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.

Despite the fact that the last show in Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 2012/2013 season is titled Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical, Lady Gaga herself takes a secondary role. There are no homages to raw-meat dresses and gold-plated wheelchairs here. Instead, writer and director Alistair Newton uses the House of Gaga as a pathway into the history of the notable performance-art stars that came before her in the pantheon of queer iconography, and how she is and isn’t a construct of all of them put together.

It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Next Wave Presents: Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

“Is Sue-Ann Levy the devil?” asked a recent cover of the Grid. The answer, of course, is no. But that doesn’t make her a saint, either. Levy, a columnist with the Toronto Sun, is nothing if not polarizing. She was openly and frequently critical of both David Miller and Mel Lastman, but having Rob Ford in the mayor’s office seems to have sent her looking for new targets. This year, those have included journalists, politicians, and, frequently, everyday Torontonians.

Levy has taken on Margaret Atwood, firefighters, various reporters, and councillors at City Hall. In October, she was accused of stoking “birther” sentiments by adding the hashtag #MuslimBS to a tweet about U.S. President Barack Obama’s Israel policies. The Sun released a statement shortly afterward distancing itself from her opinion.

It only takes a quick perusal of Levy’s prolific Twitter stream to find an insult or accusation. She refers to Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) as “delusional.” Leftists are “smug.” A jacket worn by “Ombudslady” Fiona Crean is “Communist-type.” And Levy regularly goes after other Toronto journalists; she recently tagged a tweet about Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume with “#lazy” and “#overthehill.” (Several journalists refused to comment for the Grid‘s cover article.) She even gets into arguments with readers who call her out.

At least when her main public function was to criticize policy at City Hall, it could be argued that Levy had her principles. This year, without a larger political target to aim at, she’s been indiscriminately firing verbal rounds into the crowd.

Like all of us, Levy has her selling points. She loves an underdog. She advocates for gay rights (and is gay, herself). She’s certainly not afraid to take a stand and stick to it. She’s been described as perfectly pleasant in person, the opposite of her attack-dog persona. And she owns her reputation: she described herself as a “shit disturber” in the Grid, and hasn’t yet been scared away from Twitter fights despite the fallout from her Obama tweet.

But it’s one thing to court controversy, and another to contribute to an atmosphere of mud slinging that has already done a lot of harm to Toronto’s political climate. Levy has reduced herself to one-note attacks on the left, which is a waste of the powerful position she holds as a popular columnist at a major newspaper. And worse, Torontonians—from regular folk up to City politicians—are encouraging it by getting drawn into the vitriol. Levy doesn’t have to—and shouldn’t, necessarily—play nice, but it’d be welcomed if she would play fair.

James Pasternak and QuAIA Alarmism Undermining Pride Toronto, and Toronto’s commitment to diversity.

Michael Bryant   An astonishingly tone-deaf response to a tragic death.

Frances Nunziata   Treating her colleagues like wayward schoolchildren.

Unsubstantiated “Safety Concerns” Using race as an indicator of crime.

Yunel Escobar   Homophobic slurs and frustrating non-apologies.

Doug Holyday   Trying to turn an already divided house even more against itself.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Daniel Dale is used to getting bylines as an urban affairs reporter at the Toronto Star. This year he made headlines after a bizarre altercation with Mayor Rob Ford.

Dale alleged that the mayor ran at him with a “cocked fist,” before essentially robbing him of his telephone and voice recorder. The confrontation took place near Ford’s Etobicoke home, where Dale was gathering information about a piece of parkland the mayor was trying to purchase from the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

The incident crystallized a number of prominent themes of Mayor Ford’s term in office, including his ongoing feud with the Star and his tendency to perceive media presence as a threat. Shortly after the incident, Ford’s political allies, including his brother, Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 1, Etobicoke North), took to the air to accuse Dale of harassment and trespassing. The mayor even threatened to boycott any media scrum that included Dale.

Dale maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, and police didn’t charge him after completing an investigation. But beyond questions about his behaviour before the confrontation, Dale also had to deal with criticism of his apparently less-than-macho decision to run away when the mayor came rushing toward him. NOW magazine writer Josuha Errett described Dale’s account of the events as “self-righteous,” and contended that the award-winning journalist may not be fit for work in the industry, where “hostile subjects” are a fact of life.

