Events: June 2009 Archives

THEATRE: To celebrate Multiculturalism Day (which just passed on June 27) and the launch of a new theatre project, High Rise: 19 stories in 19 storeys (set in Jamestown/Rexdale), the good people at Expect Theatre are throwing a launch party for this ambitious three-year project. Nineteen youth who live in the area were given video cameras with which to record the community they live in, capturing the hardships and the triumphs that people in this diverse community experience. This raw material will provide the base for the project. At the launch there will be performance by award-winning artist d'bi young, a chance to share your story with film director Joel Gordon, and community members can have their picture taken by photographer Steve Carty. The Jamestown and Rexdale areas of Toronto are among the most ethnically diverse areas in the city, many of the residents being immigrants living in public housing. This theatre piece will combine several different media to produce a show in 2011, with a workshop starting next year. Albion Library (1515 Albion Road), 5–7 p.m., FREE.

                    

In addition to being in the Pride Parade on Sunday (it's okay to be jealous), Torontoist also lingered in the crowds. Our Nick Kozak arrived towards the end of the parade and wandered the closed-off streets, snapping photos as he went of Pride partiers—some more extravagantly dressed, and some just more dressed, than others—and a dissenter or two, too.

AWARDS: It was December of 1978 when the first ever Dora Mavor Moore Awards were handed out to deserving theatre artists and plays. After thirty-one years (and twenty-nine more award shows) they are still honouring some of Toronto's best art on a stage, with more than two hundred theatre, dance, and opera productions up for consideration. Tonight, the CBC's Jian Ghomeshi will host the thirtieth Dora Awards, handing out statues within five major divisions: General Theatre, Independent Theatre, Theatre for Young Audience, Dance, and Opera. If you're looking to learn more about the history behind the Dora Awards, the Doras have created a book to be handed out during a pre-party at the Rosewater Supper Club. Following its launch tonight, The Doras: 30 Years of Theatre, Dance, and Opera in Toronto will be for sale at TheatreBooks. Look for Torontoist's coverage of the winners within the next week. Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre (189 Yonge Street), 8 p.m., $60.

PARADE: With rain in the forecast for most of the afternoon, this year’s Pride theme “Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop” will be heavily tested. We rally the pride community and pride supporters not to let the rain dampen their spirits, but rather to embrace opportunities for jokes about things like coming home wet. The Twenty-ninth Annual Pride Parade starts at Bloor and Church, travelling west to Yonge Street, and then south on Yonge to Gerrard Street for the finish. Judges will be watching for best costumes, art direction, special effects, sound design, and more. Church and Bloor streets to Yonge and Gerrard streets, 2 p.m., FREE.

             

Last night Yonge-Dundas Square filled up with hundreds of people celebrating the moves of the late King of Pop in the Moonwalk for Michael Jackson flashmob organized by the Urban Recreation Association Facebook group.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

ART: Harbourfront reveals a stunning look at Canada’s northern forests with a new exhibit “RESPECT: A Photo Odyssey Celebrating Canada’s Boreal Forest,” opening with a public reception tonight (on through October 12). The project’s curator Louise Larivière invited nine leading photojournalists to document the region over a period of nine months beginning last fall. The work culminates with over seventy huge prints made from the resulting photographs. Also opening are several supporting exhibits looking at the culture and peoples of Canada’s northern forests. Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West), 6–10 p.m., FREE.

MUSIC: Vic Chesnutt has been fighting for his life with fiery music since experiencing a near-fatal drunken car crash in Georgia as a teen, and his career weaves together a string of collaborators thick with some of the most influential musicians on the continent. Jonathan Richman not only carries the same influential weight, but he also wrote the best two-chord song ever ("Roadrunner")—not to mention his charming attraction to the best song subjects of anyone we know: Picasso, ice cream, secretaries, the astral plane, not owning a cell phone, and so on. There are only a few tickets left for the Jonathan Richman (playing as a two-piece with drummer Tommy Larkins) and Vic Chesnutt double bill tonight—get them while you can. The Great Hall (1087 Queen Street West), 9 p.m., $25 at the door.

