Behind the gloss of the Shops at Don Mills, a few office buildings and plazas that haven’t experienced redevelopment still line the southwest quadrant of The Donway. A passing glance at the tenants of 49 The Donway West reveals an exiled anchor of the old Don Mills Centre (Home Hardware), service-based merchants (Cadet Cleaners, The [...]

Ask Torontoist features questions posed by you, and answered by our elite team of specially trained investigative experts (also known as our staff). Send your questions to ask@torontoist.com. David Newland asks: The August 12, 2010 Photoist shows the Seaton Butcher Shop. Does Seaton Butcher get their hand-painted signs from the Honest Ed’s sign painters? Or [...]

The Diesel ad on the side of the Rex, earlier in August, being put up. Photo by Nancy Paiva/Torontoist. Diesel’s most recent ad campaign is stupid. The company’ll readily admit it: “Be Stupid” is the whole hook. Ads beg consumers to “Think Less. Stupid More.” Others warn that “There’s no cure for stupid.” Stupider still, [...]

Of the many iconic Depression-era photographs, perhaps one of the most recognizable is Charles Ebberts’ Lunch Atop a Skyscraper (1932). Taken during the building of the RCA Building, Ebbets’ supposedly un-posed photo depicts eleven construction workers sharing cigarettes and eating boxed lunches while perched sixty-nine stories above a Manhattan sidewalk. Thanks to a Toronto advertising [...]

The property at 224 Queen Street West was taken over by Juxta Productions last summer to promote movies. The property at 224 Queen Street West, at the corner of Queen and McCaul, appears at first glance to be an ordinary neighbourhood coffee shop. That is, until you look closer. Inside, the glass fridges are filled [...]

Six days ago, we told you that City Council was about to discuss a proposed new sign bylaw and tax. Today, they finished. After seven years of campaigning by public space and arts activists, two years of research and work by city staff, and a day and a half of debate in the Council Chamber, [...]

76 Church Street. Photo courtesy of Illegal Signs. The billboard industry is—obviously—in the business of getting messages across. This they have managed to do, with a vengeance. In anticipation of today’s City Council debate on a proposed new billboard bylaw and tax, the billboard industry has been using its own platform to communicate its deep [...]

Top: the Edgewater’s roof, as it was in 2000. Photo by Kevin Steele. Bottom: the Edgewater last week. Photo by Joel Charlebois/Torontoist. The Edgewater Hotel sign is gone. City officials ordered that the Parkdale landmark be removed on November 3, after nearly three years of working to convince the owner of the building to which [...]

Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist. Late last night the City’s proposed new billboard bylaw and tax [PDF] cleared a major hurdle, unanimously passing through the Planning and Growth Management Committee on its way to a hearing before the full City Council. The meeting ran ’til about 11 p.m. and had to be moved from one of [...]

Walking down Spadina Avenue between College and Dundas streets, you might completely miss them, so well do they blend in with the street scene. But stop by one of Chinatown’s many municipal trash bins, let your eyes wander up slightly, and you might see one, attached to a utility pole, doing its best imitation of [...]