Two things you may not know: The Toronto Argonauts won the Grey Cup last year (go team!), and a select group of coaches and players (the Argos are a diverse group, counting disgraced NFLers, tireless vets and All Canadian sports studs among their roster) are offering sports-dumb women a unique service: a crash course in the rules of the game and initiation into the eternal mysteries of the CFL. So ladies are you interested? No,... [continue]

Representatives of U.S. hip lit invade The Drake Hotel Underground Sunday night as newly minted McSweeney's author Salvador Plascencia presents his first novel The People of Paper alongside fellow McSweeney's alum Paul La Farge. Plascencia's lyrical fantasia is already being compared to the work of beautiful dreamers Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Paul Lafarge's latest work, The Facts of Winter, purports to continue and not continue the work of Paul Poissel, "one of... [continue]

As if being administrative capital of a province of ten million was not sufficiently honourable, Toronto was today named a Cultural Capital of Canada. The designation is bound, if we're not mistaken, to solidify the city's place as the centre of the Canadian cultural universe. Rightly or wrongly. Probably rightly. But wait! That's a Cultural Capital of Canada. Not the... Instead of sticking with the tried-and-true domestic tradition of one capital per administrative unit, Heritage... [continue]

To the six people who thought there was a chance Carlos Delgado would offer the Jays a discount and become Toronto's first 500 homer man: the dream is dead. Slick New York art dealer and Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, the same man whose tight fists held the last nail that baseball drove into the Montreal Expos' coffin, has sold seven Mondrians and a DeKooning and brought Carlos to Miami. Five years, $64 million. The... [continue]

Mediocrity. Look at the word; let your eyes linger on its stabbing ‘i’ dots and on the sassy, razzing tongue of the ‘y.’ Consider the big, judgemental block of the ‘M’ and let the jeers of the ‘ee’ sounds roll around inside your heads. Come to terms with the inescapable unpleasantness of the word. And then imagine how much more unpleasant your relationship with the word would be were it applied to your new Sunday... [continue]

Few public spaces in Toronto -nay, even in Canada- are as aggressively ugly as is Nathan Phillips Square. Take away the skating rink and the chip wagons and, especially in winter, the place has the grim, empty concrete vastness of a ca. 1950 Siberian planned city. This kind of urban dead zone is far too common in downtown T.O. (viz. the fact that the actual 'square' part of Dundas Square is usually empty); concrete blocks... [continue]

An American network television show paid lip service to Canada again yesterday, and this country's media were shouting the news from every rooftop. The plot of last night's Simpsons episode centred around a trip to Winnipeg to scam pharmaceuticals for hard-up Springfieldians. And despite the fact that there was little that was actually recognisable about the Canada portrayed (where, good sirs, was the Golden Boy?), The CP and Canada.com, the CBC, and members of the... [continue]

Paul Martin Junior fired Immigration Minister Judy Sgro today and replaced her with current HRDC top dog Joe Volpe. Despite no new information having come to light in the West York MP's "Strippergate" scandal, the fickle Martin nonetheless went off message once again in dropping his support for his beleaguered underling. Which leads Torontoist to suspect that Ethics Commissioner Bernard "Shappy" Shapiro is on the verge of declaring Ms. Sgro in the wrong. Sgro's departure... [continue]

What's the connection between the freckle-faced, gangly figure at far left and the vicious thug beside him? One is that they're both baseball players. The other is that they're actually the same person. The kid is Jason Giambi, freshly drafted by the Oakland Athletics of the American League. The absurd Michelin Man-apparent is Jason Giambi, disgraced first baseman for the New York Yankees. Giambi is on record, leaked from the proceedings of a California... [continue]

The way in which Ontario's recycling programs are funded is predicated on the idea that fifty percent of contributions are supposed to come from private industry - the same companies whose packaging choices eventually find their way into the blue boxes of Torontonians and their intraprovincial confreres. Why this little surcharge isn't being applied instead to companies using non-recyclable packaging is a bit of a mystery in itself, since taxing more responsible industries would seem... [continue]