In the shadow of the Dufferin Mall and No Frills, FoodShare is planting the seeds of a radical food system. They’ve dug up the lawn of their new location in a public school on Croatia Street to plant rows of vegetables, nourished with compost made from the waste of their busy kitchen. Staff members are cooking meals to be delivered to the homeless and underhoused, and youth in the Focus on Food program (geared to those facing barriers to employment) are cooking to learn life and job skills. On Saturday, the twenty-five-year-old organization hosted an open house, welcoming the public to become a part of their vision for good, healthy food for all.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

It's not enough to have Toronto amass into a literal garbage dump or to bar kids from City-run pools and daycares—now they've stolen the rainbow from the sky.

             

Well, it's over. We came, we saw, we didn't wait in line once (thanks, priority pass). But before we throw up our tattered white flags and rejoin society, it’s nigh time for some sort of festival wrap-up to prove we were actually there and weren't just telling you what to do. So here is a smattering of reviews and photos from our handsome reporters who we set loose into the night every night for however many nights it's been. Marvel as we run down our most memorable shows (thankfully limited to maybe one-quarter of what we saw) in hopes of helping you relive the magic. Or at least helping you fake like you were there if any of your cooler friends ask.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Well guys, we've almost made it. Tonight is already the last night of NXNE and it features a significantly scaled-back number of options compared to previous nights. For those of you who opt not to mingle anywhere near some other big party happening tonight for a glimpse at those Jonas Brothers, here are some great last-minute chances to take advantage of your festival wristband (or, for you at-the-door types, throw some extra gas money into the touring bands' pockets).

KIDS: Don Kerr, Little Paper, and Tinars for Tots present an afternoon of park loving for kids at Totstock, a fundraiser for the budding High Park Nature Centre. Children’s book readings, musical performances (from Don Kerr, I Eat Kids, and Cirque Dirt, plus David Wall performing The Lorax, and more), and a big game of Ninja Cowboy Bear fill the main stage. Staff and volunteers from the Nature Centre will lead eco-based crafts and exploratory activities around the park. It's a great way to spend Father's Day. Sorauren Park, 2–5 p.m., pay-what-you-can (by donation).

Is this festival still going? Because the party force within us is weakening. Between having out-of-town bands crash on our floors day-round and bars taunting us until 4 a.m. (oh, and that music stuff too), we are just about ready for bed and it's only Saturday. But alas we must rally, coffee in one fist and—for a limited time only—computer in the other. Preview post go!

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Weirdest news of the week? That Lars Von Trier's much-talked-about-at-Cannes horror film Antichrist is receiving a video-game adaptation. How utterly bizarre.

A new farmers’ market has cropped up in the King and Spadina neighbourhood. Launched just two weeks ago, the St. Andrew’s MyMarket will run on Saturday mornings next to St. Andrew’s Park at Adelaide Street West and Maud Street, atop a piece of Toronto history. In the mid-1800s, the block was home to one of Toronto’s three major markets, alongside St. Lawrence and St. Patrick’s. It’s now come full circle—good news for local residents who lack sufficient grocery stores and have been bruising their Ontario strawberries en route home from the farmers’ markets farther afield at City Hall and Liberty Village (the first strawberries of the season are ready and they’re sweet).

Sleep and morale are still intact as we start the third day of NXNE, but things are just getting started. Friday's finest include two L.A. noise-pop bands you wish you started, the best of the new East Coast herd, and the surprise reunion of a Toronto-grown and nationally treasured indie institution. No time for chit chat; here are your plans for this evening. You can thank us later.

FILM: Has digital killed film? Definitely not, says the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers (LIFT) with tonight’s screening of nine beautiful stop-motion, 16mm films. Afterward, two of the filmmakers, Jonathan Amitav and Chris Gehman, speak about the challenges and rewards of working with film. This event is the first part of a six-part series entitled Strategies of the Medium, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and running until Spring 2010. Cinecycle (129 Spadina Avenue), 7 p.m., $8, $5 for members.