That Sunday, on the mayor’s weekly radio show, Toronto Sun contributor David Menzies went further. He accused the Star of sending “their most effeminate reporter” to bait Ford into a confrontation that would evoke sympathy for Dale. Still others suggested, half jokingly, that Dale should have taken whatever abuse the mayor may have been prepared to dish out, in the hopes that Ford would be charged with assault and removed from his post.

Through it all, Dale remained professional and seemingly unfazed by the criticism. He continued to do his job, even when it involved covering Ford. Among his many contributions to local news this year, Dale and his colleagues relentlessly pursued allegations that mayor Ford had been using City resources to help coach his high school football teams.

Dale later said of the encounter, “I’m not at all ashamed to say it…I was scared.” While he disputed the mayor’s recollection of the incident, he said he hoped that his future interactions with Ford might be as “courteous and mutually respectful” as they’d been before that fateful evening. As we noted in the aftermath of the confrontation, those who questioned Dale’s masculinity suggested he should have stayed and fought. If he had, the public would likely have been a lot less informed about city issues in 2012.

Toronto Ombudsman Fiona Crean Grace under fire.

The Globe and Mail‘s Paywall Reminding us that journalism costs money to make.

Alice Moran   Speaking up when she didn’t need to.

Captain John   Keeping the waterfront interesting, and keeping his dream alive.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

When the NFB Mediatheque closed its doors on September 1, it took both its popular digital viewing stations, which offered free access to more than 6,000 films from the National Film Board of Canada’s impressive archives, and a number of full- and part-time positions. The closure was just part of a larger budget reduction plan that saw the elimination of 61 jobs across Canada, 33 of them in Toronto.

Though the tightening measures were announced by NFB chairman Tom Perlmutter, they were triggered by a substantial federal budget cut: $6.68 million over three years. Backed into a corner by the mandatory 10 per cent cut, which was likewise applied to the CBC and Telefilm, the venerable Canadian institution was suddenly forced to take stock of its long-term viability as both a content creator and a key pedagogical force in distributing Canadian documentaries and animated films to homegrown audiences.

To be sure, gripes about the dearth of Canadian programming amidst the flood of easily available American content are about as old as Canada itself. But the NFB’s budgetary hit feels particularly painful in a year that saw its good work celebrated both internationally and at home. One need only look to the Animated Shorts category at February’s Academy Awards, which boasted both Dimanche and Wild Life (NFB titles from Quebec and Alberta, respectively), to see how the government agency’s investment in innovative productions continues to secure Canada’s reception as a serious player in animation.

One needn’t even go so far afield, given the rapturous local reception of Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, produced by the NFB, which converted its bright Venice premiere into a strong showing at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as a respectable commercial release in both first-run cinemas and rep houses. That the NFB’s future as a producer of important films should come about as a result of compromises to its local centres of distribution feels like an awkward step backward, ensuring that if future successes like Polley’s can be made, it’ll only be at the expense of dedicated venues in which to screen them.

It’s still not clear exactly how the NFB will cope with all the cuts: the largest of them has been saved for the end of the three-year period. Fans of the NFB’s strong web presence, via both its clean website and its beautifully designed mobile apps, can also take solace in the rich programming those digital venues offer. But as everyone from stalwarts of James McNally’s Shorts That Are Not Pants screening series (now housed by the Carlton) to casual users of the Mediatheque’s viewing stations will attest, there’s nothing like having a physical space to call home.

Margaret Wente   Plagiarism, and laziness of epic proportions.

NHL Lockout   Taking hockey away from us.

Factory Theatre Board of Directors Losing their community’s trust.

John Farrell Checking out even before he left the team.

CBC Funding Cuts Weakening one of our national institutions.

Sedwick Hill For the untimely death of the Toronto Underground Cinema.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Out of all the U.S. election-night parties across the city on November 6, 2012, the event at Academy of the Impossible was certainly one of the most appropriate to its setting. Open for a little less than a year by the time Americans went to the polls, the 1,400-square-foot space had already hosted hundreds of nights like it. The generally progressive atmosphere at the event was in perfect keeping with the demonstrated spirit of this “open source social media enterprise.”

