A brief stint of Radiohead concert rumours spread like wildfires last week. Ticketmaster had announced that the band would play two shows on May 26 and 27 at the Air Canada Centre, but mentioned neither the date for the tickets to go on sale nor the price of the tickets themselves—the announcement was quickly removed from the site. This is not the first time Ticketmaster has announced a Radiohead show that did not exist, and......

After the Toronto Blue Jays acquired a gimpy Scott Rolen in exchange for a gimpy Troy Glaus, the general consensus was that the two players cancelled each other out. One point, however, hasn't been discussed—possibly because it's utterly irrelevant to the game of baseball. Still, we feel it's worth mentioning that we'll no longer have to wince as Troy Glaus limps up to bat with "Crazy Train" blasting through the speakers. Instead, we'll apparently......

The Falconer report on violence in Toronto schools talks of a "culture of fear," saying that many students bring weapons to school, and many crimes go unreported. Some of the basic recommendations to fix things include more social workers and after-school basketball, fewer suspensions, more diverse teaching staff, and gun-sniffing springer spaniels to roam the halls. Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealander who was the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest,......

With self-check-in a success at airports around the country, Air Canada is preparing to implement a system that would see passengers check and tag their own luggage. Coming in 2009: who wants to learn how to fly a plane? In spite of fears that we might not be as greedy as last year, yesterday stores were jammed with eager bargain hunters seeking shiny stuff. The crush is expected to continue through the rest of......

Say what you will about the Toronto Maple Leafs, but they’re not boring. Incompetent, sure, but definitely not boring—not even during their recent, well-publicized losing streak. The Leafs are a middling 3–4–3 in their last ten games, yet they're oddly compelling to watch: they’re tied for third in league scoring (this, despite the inability of some of its key players to put the puck in the net) and they’re by far and away the......

Last week, Maple Leaf Gardens quietly turned 76. When the Gardens was sold to Loblaw in 2004, it appeared that the grocery store chain would fast-track the historic building into a supermarket. Now the projected summer 2007 construction date has come and gone, and nothing has changed since Torontoist covered the Gardens' 75th anniversary. We worried that the Gardens would be neglected while Loblaw dealt with its financial woes and ailing restructuring of existing......

With much-maligned NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in the crowd, the Toronto Maple Leafs dropped the puck on the 2007-08 season at the Air Canada Centre last night. He was probably unable to catch a glimpse of a homemade sign halfway across the arena that read: “Bettman: ruining the NHL since 1993.” Despite the Buds’ slightly new uniforms (which either look like pajamas or practice jerseys, depending on who you ask), one might have been......

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will now appear every Saturday. Three couples tried to break the world record for longest kiss last weekend at Mexx. If the photo above is any indication, it was precisely as awkward as kissing competitions tend to be! More photos are in......

Thanks to AEG Live, the same great people who gave us Justin Timberlake tickets to give away in April, we have yet another American cultural phenomenon looking to invade Canada: So You Think You Can Dance. So You Think You Can Dance comes to the Air Canada Centre on Thursday, November 1, 2007, at 8:00 p.m., and will feature the top 10 finalists from this season (which means, unfortunately, that it will not include the......

A survey by British research firm Skytrax has named Air Canada the best airline in North America. Travelers who have endured experienced the Air Canada business model of surly staff, vanishing meals, and rising fares will marvel at how low the bar for airline excellence on this continent has now been set. BabyFirst TV is coming to Canada. The first television channel aimed at babies will soon be offered on cable and satellite systems......

Every weekday, we pick an image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! At 3,340 metres, Runway 23 is the longest airstrip at Pearson International Airport, and watching jets land and take off from Airport Road is an awe-inspiring sight. A lounge in a nearby hotel was named for it, and "two three" was......

Study finds that Ontario children's group homes are like jails. Managers of group homes dismissed charges that their homes were Dickensian by pointing out that their children are not highly skilled pickpockets. Yet. Supreme Court to hear Windsor man's "fly phobia" case. Waddah Mustapha found a fly in his bottled water in 2001, and claims to have suffered immense mental damage and a phobia of flies as a result. He was awarded over $300,000 in......

Nine months into their existence, Porter Airlines chugs along, still under the radar of most. As the Toronto Star recently reported, the young airline is still struggling to find a steady stream of regular business customers. With traffic on the 401 at an all-time high, getting to Pearson during rush hours can potentially take as long as a flight to Montreal. On a weekend getaway, the give-or-take ten hours spent traveling to La Belle......

Over the past month, Hillary Clinton has been on the hunt for a campaign song, with her "exploratory committee" website inviting her followers to vote on a winner. Finalists included born-and-bred American bands like U2 and Shania Twain, as well as tried-and-true musical legends like Smash Mouth. This morning, however, the winner was announced. And Hilary Clinton's 2008 campaign song is...that Céline Dion song from that Air Canada commercial! It's such a good song......

Birth control pills can decimate wild fish populations if their presence in waste water is not treated more effectively. The synthetic estrogen in birth control pills decimates the sperm count of male wild fish, especially smaller fish like minnows. Odds that said waste water will be treated more effectively in Canada any time soon: probably quite low. Slain environmentalist likely targeted, Toronto police say. Glen Davis, a major supporter of both WWF Canada and the......

New Brunswick native Mary Martell knew something was weird when the baggage scanners at Saint John Airport asked why she had packed a turkey in her suitcase. On her way through to YYZ for a business trip, Martell had no fowl to declare, so airport officials curiously sent her luggage through without much further scrutiny, despite seeing a tiny skeleton on the x-ray screen. After an uneventful two-hour Air Canada flight to Toronto, Martell's luggage......