Today's the day our not-so-humble music festival kicks into high gear and wouldn't you know it from the increased presence of beater tour vans confusedly driving past all your favourite patios. But when it's raining, as it's apt to do tonight, it's a billion per cent less fun to show-hop if you have a pass (and are a wuss). So here are some stacked bills that you can plunk yourself down at all evening and remain stoked (and dry) amongst fellow stoked (and dry) people.

Jaded queers will complain that Pride has become little more than a SKYY Vodka ad come to life, a commercial, de-politicized faux-hedonistic throw-back that gives people an excuse to have sex with strangers and pretend they're still teenagers. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But for those of you who are over the parade and think Church Street is a snore, but still want to celebrate Pride, there are a few cool events, hidden away in the festival's abysmal website. And yes, Drama Clubbers, there is theatre to see!

You know the drill: starting today, and every day until Sunday, a dizzying array of local and international music, film, and industry events take over the city courtesy of NXNE, and Torontoist will of course be squeezing our way into as many as we can. But no one likes to show up to the party alone, so we want to make sure you're hip to our tips too. Tonight's scaled-back festivities are a perfect, polite introduction to what is sure to be an exhausting, but exciting weekend. Ready?

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

So, we know we were all abuzz about summer festivals just this morning, but time is tickin' along, and everyone's just so busy that we thought we'd skip right ahead to autumn. This morning organizers unveiled Nuit Blanche 2009, at a suit- and camera-happy press conference at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Another year's Luminato has come and now gone, raising the question of just how brightly this new(ish) festival's star is shining.

                     

On Sunday evening, more than thirty of Toronto's most celebrated chefs congregated in the open air of Yorkville Park for Toronto Taste, Second Harvest's biggest and most lavish fundraiser. Honouring its nineteenth year, the event raised $250,000 in just one night—enough to provide 500,000 meals for people in need. Torontoist was lucky to snag a couple of these hot tickets and chat with some of our city's food glitterati who—despite the challenges of running restaurants in this economy—are continuing to do their part to fight hunger.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Unlike the divisive world of politics, the arts community embraces collaboration. Here in Toronto, it has inspired campaigns like ART ON THE MOVE, and has more recently brought downtown-based Art Metropole and the South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC) together to create REPLYall, an online visual dialogue.

                                   

The place to be at this year's Woofstock festival was the fountain in Berczy Park. Despite the moderate temperatures and a layer of suspicious-looking foam covering the water, the fountain was crowded with dogs fighting for rubber balls, chasing each other, and—in the case of one very determined Great Dane—doing vigorous laps.

Finally! We've been to a few disappointing Luminato displays of late, and a few disappointing "marquee" literary events, and so it is with great pleasure and relief that we can report that last week, both fiction lovers and Luminato-goers got exactly what they've been craving: well-executed programming that was as warm and inviting as it was ambitious. World Voices in Fiction brought four of the brightest new luminaries in contemporary fiction to the Al Green theatre Thursday night, to read from and discuss their recent works, and did so in a most satisfying fashion. The authors were brilliant and also, happily, comfortable in front of an audience. The space was welcoming and the pace relaxed, just right for a reading on a lazy summer night. (Organizers of all literary events take note: acoustics matter. So do lighting and sightlines. Please book your venues accordingly.) In short, it was just what a book-ish night should be.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com

                                   

At the crack of noon on Saturday, countless food enthusiasts lined up to buy fistfuls of tasting tickets for Luminato's one and only food event, 1000 Tastes of Toronto. Eastbound lanes of Queens Quay between Lower Simcoe and Rees were closed to accommodate the forty-some vendor booths, stretching down the street in front of the beautiful new Simcoe Wavedeck. Some of the city's best-known and respected chefs were there, chatting with patrons and serving up street-friendly versions of their signature dishes. Torontoist was fortunate to sneak in a bit early and partake in this whirlwind tasting tour of Toronto.

