Results tagged “christmasday”

HOLIDAYS: Santa will be visiting the Toronto Humane Society on December 24. In exchange for a donation, Santa’s elves will give out free wicker pet beds made, their press release assures us, at the North Pole. Toronto Humane Society (11 River Street), 12 p.m., December 24, FREE.

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Each Sunday, the editors of every site—from LAist to Londonist—choose their most interesting article, a list which is compiled into the network-wide feature Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse.

All photos by Kristin Foster.

Oscar Peterson passes at 82. The great jazz musician was a Canadian hero and he did many amazing things, including spending the twilight of his career essentially playing jazz piano one-handed and doing it better than most people who had use of both their hands.

Really not much on in terms of Christmas films this week. The Bloor is showing National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (which is about as far away from a Christmas classic as we can imagine without being a film about aliens from another galaxy that have never heard of Christmas) and White Christmas. We’re still happy to recommend Enchanted (we just saw it, and it was absolutely lovely), but for those of you who want to see something specifically related to Christmas, the Revue has come to your rescue with the help of Dion Conflict, who will be showing Christmas Kitsch-A-Roo at 9:30 p.m. If you’re familiar with Dion Conflict’s Hunk-A-Junk screenings, you’ll know what to expect—a variety of utterly bizarre found shorts—but they’re normally excellent fun and the Christmas theme means some really weird stuff is going to show up. Hopefully he’ll be showing the legendary Santa Claus' Punch and Judy, which really has to be seen to be believed.

As is traditional for Christmas Day, most of the news is bad.

It's easy to see why people would be excited about Dreamgirls. The film, about the lifespan of a Supremes-esque three-member girl group (and based on the ultra-successful broadway musical of the same name) stars Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, and Danny Glover, and, as it tomorrow Christmas Day here, has the best shot at being the Christmas movie, the 9-digit box-office numbers one that movie studios die for but that hasn't really existed (outside of Lord of the Rings) since Ocean's Eleven back in 2001. Dreamgirls is a film that, by all accounts, should be fantastic, or -- at the very least -- interesting and fun to watch, the perfect film for the holidays. Too bad it's far from it.

CTV will be airing an in-depth report on each story on their 11 PM national news, starting December 23. There's bound to be some debate among people who care about this sort of thing as to the order of the stories, as well as about some glaring omissions. But should Stephen Harper lose a federal election in 2007, he can take solace in the fact that in at least one poll, he totally kicked Stephane Dion's ass!

We're experimenting with a new daily photo posting. Each weekday morning, we'll pick a recent 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!

Transit Toronto just helpfully reminded us of the TTC's (and pretty every other GTA-based transit systems') updated holiday schedule.

Parents watch their kids toboggan in High Park on Christmas Day, 1910. Photo courtesy of William James/The Toronto Archives.