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.

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.

Toronto city council wants to improve health care for medically uninsured residents, especially those who avoid treatment because they lack immigration status in Canada. They can’t do it all directly, but on Thursday night, councillors voted 21-7 to ask the provincial government to strengthen access to basic health care programs for residents ineligible for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).

Many refugees, undocumented residents, people who have lost their identification, and even permanent residents of Canada do not qualify for OHIP benefits. Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, says that expanding health care access is both humanitarian and practical. “Early intervention is almost always less costly than dealing with a more advanced illness later in its course,” he told council.

According to a Board of Health report on the medically uninsured [PDF], the most vulnerable of them are undocumented residents, many of whom avoid hospitals for fear of deportation. When these individuals do access emergency medical services, they are routinely billed several times more for services than insured residents. That too needs attention, say some. “The billing system needs an overhaul so that anyone can access health care at a fair price,” maintained Denise Gastaldo, associate professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, after council’s vote. “Today’s decision is a step in the right direction.”

Toronto to Consider Becoming ‘Sanctuary City’ for Undocumented Residents

Also among those who can’t access services: permanent residents, who are eligible for OHIP benefits, but only after a three month waiting period. Council has asked the province to eliminate this gap in service, citing the fact that permanent residents spend years going through the application process before being accepted, and that by the time they arrive here they have already met immigration requirements.

McKeown also attempted to dispel myths about so-called “medical tourists,” who migrate to Ontario simply to receive medical care. “That’s not in fact what happens most of the time,” he said.

A few councillors remained unconvinced, arguing that medical tourists are indeed taking advantage of health care services in Ontario. “You can land at Pearson, and come into Toronto and say ‘I’m here, give me services,’ ” said councillor David Shiner (Ward 24, Willowdale). Councillor Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) said that he’s heard criticism of the proposal from older, “bonafide” immigrants. “Now all of a sudden, there’s a different kind of attitude with new immigration that you meet them at the door and have to provide everything,” Del Grande said.

Councillor John Filion (Ward 23 Willowdale) questioned the sincerity of such arguments. “If [Del Grande] saw an injured child, he wouldn’t say, ‘show me your citizenship,’ ” Filion argued. “It’s very easy to push your no button when it’s a bunch of faceless people you don’t meet.” Filion and others also argued that uninsured people with communicable illnesses threaten public health if they refrain from seeking treatment.

The province already funds services for the medically uninsured, mainly through local community health centres. Yesterday’s recommendations include requests to increase funding for those services. Council has also asked the federal government to restore cuts to critical refugee health care funding, made last summer.

Axelle Janczur, executive director of community health care hub Access Alliance, said that while some health care solutions for the uninsured involve navigating complex immigration circumstances, many are easy to solve. “We need to know who exactly has access, and provide them with better information,” Janczur said. “That part is not really controversial.”

Beloved Queen East watering hole The Avro will pour its last pint on April 26, 2013.

Well, it certainly lived up to its name. Ask the residents of Riverdale and Leslieville, and they’ll say The Avro is considered to be an example of the ideal small business in the neighbourhood—locally owned, supportive of other community projects and events, inviting, friendly, wholly invested in its customers and neighbours, and peddling a quality product as well. But yesterday, the bar’s Facebook page posted the headline “The Avro Project Cancelled Again,” swiftly and abruptly ending its successful nearly-three-year run as a community leader, meeting place, and drinking hole before its time.

Also like its namesake, the decision is sparking some outrage.

“Like the historic Avro airplane, we must give way to foreign imposition before our time,” the announcement reads.”Thank you to the countless people, friends, neighbours and local business owners we’ve met, and for all the support you have given throughout our three remarkable years. We hope the spirit The Avro endeavoured to cultivate will live on in the east, and that friendships made around our bar will continue to grow beyond our closing.”

There’s no word yet on what is slated to replace The Avro’s space on Queen East, but it likely won’t keep the bar’s signature plaid curtains, costumed mannequins, and chalkboard bathroom walls. So Leslieville and Riverside residents will have one last flight on The Avro on Friday, April 26.

The Avro’s owners, Rachel Conduit and Bruce Dawson, opened the bar in 2010, and by the establishment’s first birthday they had already inspired a wellspring of east end culture. Comedy nights, video-game marathons, live music, letter-writing clubs, community gardens, toboggan and bike rides, and the East End Icon calendar were all initiatives that brought sleepy Riversiders out of their homes and into the neighbourhood. Simply being open until 2 a.m. seven nights a week was revolutionary along Queen East.