Hidden in the heart of the Junction Triangle, the Academy of the Impossible is a meeting ground and a place where ideas freely flourish. For the #TOpoli types that flooded 231 Wallace Avenue on election night, it was a haven. If you planned to talk through the proceedings at absurd length, and especially if you planned to do so across a spectrum of mediums, this was your space.

But as readily as you’ll find a gathering of Toronto’s under-30 policy wonks, you’ll also find martial-arts training, workshops on how best to use YouTube and social media for advocacy and outreach, readings by some of the city’s best writers and journalists, and even lectures on how to run for office, all with one purpose: supporting and empowering people who, to quote the Academy’s vision statement, “don’t fit into traditional learning institutions and experience barriers to success.”

It’s education gone truly public, and it comes at a time when such opportunities are diminishing for many, and when public empowerment is perhaps more crucial than ever. There’s a reason we see many of the same faces at City Hall and in our newspapers as we do at the Academy, and why the same tools of engagement used at City Hall are taught at the old Wallace Avenue storefront space.

Leadership and organizing skills are key. Training a new generation of community organizers is especially high on the Academy’s list of priorities. In many ways, this isn’t just a meeting ground, but a training ground. What’s being trained is the most engaged, effective, empowered, and informed public possible—all with the understanding that traditional education doesn’t go far enough. Or, more to the point, that it isn’t inclusive enough.

For much of what it offers, the Academy doesn’t expect a dime. Memberships come on a pay-as-you-can basis, which is incredible, because if there’s anything Torontonians have heard from politicians this year, it’s that we have to choose between a just, inclusive society and our wallets, or our economy. They tell us there are barriers, and that some of us simply can’t jump high enough, don’t ride fast enough, or otherwise don’t count.

Let’s hear it for the hammerstrokes, like those swung at the Academy of the Impossible, that answer those barriers.

Bloor Hot Docs Cinema   A rare home for first-run documentaries.

Alex Anthopoulos   Building the Jays into a team to be reckoned with.

Sarah Polley   Staying true to an uncompromising path.

G 98.7 Making commercial radio worth listening to again.

The Beguiling Supporting independent graphic arts for 25 years.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Bike lanes. Oh, did you just flinch when we said that? Did your eyebrows arch up? Did your hands grip your steering wheel a bit harder, or did you stealthily put a finger on your bell, ready to ring it at any time?

Ah, bike lanes in Toronto. Every year it becomes a more politicized and fraught issue than the last. In 2012 we saw the death of five cyclists, the loss of the Jarvis lane, the creation of a vexed Sherbourne lane, and an ever-growing divide between cycling downtown and everywhere else.

Toronto has more than one million adult cyclists. We need the cycling infrastructure to support those people—to make sure the regular riders can travel safely, to make the occasional riders comfortable cycling more often, and to keep all other road users accident-free as well. Our discourse should be about cycling education and how to share roads effectively, not about who deserves the roads more or how we should trade infrastructure in one place for another. (It’s okay to lose Jarvis, cyclists, because you’re getting Sherbourne. Right?)

This year, city council spent $300,000 to remove a successful bike lane, deviated from the 10-year-old plan to expand the city’s cycling network, and undermined our reputation as a bike-friendly city. Installing and maintaining bike lanes is an issue of public safety, as this map unfortunately illustrates, and it is also a cost-effective way to reduce wear and tear on the streets. The implementation of the Jarvis bike lane, for example, greatly reduced collisions in its first year and only cost $59,000.

Citizens shouldn’t have to risk—and in some cases lose—their lives in order to shine a light on the chronic and now worsening problem on our roads. We know that things can be better: Ontario’s coroner found that 100 per cent of cyclist deaths between 2006 and 2010 were preventable, and that better infrastructure would have played a major role in preventing them.

One step back, two steps forward. The province just released a draft cycling strategy that aims to improve cycling infrastructure, public education, and safety. The public can submit comments through January 29, 2013.

The Gardiner Expressway An eyesore that’s creating an increasingly dangerous commute.

Breaking Condo Glass   Causing injury, closing streets, and sparking lawsuits.

Donald Trump   Lending his name to an ugly, failing project.

Extreme NIMBYism   Taking the fear of change to irrational heights.

Casino Pressure   Making it hard to make a good decision.

