Terry Fox. The Spanish Influenza. John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Vimy Ridge. The Last Spike. Bob and Doug McKenzie. Wayne Gretzky. Nellie McClung. Winnie the Bear. The Halifax Explosion. The moments and people that define Canada are as diverse and wide-ranging as the country itself. No wonder Beaver editor Mark Reid had such a difficult time selecting photos for 100 Photos That Changed Canada.
Do you remember when you were seventeen and you thought about being young, and urban, and an artist? Maybe you imagined whitewashed loft spaces with a low-key reek of depravity and beautiful people with their improbable haircuts. And maybe there were poetry readings, and everything was a little bit of a performance, and everything was deeply, self-consciously cool.
Yesterday, Torontoist packed into the charming wood-panelled ballroom of the Gladstone Hotel along with throngs of passionate food lovers for the launch of The Edible City: Toronto's Food from Farm to Fork, hosted by This Is Not a Reading Series. The latest in Coach House Books' ambitious uTOpia series, which selects one broad aspect of Toronto each year and corrals some of the city's most influential writers to tackle it—past publications addressed the city's future (uTOpia), the environment (GreenTOpia), and arts and culture (The State of the Arts)—The Edible City delves into all things food.
Cory Doctorow possesses a strange kind of celebrity. He's famous, but not so famous that you could offhandedly mention him to a stranger on the street and reasonably expect the person to be familiar with Doctorow's life and work. For other notable people, this situation might connote a kind of ignominious C- or D-List celebrity, but not for Doctorow. In his case, it might be more accurate to say that he is extremely, A-List famous, but only among the subset of the population that uses and understands the internet. This would explain why he was able, last night, to pack the third floor of the Lillian H. Smith public library tighter than a college bar. That's right. Cory Doctorow: as appealing to nerdy people as beer is to students.
Linden MacIntyre! His novel, The Bishop's Man, is a complex, nuanced portrayal of a Catholic priest dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse scandals, and bested the four other short-listed authors to take home the most prestigious literary prize in Canada.
The clock is ticking, usually reticent authors are primping, and in a few short hours Canada's literary establishment will be donning tuxedos and evening gowns in preparation for tonight's Giller Prize black-tie gala dinner and awards ceremony. Writers typically tend to elbow patches and cozy knits—the "sequins and spit-shine shoe" look comes but once a year. The Giller is the most prestigious of Canada's literary awards, guaranteeing the winner a firm spot on the bestseller list through the peak holiday shopping season and providing a level of exposure few fiction writers are lucky to find in this country. (To a lesser extent, all the shortlisted writers see these benefits.)
"I probably don't even need this microphone, to be honest!" Frontman Odario Williams and the rest of his genre-bending hip-hop group Grand Analog launched the Toronto Public Library's current Make Some Noise series straight from the kids' section of the College/Shaw branch last night, and the alternative venue proved a somehow very fitting setting for an affair that's typically relegated to dark clubs at late hours that no adorable two-year-old would ever be able to attend.
Twelve thousand dollars. That’s the budget the organizers of the first edition of the International Festival of Authors (or Harbourfront International Authors' Festival, as it was called then) had to work with in 1980 to showcase twenty-two writers of varying infamy. Capacity crowds throughout the six-day event proved to organizers and potential sponsors that Toronto could support a literary festival.
Book season is well and firmly upon us. Like the changing colours of the leaves and the rediscovery of the scarves in the back of your closet, the sudden surge of literary prizes and the annual return of the International Festival of Authors signal that autumn is decidedly here. And it makes sense, really: what better way to combat the chill than with a pile of books that keep you safely indoors?
The internet, many people like to remark offhand, is killing print. With a twenty-four-hour news cycle better served by the instant response times of broadcast and online outlets (including the online arms of print publications who will run those same stories in the next morning's paper), e-books finally taking off, and shortening attention spans that prize bells and whistles over the sedate pleasures of slow perusal, the old-fashioned printed word is facing hard times. Or so this line of thought goes.