Justin Timberlake. Where to begin? Tracing his life story to this point requires little more than listing nouns. Mickey Mouse Club. Britney Spears. *NSYNC. Justified. Wardrobe Malfunction. SexyBack. Dick in a Box. Timberlake is the epitome of a guilty pleasure, someone who is intensely hard to dislike, try as some might. No-one in recent memory has drawn more comparisons to Michael Jackson, been as successful post-boy-band, or created catchier pop songs (dude's even Pitchfork-approved).......

On Tuesday, the second-place New Jersey Devils came to play their road game at the Air Canada Centre, clogging up the neutral zone and waiting for the Maple Leafs to make a mistake. Which might have worked, had they been able to take the lead. But the Leafs played patient, capitalized on the power play, and held on for a 2-1 win. It was only after the oft-maligned Nik Antropov scored the Leafs’ second......

A CN train jumps the tracks in Kingston, delaying rail traffic between Toronto and Montreal/Ottawa. Nobody was hurt, but observers told reporters this in a tone of serious disbelief because thirty-two train cars went off the rails less than a thousand feet from Kingston's passenger station, and apparently it was quite disturbing to see, what with the thousands of tons of out-of-control metal and all. A Canadian soldier has been charged with manslaughter in the......

For the long-suffering fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the year 1967 has become synonymous with past glories and forty years of failure. On Saturday night, the surviving members of the last Leaf team to win the Stanley Cup were reunited at the Air Canada Centre for the first time since that storied championship. An Alex Trebek-narrated video tribute began the proceedings, in what turned out to be a relatively simple, modest, and perhaps......

David Suzuki, Green Avenger and Captain of Awesome, says that Torontonians have the right to know what pollutants are in the air we're breathing. 75% of the industrial pollution in our urban air is not being disclosed to the public! Save us, Suzuki! Air Canada is no longer flying to India, a move which business leaders around the city say will harm Indo-Canadian business relationships. Services to India were cancelled to boost service to......

Torontoist realizes that in some cases there's no point adding another concert review to the pile. But since we love concerts and our over-educated minds can't turn off their on-going critical evaluations, we present a review of the reviews. This post: last night's Bob Dylan concert at the Air Canada Centre. Publication: Toronto Sun Writer: Bill Harris Title: Dylan ain’t a changin’. Ignoring the grammatical fumbling of the reference to an album title (The......

Council is dealing with the fallout of the landfill deal. The Star found data that the city could've bought land at the Green Lane landfill site for much cheaper last year but did nothing. Jane Pitfield realises a day after the vote that she voted the wrong way and ended up supporting the mayor. George Smitherman is now deputy premier. If this means George gets more face-time during Question Period we might start watching. Whistleblower......

The City wants to allow you to add more items to your recycling bin. Proposals are in the works to allow polystyrene, spiral containers (ie. frozen juice concentrate cans) and even plastic bags. The problem is that the city's recycling capacity is maxed out and the City is desperately looking for more cash to increase capacity. Ok, which of you are hoarding green Steamwhistle bottles? The popular brewery is experiencing a bottle shortage and wants......

The Toronto Maple Leafs looked like a real team this past weekend. After a hard fought shootout loss to the New York Islanders on Friday, they went on to capture their third point in two nights, defeating the defending Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning 5-1 at the Air Canada Centre. After avoiding a trade deadline move this past Thursday, centreman Jason Allison played one of his best games as Leaf, scoring a pair of......

From where Torontoist is sitting it looks quite lovely outside but don't be fooled. It's cold outside and we just want to remind you to please bundle up, maybe even wearing a jester cap, before going out to do whatever it is you'll be doing this Friday evening. The Weather Office has the windchill at around -25 tonight and sadly it'll stay like this for most of the weekend. *Also, if you skate and can't......

Torontoist got to see their first ever lacrosse game on Saturday. Not only that, we saw our first ever sporting event at the Air Canada Centre (Torontoist only became a Torontoian last year). For free no less. And if there's something to be said about free tickets, it's that you can't complain about the seats. And we actually couldn't. We were directly behind the bench of the 2005 NLL champions Toronto Rock - close enough......

Kevin Drew, the braintrust behind Canada's premiere art-rock collective-typ band, is now trying his hand at travel writing. But instead of selling a blurb on Ft Lauderdale to Maclean's or something of that ilk, the easy-on-the-eyes singer went to Silver Spring, Maryland to sell articles about Toronto. For Harp Magazine, a U.S. music magazine, Drew wrote a quick-hits, some nonsense guide to Toronto. He highlights Rotate This, a bar that's been closed for some time,......

Kanye West? He was okay. His DJ, A-Trak? Now that fool can spin! After the West affair at the Air Canada Centre, former Montrealer A-Trak and his avant-gardish music troupe arrived the Kanye-Afterparty at Revival without a clear strategy. There was a drum, some keyboards, a table, and a lady shaking a shaker. A-Trak mentioned that there was no precedent for this act, and that they had just been experimenting with live DJ-percussion sets......

After a busy offseason, Raptor Basketball is back at the Air Canada Centre tonight. With all the second-guessing and criticism following every personell decision this summer, it will be interesting to see how the team responds in 05/06. There is no question that veteran leadership is at a minimum this year, however, if the preseason is any indication, it looks like Rob Babcock made the right moves on draft day. First round selections, Charlie Villanueva......