But for the past two months, Dawson and Conduit have been involved in a battle with their landlord over a rent hike and noise restrictions. With their three-year lease at its end, Conduit told Torontoist that negotiations ended with The Avro’s landlord asking for a 120 per cent increase and a rule prohibiting music after 11 p.m. (Conduit and Dawson thought a 30 per cent increase would be fair). “They just wanted us out,” Conduit said.

While part of The Avro’s demise seems personal, it comes at a time when Riverside is experiencing one the biggest increases in commercial property-tax assessment values in all of Toronto. The Riverside BIA fears that some local businesses won’t survive. The Avro’s longtime neighbours, LPK’s Culinary Groove and Loic Gourmet, also shut down recently.

“Bruce and I are pretty at peace with it, it has obviously been a couple months of struggling and fighting for it. So through all that, we’re at a good place now and understand this is the way it has to be,” said Conduit, who also owns the bicycle-themed bar Handlebar, which just happens to be located in Kensington Market, another neighbourhood at risk of losing its independent businesses due to rent increases.

And because Conduit and Dawson are now okay with saying goodbye to The Avro, they’re finding themselves being the ones offering a kind shoulder to their customers upset by the news.

“It’s like, ‘Aww, it’s okay!’ ‘Thank you! You’re very sweet’ ‘You’ll find another place!’” Conduit said.

“I was pretty surprised, and very disappointed,” said Morgan McIver about The Avro’s closure. “Everyone knows what Rachel and Bruce do for Riverside and Leslieville. It’s not just a bar making noise. These two are spearheading the changes around this community and making it more of a community.”

McIver has lived directly above the bar for the past two years with her sister, and it was one of the first stops they made after moving to the neighbourhood. “We ended up having the best night ever and met a bunch of people in the area. Even though we haven’t really hung out with those people, it’s still another ‘hello’ on the street.” McIver even has Conduit’s cell phone number in case they need to quiet down, though she has only needed to use it once.

Dana Harrison, who also lives around the corner from The Avro, ran her blog Well-Preserved as a hobby when Conduit convinced her to host a monthly meet-up event at the bar. The popularity of their Home Ec series snowballed into a trend that has since received attention in the United States and Britain.

“She’s the one who helped us push it ahead, and the next thing I know we’ve done it 12 times in a row,” Harrison said. “The conversation always kind of turned to that type of thing when we were sitting around the bar, so it became more of an instigator of other community projects. She was just really inspiring to a lot of other people to get them off their butts and thinking about the whole neighbourhood as a whole, that we’re all a part of one thing.”

Harrison will be moving her events over to Handlebar after their final instalment at The Avro next month. She says she would have preferred to keep it in the neighbourhood, but there isn’t another space suitable for it. Conduit also says that her community activism will continue in Riverside even without a physical space, as a member of the Riverside BIA.

CORRECTION: March 26, 2013, 6:00 PM This post originally said that Riverside is experiencing the highest increase in property tax rates of any neighborhood in Toronto. In fact, the area is experiencing one of the highest rates of commercial property-tax assessment growth. Assessment growth helps the City adjust a property’s taxes, but it’s not the same thing as a tax increase.

We Live Here unlocks the stories behind some of Toronto’s most unique, quirky, and all-out weird homes, the people who live in them, and the people who live with them.

Mike Donis in The Young Man and the Lake.

Yes, Mike Donis is a 27-year-old Toronto filmmaker who has been living year-round on Obsession—his 35-foot-long, 13-foot-wide boat—since September 2010. And yes, he has heard that song.

“Every single time I go somewhere and people ask me where I live, I say ‘I’m near the water at Queens Quay and Bathurst.’ And they ask the intersection, and I say, ‘No, I’m on the water in a boat.’ Then they go ‘You’re on a boat? I’m on a boat! I’m on a boat!’”

Donis was sitting on an old ’70s couch inside Obsession‘s entertaining area/kitchen/TV room, throwing his arms up and deepening his voice to recite the lyrics of the granddaddy of viral videos: “I’m on a Boat,” by The Lonely Island and T-Pain. “That’s exactly what happens every single time,” he said.

