Vintage postcard of the Toronto General Hospital (1913) from Mars Discovery District. Encounters with government bureaucracy can be stressful ordeals at the best of times; at the worst, when things don’t go your way, they can be incredibly frustrating. Apparently, this is true even if you’re a Polaris Music Prize–winning musician. Former Torontoist contributor Carly Beath pointed us toward Owen Pallett recounting his recent travails with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care......

One day Pamela Anderson stood in the centre turn lane of a highway, clad only in a Canadian flag...picturing it? Welcome to the lead photo for the "Best of Canada" edition of SNAP!. Now in its seventh year, SNAP! combines a juried competition for established and emerging photographers with a gala fundraiser on March 2 at the National Ballet School. Organizers predict that the works offered in live and silent auctions will raise $140,000......

It's been the best of times, it's been the worst of times for the Toronto Maple Leafs; in fact, the past couple weeks have been nothing short of surreal. First, the best of times: wins against the high-flying Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens, followed by a thoroughly unexpected Hockey Day in Canada victory over the league-leading Detroit Red Wings, have given the team a boost. Injured players are getting healthy. The return of the......

Photo of d’bi.young.anitafrika and her son, Moon, courtesy of Women’s Press. Last week’s literary listings featured a number of events celebrating one man (Michael Redhill, who is likely exhausted and has since gone back to Narbonne, France) and One Book (Consolation). This week the obvious literary picks are two very talented, very different women. Recent winner of the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Emerging Artist award and one of Canada’s most celebrated young performers, d’bi.young.anitafrika......

It's hard out there for a scenester these days. So many parties, so many DJs, so many Next Big Things... and so few brain cells to spare. We all know how important it is to like the right stuff, but between finding hot new ways to wear neon headgear (hint: there aren't any) and figuring out which prescription drugs don't mix, who has the mental energy to figure what exactly that stuff is? That's why......

In the battle of who owns the roads, cyclists and motorists are frequently at each others' throats. Over the last few years we've seen a heated altercation in Kensington Market and another that resulted in a motorist being stabbed with a screwdriver. It seems that the threat of a streetside melee is always looming. At Yonge and Bloor on Monday afternoon, a motorist attempted to make an illegal right turn and nearly knocked a......

Throughout the year, we select photos from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature them here on Torontoist––some as Daily Photoists, others in our Weekly Photo Roundup. Here, in no particular order, are our picks for some of the year's finest.......

As the unofficial fansite of Roncesvalles' favourite success story (and one of the oldest operating movie theatres in this country), Torontoist is pleased to tell you about another exciting event being staged by the good folks at the Revue Film Society. This time, money will be going towards brand-new educational initiatives the theatre aims to have up and running in early 2008, including a film school for neighborhood kids. This particular event, starting at......

Over on Q107 on Monday afternoon, Max Webster frontman turned DJ Kim Mitchell was sounding quite enthusiastic about Tuesday's show. It seems that in an effort to bring attention to drunk driving and the negative effects of alcohol, he's going to have two on-air personalities (Maureen Holloway and Ryan Parker from Derringer In The Morning) drinking throughout his show, presumably getting progressively drunker and stupider as the afternoon wears into the evening. An expert......

Photo courtesy of TYPE TYPE Books is expanding! Building on the success of their Queen Street West location, TYPE Books will be opening a second store in Forest Hill Village. Located at 394 Spadina Road, the store will be smaller than the one on Queen, but you can definitely expect a carefully curated "best of the best" approach to book selection, with the characterized and personalized sections that TYPE Books is known to offer. Aesthetically,......

They’ve got Hank’s seal of approval, so you know they’re at least half-way decent. Since receiving some "big-ups" on Henry Rollins’ show on L.A.’s Indie 103.1, The Harold Wartooth’s grunge-y star has been rising, with support coming in from the likes of CBC’s seminal Definitely Not the Opera and UK-based Catacomb Records. With a solitary self-titled EP under their belts, the band have demonstrated a propensity for writing Fun House-era Stooges-style riffs and burying them......

NOW's yearly Best of Toronto issue is out, and amidst a slew of other winners (Cherry DiNovo is the Best MPP! CiRCA sweeps "Best Dance Club" and "Best club for an impromptu orgy"!), the alt weekly has named Spacing Toronto as the city's best blog. We're a bit jealous––we were Best Blog in 2005, and we'd definitely be up for winning again––but Spacing has been pretty awesome, consistently, since its formation. If anything, the......

Photo by inventor_77. BY AMANDA BUCKIEWICZ AND KAREN WHALEY The numbers haven't come in yet, but anyone with eyes could tell that this year's Nuit Blanche crowds amounted to much more than 2006's paltry 425,000 attendees. The entire city swelled with people in its every nook and cranny until the wee hours of the morning. And of course, with people comes congestion, lineups, and an all around sense of chaos. The general consensus of......

Earlier this week, The New York Times ditched their Times Select subscription thing, a move that saw content previously available for about $8 a month––like some well-liked columnists, for instance––unlocked and made free for everyone. Best of all, though, was the huge amount of material from the newspaper's archives that was set free, dating all the way back to 1851. The rest of the internet has already been having some fun uncovering the gems......

