In June, 200 media professionals, producers, activists and academics packed into a Bathurst Street studio for a party celebrating the launch of a new English-language global news and documentary network, The Real News. If building an international news network from scratch doesn’t sound mind-boggling-ly ambitious to you, consider this: Real News CEO Paul Jay is promising to accomplish this feat without corporate, government or advertising dollars. This makes The Real News the world’s first...... [continue]

Is there an age limit for trick-or-treating? While there appears to be little consensus on this head-scratcher, a national hunger-focused campaign is giving college students the opportunity to trick or treat, guilt-free. This All Hallows' Eve, 3,000 volunteers from Humber College, U of T, and Ryerson University will don spooky costumes and go door to door collecting non-perishable food items for Trick or Eat 2007. They’ll be collecting on behalf of Meal Exchange, a... [continue]

Sold in April and refurbished this summer, Toronto’s smallest house is on the market again! Built in 1912 and occupied for twenty years by Toronto contractor Arthur Weedan and his wife, the baby bungalow was originally intended to be a driveway. Located at St. Clair and Dufferin, this little piece of prime real estate sold earlier this spring for a whopping $139,000. Given its spatial challenges—and its price tag—the 300-square foot house is a... [continue]

At their crudest, graffiti tags are generally used for the artist’s personal aggrandizement. While it is not uncommon for graffitists to tag the names legendary celebrities (Tupac anyone?) much more rare is the tagger who promotes the work of classical composers posthumously. Recently, tags of the name of the Bohemian-Austrian composer Gustav Mahler mysteriously appeared on the Queen Street Bridge and along Lake Shore Boulevard East. Who is this culturally aplomb tagger and why... [continue]

Given the chance to provide insider knowledge about Toronto to a well-known travel site on behalf of your city and fellow residents, what juicy local secrets would you reveal? Lucky Toronto members of Travelocity.ca presented with this very challenge seemed to buckle under pressure. Based on a poll of its members, this year’s Toronto finalists in Travelocity's 25 Canadian “Local Secrets, Big Finds” were Café Diplomatico and Riverdale Farm. While we can all agree... [continue]

You've traced your roots through to great-grandma Edna back to the early 1900s, but that's when the trail suddenly goes cold. Who were her parents? And their parents? Has a seemingly futile search left you wanting to beat your pretty head against a brick wall? If this scenario sounds familiar—or interesting—help is on the way. Before you give up the hunt, make sure you leave no stone unturned (particularly Nana’s headstone!). Information collected from gravestones,... [continue]

Beyond the month of February, it is not often that Torontonians have a public opportunity to celebrate their city’s black legacy. But they’ll get one this weekend at the 15th annual Marcus Garvey Celebrations. The celebrations, which honour the iconic Jamaican American revolutionary, will this year also pay tribute to Torontonians Lucie and Thornton Blackburn in commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Ontario. The Blackburns were African American... [continue]

There are few things more irksome to a cyclist than a needlessly blocked bike lane. So while some people are making their own, others have created a service to help defend the far-too-few bike lanes we have already. This is precisely the idea behind MyBikeLane Toronto. A North American network of blogs launched in 2006, MyBikeLane is dedicated to outing the road hogs and other boobs blocking the way. All cyclists who have experienced... [continue]

Where can you find popcorn lovers and peaceniks together? At a politically conscious film fest—in a park, no less! Tomorrow is the final night of Peace Reel: an anti-war focused outdoor film festival co-presented by the Toronto-based collective, Artists Against War (AAW) and by CitizenShift, an initiative of the National Film Board. Over the past month, Peace Reel has organized a free Sunday-night series of short films and documentaries at Christie Pits Park. This week,... [continue]

Though it is a rare sighting in Toronto, the luminous body pictured on the left is not Joel Black’s UFO. It’s a chandelier by award-winning glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. Originally from Tacoma, Washington, Chihuly is a highly prolific artist known for massive architectural installations, some of which exceed nine metres in length. Chihuly’s works are found in over 200 museum exhibitions around the world including in the Distillery District’s Sandra Ainsley Gallery, where his motley... [continue]

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