But a quick tour around Obsession (it doesn’t take much time) reveals a living space that has nothing in common with the pristine white yachts so often associated with the boating life. Climbing down several steep steps from the deck into the cabin brings us into the main living space. Towards the back is a bedroom and bathroom, and closer to the front of the boat is a guest room that’s more of a storage space at the moment, filled with what Donis calls “garbage.” He hopes to turn it into something useful.

And Donis isn’t permanently dressed in a black-and-white tuxedo, or designer creased Bermuda shorts. As he gives Torontoist the grand tour around his 34-year-old barge, he wears a pair of jeans and a casual red button-down shirt. The word that comes to mind is “humble.”

“Because millionaires have them, I assumed they were a million bucks. I didn’t know that if you get a Millennium Falcon like this, you can actually get one for a reasonable price,” Donis said. He found the boat on Kijiji. “It’s more comparable to buying a car than to buying a house, if you’re not buying a new boat.”

A few years ago, Donis was living in Scarborough, but hoping to move into the city for work. In 2010, when he visited an uncle who was spending the winter living on a friend’s boat, he realized he had found a solution. He contacted the people at Marina Quay West, bought the boat, and made the move.

“You could live downtown, that was what kind of sealed the deal. At the time, outside of the upfront cost, the monthly fee was less than what I would pay in rent. Even outside of the cool factor and the adventure factor and just being different, it was actually cost-effective,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’”

The docks at 539 Queens Quay West are technically a gated community. The only foot traffic is from other boat owners.

Now docked at 539 Queen’s Quay West, the boat is just southeast of Fort York and just north of the Island Airport. It’s surrounded by a glass wall of condo buildings on one side and Lake Ontario on the other. It has an unblockable view of the CN Tower. You could argue that Donis scored a pretty prime location for only about $600 to $750 a month (this season, docking fees are $72 per square foot per six-month-period). In the summer, the neighbourhood buzzes with festivals, outdoor movies, and runners and rollerbladers galore. But in the marina, it’s even livelier.

“It’s a good thing that I’m young and energetic because I don’t know how some of the old guys do it. But they party a lot,” Donis said with a laugh. “In the summertime, you have a lot of people who are only coming for fun. The only time that they’re here is to party all the time. They’re not here for necessarily any other purpose.”

Donis, too, has had his fair share of parties (he once fit about 25 people inside the boat). And despite the marina being chock-a-block with wealthy vacationers or their teenage children during the summertime, the season is still his favourite part of being a boater.

“You can go anywhere you want. I haven’t gone anywhere very far yet, but the fact that you can—it puts you in a different mindset,” he said. In fact, the longest trip Donis has ever taken with his boat was the first one, from the Scarborough Bluffs to his first marina downtown. It took about four hours, because it was his first time solo at the wheel. But it did result in some primo Facebook photos. “And just the environment here, it’s like going to the cottage or going camping or something like that, but it’s every day,” he said

Mike Donis, at home on the water.

But on the wintry January morning Torontoist visited Donis’ home on Pier 3, the atmosphere was much different. The marina, half-full with boats covered in shiny white tarps, was desolate. It looked like a nearly finished pack of Dentyne Ice. And the only thing close to summertime tunes was the beginner violinist–like creaking of the docks moving in the waves. Burly bearded boaters strolled to the main water facility to refill their jugs, since the water supply is cut off to the slips during the colder season. They gruffly greeted each other in passing. Donis says there is a certain rustic type of personality that chooses to hunker in a boat year-round. Still, there’s a sense of community.

“I’m closer with these people than any other neighbours I’ve had. When I moved here, everyone was quick to give me tips and pointers. ‘Oh, here’s how to shrinkwrap your boat, here’s a smarter kind of heater to get, here’s what you should do to your engines in the wintertime.’ There’s a bit of a camaraderie,” he said. “I’m right downtown, Spadina’s a block away, but I’m in a small town.”

Which isn’t to say that leaving steady ground for a home on the lake is entirely easy. Donis has to deal with noise that travels across water, the occasional storm (luckily, he doesn’t get seasick), having to shower on land in the winter, and a lack of space. “It forces you to be very, very efficient with what you have,” he said. Still, he doesn’t see himself abandoning ship anytime soon.