The Impossible Rental Market Vacancy rates that make renting hopeless.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

As if transforming one of the most diverse cities in the world into a denser metropolis wasn’t challenge enough, now we have to worry about falling objects of mass destruction. If you haven’t yet had to pluck sharp bits of glass out of your hair, here’s what’s been going down: balcony panels have been shattering in a number of Toronto’s downtown condominiums, closing intersections and in some cases sparking lawsuits.

Freak accidents aside, the problem appears to be a manufacturing issue with the type of glass used in many buildings. The strongest, safest glass is more expensive—small comfort when there have already been been some reported injuries.

To combat the sharp-edged showers, some developers are wrapping mesh around their glass-panelled balconies as a precaution, while the provincial government was forced to act earlier this summer and implement new regulations for the type of glass used in construction. Under the new code, companies must use a material that is closer to that used in windshields (heat-strengthened and laminated) for glass that is in or near balconies. The flaw in this new system? The regulatory changes only apply to buildings that haven’t been built yet, not ones that are already raining glass over our residents.

Until a more permanent fix is implemented, we advise the Chicken Littles of the world to refrain from looking up if they’re walking near one of the suspect condominiums, or, at the very least, to carry an umbrella.

The Gardiner Expressway An eyesore that’s creating an increasingly dangerous commute.

The Impossible Rental Market Vacancy rates that make renting hopeless.

Donald Trump   Lending his name to an ugly, failing project.

Extreme NIMBYism Taking the fear of change to irrational heights.

Casino Pressure Making it hard to make a good decision.

Bike Lane Fiascos More angry, more congested, and less safe streets.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Andy Byford entered Toronto’s public spotlight in early 2012 as the freshly minted interim chief general manager for the TTC. Byford took on the role after the man who hired him into the organization, Gary Webster, was fired from the position without cause (but actually because he wouldn’t fall in line with Rob Ford’s subway-or-no-way mantra). His appointment was quickly made permanent and Byford changed his title to CEO.

Since taking the reins, Byford has pushed hard for the TTC to value the people who ride it. Not everyone will agree that the fight for improved customer service is a terribly lionhearted one to take on, but at a public organization faced with two conflicting needs—controlling its budget while serving an ever-increasing numbers of riders—a lesser person could probably find countless reasons to let this stuff slide.

Over the course of 2012, Byford has announced a series of ideas and projects that should make the better way, um, way better. Of them, the customer charter is perhaps the biggest. The commission that Byford is helping reshape will use this charter to give riders a clearer idea of the quality of service that they can expect. He’s essentially giving riders a reason to raise their expectations.

For a while the TTC had been contending with some unfortunate incidents—a sleeping fare collector, a distracted subway driver—which shook the public’s already faltering confidence in the system. Byford has tackled this head-on: soon after becoming CEO he issued a public memo to all TTC staff, warning that those who showed such disregard for transit riders would face real consequences. Faith in Byford’s leadership increased again in June, when he went to the scene of a Union Station flood, and provided frequent updates while supervising the clean-up.

And though it seems like a minor detail, Byford also deserves praise for his stance on TTC fashion—the uniforms will be changing in 2014. He’s sweating the small stuff too, and he wants us all, riders and staff alike, to feel better about the transit system that forms the backbone of Toronto.

Byford’s leadership is refreshing. It is also a marked contrast to the past couple of years of transit discussions at City Hall, which have consisted of little more than gridlocked ideological squabbling. More substantial improvements might still be a ways down the tracks, but better customer service is something that anyone should be able to get behind. Andy Byford certainly has, and he’s won many Torontonians over in the process.

Adaptation of Maple Leaf Gardens, for giving our history new life.

Ontario Place Revitalization Plans, for preserving and renewing where each are needed.

David Mirvish, for ambition writ large.

Astral Info Pillar Hackers, for taking Toronto’s sidewalks back.

The Ryerson Image Centre, for living up to the university’s ambitions.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

It probably comes as a relief to many hockey fans that Ryerson University has been using part of Maple Leaf Gardens as an arena since the Mattamy Athletic Centre opened in September. The reminders of the building’s past are all around you: from the recreation of the old marquee above the entrance, to the walls of photos of memorable moments, to the row of old seats lining the wall by the escalator.

