When telling the story of the Holocaust, one effective way to overcome our sheer inability to comprehend the scope and scale of such atrocities is to zoom in on one or two stories: share one particular experience, in all its brutal specificity, and we have at least a small way into the event—the small details illuminate the larger whole.

One theatre company from the Netherlands, Hotel Modern, takes a related approach in KAMP (CAMP). The production depicts a typical day at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but instead of zooming in into a closeup, it shrinks everything down, literally, into miniature. It’s the accumulation of thousands of small details that has the impact in this case.

Eleanor McMahon thinks it’s time to change the conversation around cycling in Ontario.

McMahon is the founder of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, who will be hosting the fifth annual Ontario Bike Summit this week in Toronto. She says that we need to stop talking about things like bike lanes and other bicycle infrastructure as a zero sum game between cars and bikes.

“We do polling, and our polling tells us that 89 per cent of Ontarians are both drivers and cyclists,” she says. “The notion that it’s cars versus bikes is overblown, and it’s really not working anymore. Deciding to change the conversation means going out of our way to poke holes in that idea and say from the get go ‘We don’t buy into that philosophy, and just because you say it, doesn’t make it true.’ ”

Even with the success of acts like Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords, people still tend to view musical comedy with some suspicion, and not without reason. Those high-profile success stories aside, at the club level, musical comedy is too often the province of people who aren’t quite good enough to make it as musicians, but not quite funny enough to make it as comedians.

Two local comics, Robert Keller and Rush Zilla, are out to change that perception with their show, Off Key Comedy, which features a wide variety of acts whose only commonality is that they combine music and comedy in one form or another. The third edition of the monthly show will take place on May 23, at Comedy Bar.

Source: the Telegram, December 9, 1929.

A centrepiece of Loblaws’ local holiday promotions this year is the giant gingerbread house constructed from real cookies at its Maple Leaf Gardens store. Had that edible homestead been built in 1929, it might have utilized some of the 100,000 pounds of potential doorstoppers made at the corporate bakery that year.

Opened in October 1928, the Loblaw corporate headquarters at Bathurst and Fleet Streets (now Lake Shore Boulevard West) included offices, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities. The fine print in today’s ad boasted about the building’s baking capability:

The latest type of automatic mixing equipment and the most modern electric ovens available are now in operation at the Loblaw bakery in the company’s new warehouse and factory building on Fleet Street. More than a ton of cake and half a ton of cookies are baked every day in the ovens and distributed to the groceterias. Neither the cakes (or cookies) nor the materials of which they are made are ever touched by hand. Photos show the staff withdrawing cakes from the high power ovens, which can generate a heat up to 600 degrees.

The holiday treat’s billing as “Christmas Cake” makes us wonder if Loblaws observed a seasonal naming tradition, or if “fruitcake” was already scarred by too many jokes about its shelf life. The ad writer makes it sound like a tempting treat, thanks to ingredients like “Valencia Almonds” and “New Laid Eggs.” His or her copy places the cake much higher on the class scale than the poor “Real Value Chocolate Puffs,” which are “just a real good chocolate coated marshmallow biscuit.”

Every now and then I stumble across a place in my quest for unusual restaurants that is so removed from my day-to-day realities in downtown Toronto that I feel like I’ve travelled to some far-flung country. If you want a wonderful cultural experience, save yourself a plane ticket and head up to the St. Clair Bakery & La Belle Jacmelienne in Scarborough.

It turns out there’s another bakery in Toronto called St. Clair Bakery near Old Weston Road. I haven’t been there but I can guarantee you that it’s nothing like this place. Founded in 1957, the bakery specializes in Greek and Macedonian breads and pastries.

In 2009, Lukas Cineus Jr and Marie Claire, a native of Jacmel, Haiti, took over the shop. “We still make the same desserts and bread as before, but we’ve added a Creole and Caribbean flavour,” says Lukas.

On his business cards it says “Sakpasé, nou palé Kréol tou wi!” which is Creole for “What’s happening, we speak Creole here also, yes!” (En français, “Qu’est-ce qui se passe, nous parlons créole aussi, oui.”)

Some Greeks and Bulgarians come in looking for European coffee and pastries, but the main clientele are Haitians who come for take-out food. One Haitian customer picks up some baklava to go with his Haitian food. Compa, a sweet, mid-tempo Haitian musical style, plays through the speakers.

There are no tables, but people sit by the windowsill chatting and eating bouillon kabrit—goat soup. This tasty soup is an unusual mix of flavours—goat broth, large chunks of yellow yam, dumplings, carrots, watercress, parsley, and shallots. It’s a nice comfort food with a spicy kick.

The menu varies depending on when you come in, but if you’re lucky, you might get to try a Haitian patty, which is made of flaky pastry and filled with chicken, beef, or salt fish. Other specialties include rice made with djon djon, a type of mushroom native to Haiti.

Rice and beans, plantain, grio, and tassot.

I got a order of grio (fried pork) and tassot (fried beef) to go. The pork was pure fat but the beef was nicely marinated. The plantain tasted quite different from plantain I’ve had before, as the Haitians cook it when it is still green, so it isn’t sweet at all. It’s a huge amount of food and it sells for around $8.

The bakery is open from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., except for Sundays, when it closes around 6 p.m. But if you want Haitian food, don’t come too early—2 p.m. or later is your best bet. Don’t come by if you’re in a rush: It’s more the kind of place where you hang out for a while, chatting with staff and customers while you wait.

St. Clair Bakery & La Belle Jacmelienne (3537 St. Clair Ave. East, Scarborough), 647-477-1112.

Spice City Toronto explores Toronto’s great hole-in-the-wall restaurants and strip-mall joints serving food from all corners of the world. Find more photos and details about St. Clair Bakery & La Belle Jacmelienne here.