“I don’t think there’s anything really tough about living on a boat, it’s just something you have to adapt to. In the future when we have flying cars, we’ll think back and wonder ‘Oh, how did we ever manage?’ You just do,” he said. “And it’s cool. They wrote a song about it for a reason.”

Hat-tip to the Toronto International Boat Show for bringing this to our attention. The show runs from January 12 to 20 at the Direct Energy Centre.

Kristen Thomson and Tom Rooney play married couple Cathy and Peter in Someone Else.

Someone Else
Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley Street)
January 7 to February 2, 8 p.m., Wednesday matinees at 1:30 p.m., Saturday matinees at 2 p.m.
$22–$49

The characters in Kristen Thomson’s plays are usually plucked straight from her own subconscious, deeply inspired by her personal experiences. Her latest script is no different. The titular “someone else” doesn’t mean she’s completely stepping into a foreign pair of shoes, but rather that she’s exploring the crisis that plagues so many of those entering middle age: a changing identity.

Opening this Thursday in a co-production with Crow’s Theatre and Canadian Stage, Someone Else is a story directed by Thomson’s longtime collaborator, Chris Abraham. It explores a marriage on the brink. The troubled spouses are a standup comedian, Cathy, played by Thomson, and a doctor, Peter, played by Stratford actor Tom Rooney.

Torontoist sat down with the two actors to talk about the creative process, the pain of loss, and how finding the right collaborator is like finding a soulmate.

Torontoist: Can you tell us what the play is about?

Kristen Thomson: It’s a story of a couple at a very difficult time in their relationship, because they’re each at a time in their lives when their relationship with each other is changing. They kind of want the relationship to be the way it has been, but it can’t because they’re changing, and that friction makes a lot of who they are deep down erupt. The play is the fallout that follows.

Tom Rooney: It’s a coming-of-age story for middle-aged people.

Kristen, why was this a subject you wanted to tackle now?

KT: I am interested in middle age because that’s where I am, and I’m finding it pretty interesting—what feels like an identity shift. It’s like a second adolescence. And also, as part of that, I’m in a long-term relationship and I’m interested in what happens. How do you love someone over such a long period of time when your own identity is shifting and certainly their identity is shifting? I had these seeds planted thinking about my own life, and then created this couple that would be in couple’s therapy. That was the first idea.

And Tom, when did you get involved?

TR: I was in on the early workshops, that was what, two years ago?

KT: Certainly a year and a half. But you know, Tom had been working with Chris [Abraham] at Stratford, so when I offered up these ideas, [Abraham] thought of Tom immediately. So Tom has been one of the primary creators and, like all the people who come as part of the creative team, [he started] influencing the play.

If you make room for people to make contributions from the beginning, what you work towards is kind of a built, constructed thing and not exclusively words on a page.

TR: The story has really emerged, hasn’t it? It still is, to some extent… Even though I’ve known about it for the last year and a half, I’m still finding more depth to it and more elements to the story that hadn’t really occurred to me before.

It’s very beautiful, and its very funny, and it’s very hopeful, even though it’s quite…

KT: Harsh.

TR: Harsh. In with the comedy is the pain we feel and the pain we inflict on each other. Everyone can relate to that. But in the end, I think it’s very hopeful and very beautiful.

How do you deal with that, being horrible to each other and feeling all that pain, day after day?

TR: As an actor you want something to excite you onstage.

KT: What you don’t want to have is if you’re with, like, a cold fish. You know, where everyone’s being polite? That can happen. It in fact doesn’t feel like pain, it feels like there’s a tremendous amount of generosity and openness that gives you something to play with.

TR: And also, with these two characters, they have a history. And that history involves love, and concern, and care. So at the bottom of all the turmoil, there’s still that. They’re still very much connected with each other.

Kristen, do you have any reservations about using such personal material in your plays?

KT: I don’t necessarily have a story in my mind I want to plot out and tell. I’m more trying to find a way to tap into my subconscious and get out there. So in a way, even though it’s very personal, I’m grappling with stuff that’s not completely known to me. One level it’s really, really rewarding, and on the other, it’s quite scary.

Tom, since it’s so personal to Kristen, what did you relate to in the play?

TR: The thing about being middle-aged to me is that it’s a time in your life where you can look back, but also look forward, and in that regard it’s really unique. I think there’s a great deal to relate to. And in terms of relationships, they’re always changing and you’re always trying to figure out how to keep them going and how to keep them healthy.