At street level, the Loblaws store, which opened in November 2011, also mixes past and present. Beyond the wall of cheese and specialty food counters, the store’s pillars commemorate important dates in Gardens history. You can look at old newspaper wrestling ads while sitting down with a coffee. Centre ice is quietly marked with a red dot in the middle of aisle 25, though we hope staff haven’t been called too many times to clean up broken bottles of soy sauce from the adjoining shelf. There’s a hanging sculpture made from a jumble of salvaged arena seating. Even the parking garage is decorated with names of sports teams from the past.

The current state of Maple Leaf Gardens is a large-scale example of what can happen when a heritage building’s new owners embrace the structure’s past, rather than treat it with token recognition. Even future bookings, such as the upcoming Ontario Liberal leadership convention, harken back to the political events that regularly graced the Gardens. The site’s deep resonance with the public probably helped in its renewal. One can only imagine the outrage if the Gardens had suffered the fate of 81 Wellesley Street, which was suddenly knocked down in January before it could receive a heritage designation.

For years after the Toronto Rock played their last game there in 2000, we wondered if Maple Leaf Gardens was going to rot away. Former owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment might have been satisfied with that fate, given its reluctance to sell the Gardens to anyone who posed the remotest threat to the Air Canada Centre’s event bookings. As recently as last year, MLSE filed a lawsuit against Ryerson to prevent the university from using the name “Maple Leaf Gardens” for promotional purposes. Ultimately MLSE’s obsession with the bottom line won’t prevent the public from referring to the building by that name: we still call the Rogers Centre “SkyDome,” after all.

Besides, as long as the NHL lockout continues, the Gardens can boast it has hockey games. The Air Canada Centre can’t.

Andy Byford, for bringing customer-focused change to the TTC.

Ontario Place Revitalization Plans, for preserving and renewing where each are needed.

David Mirvish, for ambition writ large.

Astral Info Pillar Hackers, for taking Toronto’s sidewalks back.

The Ryerson Image Centre, living up to the university’s ambitions.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

It’s possible you regard Ontario Place as that weird park across from the CNE through which you have to wander to get to see Bon Jovi every summer. But if you’re of a certain vintage, you have fonder memories of the park that once was. You recall your first glimpses of the Zeidler-designed pods hovering over the water, and you remember standing in line for an hour in front of the movie theatre that looks like a golf ball, anticipating that “Holy shit!” moment when the newfangled IMAX movie would make you feel like you really were in space.

Maybe you rode down concrete waterslides, dodged punching bags in Children’s Village or loved watching Blue Rodeo at The Forum. (“The rotating stage is so cool! I can’t see the band half the time but I don’t care because it’s so cool!”) Maybe you once held your parents’ hands, gaping in awe at the siloed wonders of Ontario North Now. Okay, probably not the last one.

Any way you slice it, Ontario Place used to be a symbol of the province’s promise, and over the years it became, basically, nowhere. IMAX screens can now be found all over, the rides seem super-meh, and the pods became hosts to Lego displays and lord knows what else. Finally, early this year, the province decided it was time to shut down the whole shebang and start again.

John Tory was picked to chair a committee tasked with coming up with a new plan for Ontario Place. Its report came out in July and we all breathed a happy sigh of relief.

First thing the committee said? No casino. This isn’t the place.

Second thing? Add some appropriate housing so there’s year-round population and it’s not just some weird, cold place no one visits after Labour Day. (Adding a year-round concert venue is another idea with the same goal.) Also? Preserve the architectural heritage of the Cinesphere and pods while giving them new uses, and make the whole park a model of sustainability that’s barrier-free, while harnessing the best possibilities of a public-private partnership.

The only thing more encouraging than the 18-point report is how the government unquestioningly accepted its every recommendation. (Caveat: An election is coming so who knows what that means.)

If you think Ontario Place is super boring, or you never even went there, just look at it from above. It’s a special place, with a special heritage, in a special location. For a city that always bemoans how it messed up the waterfront and how rarely it celebrates its own heritage, Ontario Place presents an absolutely perfect opportunity for some rectification. Of course, the devil’s in the details, and while we have a good framework for starting, now it’s time to make it happen.

Adaptation of Maple Leaf Gardens, for giving our history new life.

Andy Byford, for bringing customer-focused change to the TTC.

David Mirvish, for ambition writ large.

Astral Pillar Info Hackers, for taking Toronto’s sidewalks back.

The Ryerson Image Centre, living up to the university’s ambitions.