Picture [your favourite sports franchise here] signing a 'local' kid to patrol left field, to sit back on the blue line, to punt the ball or to guard the key. Picture kids from local peewee and little league teams streaming into every game, waving pennants and wearing jerseys, with the aim of seeing the local-boy-made-good ply his trade on his own field of dreams... Seems like kind of a nice idea, right? A way to... [continue]

This is a bedbug. And while the monstrous little bloodsuckers may not be known to bear tiny little Toronto flags, they are apparently becoming increasingly common in this burgh. The spectre of bedbugs tends to evoke images of peeling wallpaper and unidentified carpet stains and seedy roadside motels called the Palace or the Shangri-La, and yet this association was the product of a relatively short period in the enduring human-insect inter-species scrimmage. Prior to the... [continue]

Torontoist just returned from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and was feeling very establishmenty, having been confronted by a flag-waving gaggle of Free Tibet soul-seekers walking out the Front Street entrance. Wearing a tie (and not ie. a string of prayer beads and a lovey attitude), your TO-ist was apparently mistaken for one of the hundreds of businessmen trapped inside the MTCC listening to the Prime Minister. The puffy, pouty prince of Parliament was, you... [continue]

While David Miller, the Mayor, cannot have passed his finest week, given the scorn with which the mainstream press approached the bureaucratic reorganization he rammed through council yesterday, the world's other David Millers made sure to pick up the slack. David Millers, like Jason Chows, like to get each others' backs. To wit: Deputy David Miller of Tullahoma, Tennessee was totally on last week, having done his part to uphold the Volunteer State's peace on... [continue]

At left, and for your consideration, is the Octopus Card Torontoist uses during trips to visit mother in Hong Kong. It's a stored-value dealy, meaning that you stop by the train station or corner store on your way to wherever, put like $500 on the card, and whizz around on public transit all day without actually handling any change. And while it's increasingly easy to use Octopus at convenience stores and fast food outlets... [continue]

Parliamentarians, averse to confronting actual problems, have elected this week to take on the Governor General's ostensibly appalling spending habits. Never mind that the engaging Mme. Clarkson's been dipping into the federal kitty in order to boost Canada around the world instead of sitting, Romeo LeBlanc-style, in a Rideau Hall La-Z-Boy and occasionally signing papers. Never mind that she and John John represent a better face for notre pays than puffy, boring-looking P. Martin ever... [continue]

Daniel Irvin Rather has announced his impending retirement and the battle to succeed his very well remunerated seat at the CBS News anchor desk is likely already claiming lives and egos on West 57th down in New York. And while it may take some time for the blood to cake and dry and for once pristine haircuts to be un-ruffled, it's entirely likely that one of Toronto's very own, pretty boy John Roberts, will emerge... [continue]

A chill wind blows through Toronto's western suburbs this evening as Mississauguans come to terms with the fact that access to the Liberal pork barrel is no longer theirs to enjoy. Famed wild card MP, and apparent vodoun houngan, Carolyn Parrish has been pushed out of the Liberal Party gulfstream with an Acme anvil in her parachute sack. While probably even the least politically-attuned citizen of Badger Rectum, SK was aware that Mme. Parrish's hangin'... [continue]

While sources are saying that Mayor Miller has backed off on plans to deliver any "Ich bin ein Frankfurter" speeches whilst on official city business in Germany. He is, by all accounts, doing a smashing job of forging what pretty much everyone considers to be a badly-needed partnership between Toronto and "Mainhattan." The intent of DM's European vacation, says City Hall, is to "actively promote business, trade, tourism and cultural relations between the two cities."... [continue]

Odds are good you've read William T. Vollmann only in short form, in periodicals; if you head down to your nearest bookstore and look, between Voltaire and Vonnegut, for any of the Sacramento-based scribe's big fat tomes, you'd be lucky to dig even a single one up. Yet Vollmann is pretty much the most prolific writer around these days. Since the age of 28 (he's 45), the man has churned (absolutely churned) out works left... [continue]