAD in it’s glory days) – but I did four complete
More Yonge-St wrecking-ball mayhem (near the much-missed Uptown theatre) I lost my chance to buy a proper Aquascutum pea-coat at Stollery’s (the very last place in town with a decent Haberdashery counter – dammit), and the ever growing tower on the opposite
As mentioned in my last post about the demise of the Brunny – there is good news on Bloor as well. This building, the former Hungarian Palace, was empty and abandoned not for years, but for decades. When I was a small
Lest my fellow Torontonians think I’m trying to portray a sanitized version of scuzzy Yonge St to my far-away friends, here’s a cultural landmark far more typical of the part of the downtown strip where Elm (Arts and Letters) intersects. Coming up
Toronto is one of those cities that has managed to flip it’s industrial core into housing comparatively successfully – that is, though it drives me half-mad, it is almost certainly more fun to complain about gentrification and rampant overdevelopment as we do,
…now sadly lapsed, but in full-force through the fifties, sixties and seventies, which said that at some point between the ages of eight and ten, every young boy must attempt to build a model of the Cutty Sark, drive himself crazy trying
Checked-in at the Ryerson image centre today, a vastly under-appreciated cultural resource in Toronto. Not only do they put on first-class exhibitions (we’ve seen Avedon, Karsh, Goldin and more) and charge absolutely nothing for them, they are also genuine photographic keeners –