I noticed that you said you started working on this show about a year and a half ago. I know that on December 30, 2010, your wife [theatre director Gina Wilkinson] passed away from cancer. What was that experience like, working on a show about a crumbling marriage when you had just lost someone you loved?

TR: You take the experience you have in life, and you can’t help but use it in what you do. I think loss and grief is a part of everyday life, and I think in some ways Cathy and Peter are dealing with a loss.

KT: And you know, I’ve also experienced major loss in my life, and there is also the idea that you just want to keep working, right? Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible to continue on, but then you do.

TR: Also I’ve found that this community is a great place to be when going through difficulties because there’s a tremendous amount of support. And we’re also in the business of understanding emotions and conflict and troubles. They can empathize because that’s what we do. And Gina, being the incredible theatre person she was—

KT: She was incredible.

TR: She loved telling stories, she lived to tell stories. That’s what she would want. She would love to see me working with these people. She would definitely want to see this play, she would love to see this play.

Kristen, you’ve developed a very strong partnership with Chris Abraham, having done I, Claudia, The Patient Hour, and now Someone Else with him. What do you think is the value in having that reliable relationship?

KT: I’m the writer, but I somehow feel like [Abraham]’s the storyteller. He’s the one who has his eye on the story, has an idea of a beginning, middle, and end. He keeps me writing in the right direction and from over-writing quite a bit. Quite a bit. I would say, by the time we’re starting rehearsal, both of us have an equal relationship to what’s happening in the play. I think that true sense of collaboration is unique.

The way you talk about it, it seems like finding a collaborator is just as difficult as it is finding a soulmate. There’s the “dating” period where you try out different people, but then you find the one you’re looking for. Is that kind of how it is?

KT: I think that you’ve said it absolutely right, I don’t even want to comment on it. That’s absolutely right, it is that rare.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

A crowd at the first-ever AGO 1st Thursday, on October 4.

CULTURE: Ever wanted to know more about Yiddish? Yiddish Vinkl is a group of people who are interested in all things related to the language and its associated culture. And fear not if you don’t speak any Yiddish: the meet-ups are all conducted in English and are open to everyone. Free Times Cafe (320 College Street), 12 p.m., FREE.

ART PARTY: Over at the AGO, it’s the very 1st Thursday of the year (get it?). If you haven’t yet discovered this monthly series of in-gallery parties, they feature art, artists, live music, food, and drinks all at once. The AGO (317 Dundas Street West), 6:30 p.m.–11 p.m. Advance tickets sold out, limited $12 rush tickets available at the door.

ART: These days, thanks to Hollywood, superheroes are everywhere. But art galleries are still lacking in capes and tights—which is where Hashtag Gallery comes in. Check out a comic-themed art show that features many of the characters you know and love. Work from artists W. Scott Forbes, Ricky Kruger, Alina Urusov, Cy Berlin, and Deena Pagliarello will be on display. Hashtag Gallery (801 Dundas Street West), opening reception 7:30 p.m.–11:30 p.m., FREE.

Urban Planner is Torontoist‘s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to events@torontoist.com.

The Dineen Building's Yonge Street facade.

Sometimes you find a diamond in the rough in the heart of the city.

Take, for example, the Dineen Building, located in the Financial District, at the corner of Yonge and Temperance streets. It’s a heritage building that has recently been restored by a developer called Commercial Realty Group.

In Toronto, full of brand-spanking-new eyesores like the Trump Tower, Commercial Realty Group president, Clayton Smith, is preserving pieces of our past. His company bought Toronto’s Gooderham Building (also known as the Flatiron building), a restored 19th-century office building, in 2011. The wedge-shaped structure has been a fixture at the corner of Church and Wellington streets since 1892.

But why did Smith purchase the Dineen Building—which, unlike the Flatiron, was an eyesore? He recognized the beauty underneath the dirt and soot-stains.

The Dineen Building was built in 1897 by William Dineen, a Toronto fur producer and hat maker. The W. And D. Dineen Company had offices, workshops, and a showroom in the building—which goes to show how far hat purveyors have fallen.

In 1917, the no-doubt-beautiful showroom full of furs and chapeaus was destroyed by a fire that did an estimated $10,000 in damage.

Commercial Realty Group president, Clayton Smith, on the roof of the Dineen Building.

