SPOTTED BY: Torontoist Flickr Pool contributors dtstuff9, PLTam, and emaninTdot. WHERE: Yorkville WHEN: Saturday December 10 WHAT: Every year since 2005, intrepid Santa-lovers have donned…not much at all, and taken to the streets for a good cause. The annual Santa Speedo Run has raised $180,000 since its inception for the Hospital for Sick Children. About [...]

Wouldn’t it be grand if we could revisit the days of yore, when the TTC provided holiday bus service to the North Pole? Legend has it that as Christmas approached, a fleet of special winter wonder buses were put into service. Fuelled by marshmallows, fare charged at one gumball, drivers dressed in candy cane costumes, [...]

Glad Hand is Torontoist’s political cartoon, created by Brett Lamb and appearing here every Friday.

Photo by Jösé from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. For the fourth year in a row, the TTC will be free to ride after midnight on New Year’s Eve—only this time, they’re paying the bill themselves. In 2007 Capital One sponsored the night of service, and in 2008 and 2009 a “coalition of leaders in the [...]

Streeter collects only the finest overheard conversations. Hear something? Send it to streeter@torontoist.com. Overheard by reader Ben Marans at the Gerrard Square Home Depot on Thursday. Middle-aged woman: What are you up to this weekend? Middle-aged guy: Not much. Just hanging with the family. Middle-aged woman: Oh…are you going to put up a Christmas tree, [...]

Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city. Ho, [...]

Source: the Toronto Sun, November 3, 1980. Santa Claus made his annual trek to Toronto this past weekend, arriving on a float to bring good cheer to children of all ages. Over the next few weeks, he’ll make the rounds of local shopping malls to listen to last-minute gift requests before sending final orders in [...]

Photos by Dean Bradley/Torontoist. WHERE: Bloor Street West and Avenue Road. WHEN: Sunday, November 21, between 1:00 and 3:30 p.m. WHAT: Rob Ford, coach jacket and all, would serve as the de facto opening float for this year’s Santa Claus Parade, but the big guy all the kids were excited about was farther down the [...]

As perennial the first winter frost, the sign of collapsed jack-o-lanterns rotting in the alley adjacent to your apartment can mean only one thing: Christmas time is here again. And sure, it’s become kind of trendy to hate Christmas: to gripe about the commercialism and the crowded malls and the Salvation Army Santas bleating on [...]

Photos by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist. WHERE: The Bay, at Queen and Yonge. WHEN: Friday, October 22, at 6:30 p.m. WHAT: At The Bay’s flagship store, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, two months too soon. (As Dale Watson, who noticed the decorations on Thursday, put it, “WTF?”)