PARTIES: Well, the Luminato Festival of Arts & Creativity closes out today with a big finale at Harbourfront in celebration of Cirque du Soleil’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Mini performance events will be happening at both Harbourfront and the Toronto Music Garden from 1:30 p.m. onwards, with a free shuttle boat running between the two locations (the last shuttle is at 8 p.m.). The day ends with the grand finale at 9 p.m. Keep in mind that there’ll be plenty of tasty $5 food dishes available at Harbourfront all day, too. Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West), 1:30–9 p.m., FREE.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

This morning marked the official opening of the Simcoe WaveDeck, the latest milestone in the ambitious central waterfront transformation. In total, four of these curvy, boardwalk-meets-bridge structures will be open by 2012, each at the base of a major waterfront street. The award-winning Spadina WaveDeck opened late last summer, the Rees WaveDeck is on schedule for a launch later this season, and the Parliament WaveDeck is working its way through the design development phase. Aptly named, each WaveDeck is a variation of a multi-layered, undulating ribbon of wood, rising as tall as six feet above the ground and dipping to almost skim the water's surface.

ART: Gallery 47 hosts the opening reception for a new painting installation, Jennifer McGregor's Slant. We’d love to tell you more, but as the exhibit explores the themes of “concealment and disclosure” it’s all kind of hush hush. We can suggest that with the installation's air of whimsy, in a format usually reserved for film and sculpture, it may be the closest thing yet to physically entering a painting. 47 (47 Milky Way), 7–10 p.m., FREE.

ART: The sugary yet ominous drawings of Sarah McNeil are exhibited tonight at newly opened Queen West clothier Robber. The title of the show, “Other Wild Mammals,” includes ermines, rabbits, wolves, and, hey, people, 'cause we're mammals too! McNeil also runs a quaint blog where she details recipes for linseed crackers and her daily activities, while featuring her new artwork. Tonight’s opening will have drinks and snacks on hand. Robber (863 Queen Street West), 6–9 p.m., FREE.

Because you're worth it, Toronto, L'Oréal's Luminato Festival has descended upon your fair city, bringing things such as Neil Gaiman, Randy Bachman, and religious controversy to Hogtown. But worry not, dramaphiles, there's theatre too! From faux-punk rock shows, to nine-hour epics, to children's operas, to Edgar Allan Poe, there's something for everyone (who can afford the mostly expensive ticket prices) to enjoy.

On Monday night, the Gladstone Hotel held the first of three cross-Canada net neutrality discussions established by SaveOurNet.ca. Speakers included SaveOurNet co-founder Steve Anderson; Rocky Gaudrault, CEO of TekSavvy; Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation; Derek Blackadder, a national representative with CUPE; Raymi Lauren White, of Raymi the Minx; and Sass, of zucket.com. The panel discussed a variety of internet-related topics, including throttling, public infrastructure, and the oligopolies of Bell and Rogers, but most of the debate focused on the movement’s deepest problem: how to sell the concept of net neutrality to average Canadians.

WORDS: Crime-novel writers, a former magician’s assistant, and members of Toronto's diverse writing community make up some of the small collective commissioned to compose short pieces for "Gothic Toronto: Writing the City Macabre," part of Luminato’s Edgar Allen Poe nod. Cherie Dimaline, Nalo Hopkinson, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Andrew Pyper, Tasleem Thawar, and Michelle Wan will each read their gothic tale contributions at the event, hosted by Rue Morgue’s Liisa Ladouceur. The collected works will be available at the reading as a very limited-run Victorian chapbook, created specially for this Luminato and Diaspora Dialogues collaboration. Music Gallery (197 John Street), 7:30 p.m., FREE.

On the same night that their magazine counterparts were feeding on a chocolate fountain at the Carlu, the scrappy newspapermen and women of Toronto's major dailies were knocking back bottles of Molson and rocking out at the Opera House: Newzapalooza V, the city's fifth annual Battle of the Media Bands, went down last Friday, raising close to eight thousand dollars for the Children's Aid Foundation. And far from strumming as Rome burns, the event served—intentionally or not—as a defiant celebration of the romantically proletarian spirit that somehow still manages to underpin the culture of the broadsheets.

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Despite all that Toronto has to offer, it is not a perfect city. Operating under the assumption that Toronto is “unfinished and full of possibility,” consulting firm OpenCity Projects uses bold design in order to create more meaningful experiences for people in the city. Its most recent endeavour, fittingly titled “Icebreakers,” tackles the communication gap between people who live in, work in, and visit Toronto.