The Dineen Building was restored after the fire. In 1973, it was listed in the City of Toronto’s Inventory of Heritage Properties, and in 2008 it was given a heritage designation. Even so, it languished in the hands of its owners. Smith purchased the the rundown structure in 2011 for a song.

According to Smith, the space was in need of major work. The ceiling in the Yonge and Temperance storefront had been lowered by 11 feet. The original iron balconies were so rusted that some pieces dangled precariously above pedestrian walkways. Squatters had to be evicted.

The Dineen Building prior to its restoration. Photo courtesy of Clayton Smith.

This didn’t deter Smith. That’s because he, unlike some other property owners, is willing to pay for excellent restoration work.

During a tour of the Dineen Building—still under renovation but already partially occupied by iQ Office Suites—Smith pointed out some of the finer points of the restoration work. In the lobby stands a safe from J&J Taylor Safeworks, (otherwise known as Toronto Safe Works), a mid-19th-century foundry that held a near-monopoly in the local safe-making business thanks to their products’ reputation for being fire and theft proof. Two more J&Js reside on the third floor, built into the wall of the building.

A J&J Taylor Safeworks safe, preserved in one of the Dineen Building's walls.

In a street-level retail space, set to open as a café in the spring, two iron columns with fleur de lis capitals support the centre of the room. The space is empty and dusty, but ready for the new tenant. Smith’s team restored the building’s original boiler-room door and mounted it to the wall of the retail area. From the looks of it, the local coffee chain Balzacs would do wonders with the space, but Mr. Smith woudn’t say specifically who is expected to move in.

It’s hard to picture what the building’s patio will look like right now, because it’s cold, dreary, and ridiculously grey outside. But the wrought-iron patio railing gives the space a decidedly Parisian feel. It’s in the middle of a very busy downtown corner, and yet, at the same time, it’s quiet. The entrance to the building lobby is located on Temperance Street, past the future patio.

The building's street-level retail space.

The sophisticated will appreciate the work Mr. Smith’s team has put into the Dineen. An additional floor to for the building is also in the works—a glass-roofed restaurant with a patio that will give diners a chance to see the stars—or a glimpse of who’s still toiling in their office late on a Friday night.

For what it is and what it will be, the Dineen restoration is indeed a jewel.

And what is Smith doing after the work is done? “I’ll go surfing in Costa Rica,” he said ruefully, playing with his fedora. “This is exhausting work.”

I Want Your Job finds Torontonians who make a living doing exactly what they love to do, in any field, and for any salary, and asks them how they did it.

In her work as conservator of contemporary and Inuit art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Sherry Phillips is part MacGyver and part…well, let’s just say that right now she’s working on touching up a giant hamburger.

“This was the first [public art] intervention of significance,” explains Phillips, whose restoration of Claus Oldenburg’s 1962 Floor Burger sculpture is currently taking place on the gallery floor, where attendees can see it as it happens. The burger—which, for copyright reasons, can only be seen in public and not in a photo at the top of this here edition of I Want Your Job—will be heading off to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the spring.

But art conservation, according to Phillips, is a lot more than just restoration. And, unlike the AGO’s current live-restoration burger exhibit, it usually happens behind closed doors, in a laboratory hidden within the belly of the museum. We got a look at all of it.

Our interview with Phillips is below.

Torontoist: So, the age-old question: how did you get into art conservation?

Sherry Phillips: I was doing my undergraduate in science and I fully expected to go on to a career in research. Then I had a summer job actually doing research and I really didn’t like it. I hated it. So I had to rethink everything that I was doing. I went through one of the government-sponsored programs for recent graduates—like career-counselling stuff—and I came across this little information packet about art conservation.

All of a sudden, I started putting things together in my head, like, “Oh, that’s why I always skipped genetics labs to go to the ROM or the AGO!” I always took art courses to go along with the science, but I never put two and two together.

I talked to a whole bunch of conservators. The painting conservator at the ROM at the time gave me a break. She took me for six weeks or something, and I fell in love with it. Then I went back to school and did art history and art studio for a year, and then they accepted me into the program.

What do you do from day to day?

It’s different every day. In this institution, it tends to be driven by loans or exhibitions. So, getting artwork ready for those. Something like the burger, for instance. We’re lending it to MOMA, so there was more incentive to bring it out of storage and get it on display because of that loan we agreed to.