With the closure of Pages Books a couple of months ago, Toronto lost one of its great literary institutions. As we reported at the time, however, the news wasn't entirely grim: "There is, fortunately," we said, "the silveriest of silver linings, which is that Pages' much-loved programming, run under the banner This Is Not A Reading Series (TINARS), will continue."
The contenders for Canada's most prestigious literary award, the Giller Prize, were announced a few minutes ago. On the shortlist this year are: Kim Echlin for The Disappeared (Hamish Hamilton); Annabel Lyon for The Golden Mean (Random House); Linden MacIntyre for The Bishop's Man (Random House); Colin McAdam for Fall (Hamish Hamilton); Anne Michaels for The Winter Vault (McClelland & Stewart). This is one of those times when just being nominated really is a boon—shortlisted authors routinely see a significant spike in sales and exposure. The winner of the Giller almost inevitably becomes a national bestseller, in addition to claiming the fifty-thousand-dollar prize.
Remember The NeverEnding Story? That 1984 film about some kid who gets lost in a magic book and ends up having an excellent adventure involving a giant, flying, luckdragon?
This year's edition of TIFF marks the first time in quite a while that the opening film—Creation—isn't a "Toronto film" in some sense. But don't think that that's an indicator the festival has forgotten its hometown roots.
So you have Gossip Girl seasons one and two on DVD and no one likes the show more than you. But have you ever laid awake at night wondering, "How many husbands has Lily van der Woodsen had? What song do Blair and Chuck make out to in the back of the limo? Who designed the dress Serena wore in 'Seventeen Candles'?" Sure you have.
For most city students, this week marks the start of another year of hitting the textbooks or reasonable facsimiles of. Back in 1929, local department stores such as Simpson's did their part to further the education of their future customer base by offering texts alongside the normal range of school supplies. Of the subjects listed, note that it was slightly cheaper for students to study British history than Canada’s past, which demonstrates the societal ties that remained between Ontario and “the mother country” (unless the publisher simply charged less). Also note how perilously the texts float above each student’s head—we hope this wasn’t a hint that knowledge should literally be fed to student brains.
Finally! We've been to a few disappointing Luminato displays of late, and a few disappointing "marquee" literary events, and so it is with great pleasure and relief that we can report that last week, both fiction lovers and Luminato-goers got exactly what they've been craving: well-executed programming that was as warm and inviting as it was ambitious. World Voices in Fiction brought four of the brightest new luminaries in contemporary fiction to the Al Green theatre Thursday night, to read from and discuss their recent works, and did so in a most satisfying fashion. The authors were brilliant and also, happily, comfortable in front of an audience. The space was welcoming and the pace relaxed, just right for a reading on a lazy summer night. (Organizers of all literary events take note: acoustics matter. So do lighting and sightlines. Please book your venues accordingly.) In short, it was just what a book-ish night should be.
Last February, when three of the four major publishers in Canada pulled out of Toronto's annual book industry trade show, BookExpo sadly bit the dust. The collective feeling, particularly amongst small press publishers and indie booksellers, was “where do we meet now?” The book industry is in trouble, and even major publishers are scared stiff by spiralling sales and the rise of ebooks. And so, with a need for real discussion, BookCamp was born.
Book readings are, in a certain way, transgressive. In bridging the usual remove between author and audience, and in reinstantiating the written word as performance, they breach the boundaries which usually govern our experience as readers. Book readings rely on that transgressive quality for their success: a good book reading is one in which listeners feel genuinely connected to the author they are hearing, and in which the performance conveys something more than whatever is contained in the written work alone.
This upcoming weekend is the inaugural Open House Festival, the Globe and Mail's new celebration of books and the people who write them. We have a bit of a thing for words and wordsmiths around here, and so will be attending in force to report on how the festival fares in its first year out. Organizers have pulled together an all-star line-up and kept ticket prices for most events reasonable ($15 for McInerney, Rakoff, Toews, and Trillin is a pretty sweet deal), so with any luck this will turn out to be the first installment of a new annual tradition.
TTC Kills the Radio Star
How to Lose Your Cool and Alienate Context
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Anthems for a 175-Year-Old Girl
Walk and Bike for Life
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