ART: Communication | Environment, part of Luminato, features a series of eye-popping installations with the common theme of contemporary communications. Among them is David Rokeby’s installation at the Allen Lambert Galleria, which features sixty-four spheres suspended along the atrium in the form of a modified sine wave (the basic structure of wireless communication). Allen Lambert Galleria (181 Bay Street), all day, FREE.

Toronto funnymen Aaron Eves and Chris Locke, hosts of the monthly variety show Let's Get Hot!, celebrate their linen and silk anniversary (that's four years, people) as a duo tonight at the Rivoli, home to the popular weekend-capping comedy series Laugh Sabbath. LGH virgins can expect a lineup of the city's finest comics sandwiched between Eves and Locke's cry-laugh inducing performances. "Aaron and I always got along jokewise," says Locke. "At first we thought of doing a talk show where he’d be my sidekick, like Paul Shaffer. Or, you know, like in Return of the Jedi when Jabba the Hutt has that screaming gremlin." Eves adds, "And we wanted our audience to be chained women in gold bikinis."

ANIMALS: Love-struck pooches will have the opportunity to declare their undying canine love today at the first-ever Woofstock Doggie Weddings High Tea. Doggie couples dressed in wedding attire will receive a certificate of “muttrimony” upon celebration of their “commuttment.” The event is the official launch for next week’s Woofstock, North America’s largest festival for dogs and dog lovers. Proceeds from today’s fundraiser go towards the Pet Trust Fund in support of canine cancer research. Le Meridian King Edward Hotel (37 King Street East), 2–4 p.m., FREE ($10 donation suggested). Space is still available, online registration preferred: info@woofstock.ca

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

The "Night In The Big House @ THE DON JAIL," scheduled for tonight, was to be the rave of the season. But a note posted to the Facebook event page on Thursday morning called it off: "As of 10am on Thursday, June 04, 2009 the Ontario Realty Corporation, an arm of the provincial government and the agency that controls the Old Don Jail has cancelled our event on Friday, June 5, 2009 and ALL other events for the Old Don Jail in the near future."

The next time somebody tells us that Toronto is in the midst of a war on cars we are going to buy them a plane ticket to Copenhagen. Or possibly Bogotá. New York if they want something closer to home. We will send them to one of the growing number of cities that are actually demonstrating the nerve to redefine their planning priorities in favour of liveability and environmental sustainability and dare the auto-obsessed malcontents to say that they aren't all the better for it. For all the recent controversies over Toronto's Bike Plan and Walking Strategy, over our notions of just talking about taking down one portion of one disastrous highway, and converting one traffic lane on a road that is not used to capacity [PDF] to allow five times the number of people to use it on their bikes, Toronto's initiatives are piddling, tentative, nibbling-around-the-edges sorts of things when compared with what is happening elsewhere in the world.

FESTIVAL: The big thing on everyone’s mind for the next two weeks will be Luminato. The festival, which we previewed yesterday and will be covering throughout, launches with a free opening night party, where Randy Bachman will play a free concert. The question is, will he play “Taking Care of Business” now that it’s not the Great Canadian Tune? Yonge-Dundas Square, 7 p.m., FREE.

Summer festival season is about to begin in earnest, and kicking things off is that multi-disciplinary, multi-location, multi-day extravaganza known as Luminato. With everything from nine-hour theatrical epics to a giant red ball popping up where you may least expect it, Luminato is again sure to draw its share of fans and also its share of haters. (It's whimsical fun! It's heartlessly corporate! Stuff is free! Stuff is overpriced! Pick a point of view, and you're bound to find someone who shares it.) Ever your intrepid cultural emissaries, we'll be on the lookout for the wacky, the wonderful, and the just plain trying-too-hard.

It turns out that if you want to be a successful poet and $50,000 richer, you better consider going by your initials. The ninth annual Griffin Poetry Prize winners were announced last night at the Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery District, with A.F. Moritz winning the Canadian award for his book of poetry The Sentinal and American poet C.D. Wright winning the International prize for her book, Rising, Falling, Hovering.

