From vacationing tourists to Hollywood elites, the Sutton Place Hotel at Bay and Wellesley has catered to downtown visitors since Canada’s centennial year. This week, new owner Lanterra Developments announced plans to close the 45-year-old hotel and retrofit it as a condo with nine additional storeys. After renovation, the building may still devote rooms to [...]

Rebellion has been brewing at city council. Today’s special meeting points to the increasing frustrations some of our elected representatives have had with the bull-headed management style of Mayor Rob Ford. But today’s debate on the future of public transit in Toronto is hardly the first time a large segment of council has decided not [...]

How would you open a profile of Toronto for one of the U.S.’ most popular general interest magazines? Well, if you were the Saturday Evening Post 60 years ago, you would start with a joke that originated in a rival city, Montreal: a Toronto magnate was summoned to appear in court. On the appointed day [...]

Born out of what could be called “Expo 67 envy,” Ontario Place was originally designed to be a park where the cultural and economic accomplishments of the province could be celebrated, with a side order of entertaining diversions. While the early exhibits flopped, Ontario Place became a spot where children played, teens saw their favourite [...]

When Casa Mendoza closed its doors on New Year’s Day, a chapter of the city’s waterfront history ended. The last motel/restaurant to operate along the Lake Shore Boulevard strip on Humber Bay, it was demolished last week to make way, like its former neighbours, for condos. With it go memories of a row of businesses [...]

It’s a weekend evening on Gerrard Street East in the mid-1970s and, as usual, there’s a line-up around the block to get into the Naaz Theatre. The first cinema in North America to show Indian films exclusively, according to its owner, the theatre was a brightly lit beacon, drawing South Asians from across Toronto and [...]

STAMMERING Corrected. Booklet gives full information. Write: William Dennison, 543-A Jarvis St., Toronto, Ont. Advertisement, 1949 When William Dennison announced his run for mayor in 1966, the Globe and Mail described the veteran city councillor as “a funny kind of socialist, a former professional heckler, fender inspector and beekeeper, a man who could never see [...]

Just south of Dundas on Crawford Street is a series of faded blue waves connecting a pathway that runs from Shaw to Gore Vale Avenue through Trinity Bellwoods Park. On a snowless winter day, runners still nonchalantly jaunt across it, their minds focused on their pace or the music coming from their headphones—unaware that if [...]

On January 12, 1928, two hockey teams composed entirely of First Nations players took to the ice at Ravina Gardens on Rowland Street for a “a very speedy and clever game of hockey,” as one newspaper described it. It was one of the earliest stops on what would be a 2,200-mile motor coach tour. Over [...]

In the beginning, there was a box of back issues of Sports Illustrated in my Mom’s shed. As a kid, I loved flipping through SI when it arrived in the mail. The articles didn’t always grab my attention, but the ads did. When the time came to clear out two decades’ worth of magazines, I [...]

Last week, after hearing about a trio of local bookstores facing closure or sale, we looked at some of Toronto’s past purveyors of literature. As we wrote then, it feels as if Toronto is experiencing a cycle of closures similar to the late 1990s. Back then, blame initially fell upon big box stores like Chapters [...]

It’s common knowledge that Toronto isn’t the most popular city amongst the rest of the country. Something about a superior attitude or being the centre of the universe. It’s a long-held belief, and one that Maclean’s was willing to exploit when it devoted a section of its April 1972 issue to the city. While the [...]