Part of having conservation on display is the promotion of what we do, and [our] preservation efforts. I’m pleasantly surprised by how popular it has been. Usually, we’re behind the scenes.

Some tools of the trade.

What’s the actual process of restoring artwork like?

We approach each artwork as an individual piece. The treatment of an artwork is always an individualized plan. Nothing is ever the same.

So, you have to research each piece?

You research the artwork, and you research the materials. There’s lots to consider with each artwork, and even some paint layers. I sent some paint samples [from the burger] to the Canadian Conservation Institute and they did analysis on them for me to determine exactly what kind of paint the artist used, the pigments used, the binding mediums that were there, and so on.

You do contemporary conservation. I imagine your experience is very different from that of those who focus on older works.

In a way. I find with contemporary, I tend to borrow techniques and ideas from all the different disciplines. Because I might have something that has paper, metal, paint, and all these different things on it. Then there’s time-based media, which is a whole other discipline in itself.

It’s more than just restoration. It’s the preservation of artwork. We promote, we advocate, and we safeguard the artwork. Every aspect of how this artwork is stored, or exhibited, or handled in transportation, we have say and involvement in that. So, if I can use the burger for example, yes, I’m treating it so that the paint layers will be stable to travel. But I’m also intervening in the stuffing, to redistribute it slightly so that it looks better as a burger. But I don’t want it to be too perfect because it’s a 50-year-old burger. That just wouldn’t look right.

How do you know where to draw the line?

I work with a curator. The two of us stand there and we have images from the ’60s, and we go back to those images.

So, you’re trying to make it consistent with how it’s always looked?

We’re trying to make it consistent with how it should look. It’s a soft sculpture, so it’s always shifting. But some of that movement has gone to an extreme, so we have to reverse that.

It sounds like very nuanced work.

In many ways, it is! There’s a huge aesthetic component to it as well as the mechanical stabilizing aspect. You kind of do the mechanical first, knowing that the aesthetic component will come. But your treatment plan is always multifaceted. It’s never very simple.

A few weeks ago, there was an announcement that saddened many Torontonians: the Mr. Christie bakery, near Lake Shore Boulevard, would be closing. It’s the end of a longtime landmark, and also of 550 jobs. Etobicoke councillors are concerned that factory owner Mondelez Canada wants to have the land rezoned for residential development—cue the condo alarm bells—and that this will lead to the loss of further employment lands in the area, and in particular threaten the future of the Ontario Food Terminal.

Today, in an effort to reverse that trend, city council voted unanimously to ask the province to declare the Food Terminal and the land around it, including the Mr. Christie site, “a provincially significant employment area”—which would have more effect than the municipal government’s designation, because it would preclude appeals to the OMB.

Local councillor and Planning and Growth Management chair Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore) has been championing this cause. In an interview with us last week he explained why he thinks this is a matter of not just municipal but provincial concern: it’s not so much the Mr. Christie plant itself, though that’s garnered most of the headlines, but that bakery’s ability to serve as a buffer between the condos that have already been allowed in the area and the Food Terminal. And the Food Terminal, he contends, is essential. It’s the largest produce distribution in the country and the third largest in North America. For decades Toronto has been a major food processing centre, and Milczyn’s worry is that if condos start encroaching on the Food Terminal the province, which owns the site, will be tempted to move it outside of Toronto—and this, he says, could have a cascading effect on other local businesses, ranging from those processors to the many small shop grocers who make the journey to the Terminal several times a week to stock up.

He is also concerned about the future of development in Etobicoke. “We’re reaching a point where the infrastructure to support increased residential is not there,” he says, “in terms of traffic capacity, in terms of public transit, schools, libraries, other facilities.”

Nobody really expects today’s vote to save the Mr. Christie plant: even if the provincial government grants the City’s request, Mondelez is likely to shut it. (They could then sell the land to someone else who wanted to operate a factory, manufacturing site, etc., if they were denied the opportunity to build condos on it.) But the reason councillors from across the City spent time speaking on the matter today is that they share a concern about the shrinking availability of employment land in Toronto. And they hope that by maintaining the current zoning and planning designations, they might not only preserve the Food Terminal but find a way to spur some new economic activity in the area. Council, following a motion from Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), is now going to consider striking up a working group to examine the prospects for “hosting educational and/or commercial food incubator programs and possible new food industry tenants” on the land.