After twenty-seven prolific years of defining quirky Canadiana with defunct hometown heroes the Rheostatics, Dave Bidini will be celebrating the release of his first solo album at the Horseshoe Tavern this Saturday, June 6. Not content with convention, however, he will also be celebrating in record stores, book stores, music stores, and right out in the streets earlier that evening, with guest musicians, authors, and comedians joining him along the way. Saturdays rarely look so musical (and literate and hilarious).

FILM: The short films of surrealist French filmmaker Jean Painlevé are screening tonight at Cinematheque Ontario. Painlevé, whose films are a strange cross between fantasy and science, suffuses the lives of octopuses, butterflies, and seahorses with a dream-like beauty unseen in modern-day nature documentaries. He made over two hundred films in his lifetime, with five showing tonight alongside Blood of the Beasts by ultra-realist Georges Franju, which depicts the grisly interiors of a late 1940s slaughterhouse. Cinematheque Ontario (317 Dundas West) 9 p.m, FREE.

May 26 marked the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous Montreal Bed-In, the site of the recording of "Give Peace a Chance." Over in the M-Dot, the Musée des beaux arts has been holding a popular exhibit about what may have been the world's most famous sleepover. Closer to home, draft89 Theatre Collective has been mounting The John/Yoko Bed Piece at the Theatre Centre, which dramatizes the event.

Ever wonder what distinguishes a good bicycle rack from a bad one? Or what the optimal buffer is between a bike lane and a parked car? If so, then last week's Bike Summit was the place for you, as active transportation activists, transportation planners, urban infrastructure experts, and assorted cycling gurus came together to consider these and other such questions. Organized by the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation (TCAT), the second annual conference was a day-long extravaganza devoted to everything on two wheels.

Glitz and glamour go hand in hand, but they are rarely accompanied by substance. Inside the ROM on Monday evening, however, the three coalesced in the third installment of the Munk Debates. Determined to offer a "substantive forum for leading thinkers to debate the major issues facing the world and Canada," the revered series has brought high-profile speakers such as Mia Farrow, Samantha Power, and Charles Krauthammer to Toronto to debate critical issues like the need for humanitarian intervention and the 2008 U.S. presidential election's effect on global security.

LECTURE: Danish Urban Designer Jan Gehl presents his work and rounds out his lecture with a discussion of what makes good public design. The architect and (actual) urban planner has been at the forefront of pedestrian and pedal-friendly design in cities around the world for the past twenty years. This is the first of two lectures exchanging public space ideas with Danish designers, co-presented by the City of Toronto. Design Exchange, trading floor (234 Bay Street), 3–5 p.m., FREE.

This Saturday night may shock the social system: there's going to be a "gala evening" of a fundraiser, held at a downtown museum, attended by the fashion set. No, that's not the shock. This is: we guarantee the best-dressed babes there really do alter vintage frocks, know what Dior is, and frequent "mom-and-pop shops on Queen West."

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

For almost a year and a half now, some of Canada’s major ISPs, including Bell and Rogers, have defended their throttling practices by arguing that excessive BitTorrent traffic is crippling their networks. Open-internet proponents, like Michael Geist, SaveOurNet.ca, and even Google, have questioned the telecoms' motives and asked the CRTC to step in and stop throttling. Geist further argues that throttling, high prices, and slow speeds, are reducing Canada’s competitiveness in the new digital economy. Today, a report released by the OECD on broadband growth and distribution, revealed that Canada’s broadband services are among the slowest and the most expensive in the developed world. In terms of price per megabyte, Canada ranks twenty-eighth overall, just ahead of Mexico and Poland. With the CRTC’s July traffic-management hearings fast approaching, net-neutrality advocates are working overtime to spread awareness of the issues and rally Canadians behind their cause.

                            

Kensington Market held the first Pedestrian Sunday of the year yesterday. The car-free streets thronged with people enjoying a sunny day as they ate street food from the neighbourhood's restaurants, listened to bands (including Escalate and Mr Something Something with their Soundcycle), played giant scrabble, learned how to fix their bikes courtesy of the Bike Pirates, and danced in a stream of bubbles.