If you're downtown and looking for a lunch-hour chill-out tomorrow (Wednesday), head over to Indigo in the Manulife Centre at Bay and Bloor. At 12:15 p.m., Juno Award winner, Grammy recipient, Officer of the Order of Canada, and Canada's Walk Of Fame starholder Diana Krall will be sitting behind a piano and performing songs from her latest release, The Very Best of Diana Krall. If you didn't get your autograph fix during TIFF last week,......

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......

"Busker? Don't even know 'er!" jokes aside, Toronto's annual street performer extravaganza is back until Sunday with a new roster of bizarre talents from around the globe. Buskerfest, the last of the major summer street festivals, draws about 350,000 spectators over four days and it's the best place to see someone jam a sword down one's esophagus up close. Magicians and balloon artists are also present for the kiddies, and there are plenty of......

Though the lineup for this year's Virgin Music Festival is, admittedly, pretty awesome, there are still bound to be individuals for whom a full day of live music (and shameless advertising!) is simply not reason enough to make that ferry boat ride out to the Island. That's where Global Inheritance comes in. A registered non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, Global Inheritance is looking for volunteers to participate in a human chess game at......

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 appear every Friday night. Cathy Gordon decided to get very, very publicly divorced on Monday, with an art piece she called "On My Knees." For it, she crawled around Toronto for a while (on her knees!), signed divorce papers, and then......

Do you wistfully dream of having a little corner of the city to call your own, but balk at the "Homes" section of the classifieds with its hyperbole-strewn ads and dead-eyed realtors? A new Google Maps-based website, housing123.com, tries to make things a little easier for potential home buyers across the GTA. The Canadian Real Estate Agency (CREA) operates a database known as the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which allows realtors to view virtually......

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 appear every Friday night. First a monkey escaped. Then, elephants did. And now, a bear has! Animals are apparently not big fans of being captive. Weird, right?The semi-famous Enrique Inglesias was at MuchMusic.This weekend (starting tomorrow morning at 11 a.m.) is......

Torontoist has always had a soft spot for felines, which is why we think you should know about an excellent kitty-benefiting event taking place this weekend. For ten years, the Annex Cat Rescue has been taking good care of stray and feral cats in and around the Annex. Their good work includes finding good homes for stray and injured cats, helping to humanely control the cat population, and monitoring feral cats for illness. The......

The Toronto Star published a good article Sunday revealing that "the city's Waterfront Secretariat is now reviewing the recommendations and cost estimates of recent waterfront task forces on the fate of the Gardiner." Torontoist hears you asking, wasn't this the whole point of the Gardiner Report released last September? Now that the city has all but canned plans to tear down the elevated highway due to lack of funds, however, discussions are focussing on......

Tut tut tut. We’re all very disappointed in you, John Krasinski, for your decision to star in License to Wed. Sure, you’ve been working so hard to build up your hipster cred—interviewing the Shins, playing on stage with Ben Gibbard, but I’m afraid we might have to revoke your hipster privileges. The Sun’s Kevin Williamson claims of the film, “you can at least approximate the experience of sitting through this alleged romantic comedy at home......

Weekly indie institution Wavelength started in 1999, setting up shop at Ted's Wrecking Yard, then bouncing between venues until landing at its current home, Sneaky Dee's, in 2002. Past performers read like a who's-who of home grown indie music: Great Lake Swimmers, The Bicycles, Cadence Weapon, Julie Doiron, Peaches, Final Fantasy, Feist—and the list goes on. After a Canada Day hiatus, the Sunday night series is back with a stellar July lineup for its live......

Photo by Carrie Musgrave. We could begin this week by rambling on about how we're into the second half of the year already (really?!) or tell you all about our Canada Day weekend, but let's just get straight to it this week. Go see The White Stripes on Thursday. If there's one show you go to this entire summer, this is the one. Really. We recently saw the Stripes at Bonnaroo and they were......

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! One of Toronto's strengths is our celebration of world cultures, and July 14–15 will be all about Thai pride! The annual Tastes of Thailand festival is the biggest Thai event in Canada and features activities like traditional dancing and costumes, food......

Photo by Iamkevin from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's that time again. Toronto's Pride Week kicks off this evening and runs until Sunday, June 24. As one of the largest festivals in North America, Pride Week has become one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the year for some Torontonians—sort of like Christmas for queers, but with more glitter and lights and all the fruitcake you can handle. Since you couldn't possibly attend......

Yesterday afternoon marked the kickoff event for Woofstock, North America’s biggest outdoor festival for canines. The King Edward Hotel hosted high tea for dogs who have survived cancer, or are currently battling the disease, and their owners. While some might scoff at the idea of a tea party for dogs, you’d be hard-pressed to find an event more heart-warming. The tale of Monty the Bernese Mountain Dog, for example, is the stuff movies are......

Running from June 1–10, Luminato takes over our fair city, with over 100 events spanning just about everything arts-and-culture-related. As they boast on their website, "Luminato was created to bring Toronto's best to the world, and the world's best to Toronto." A noble goal, and one they seem to have accomplished: Leonard Cohen! Philip Glass! Uh...Stephen King! Dancers! Artists! An Art Boat! Many things! Luckily, Torontoist (in the form of contributors Sharon Harris, Stephanie......