Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a behind the scenes glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. There is, of course, no multi-partisan training manual for new candidates on how one is to behave during an election campaign with regards to one's opponents. Therefore, the first time I ran (in the 2006 federal general election)......

Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a behind the scenes glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. Now that three out of four major party campaigns have offices up and running, our focus has turned to the meat and potatoes of campaigning: the canvass. If you live in Toronto Centre and you haven't yet heard......

Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a "behind the scenes" glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. A strange thing is happening here in Toronto Centre: Barack Obama seems to have become a candidate. Not literally of course, and (as you'll see) it's not clear what party he's representing, but his presence is certainly being......

Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a "behind the scenes" glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. Right before Christmas (and just days before the deadline) the prime minister finally called a by-election for the riding of Toronto Centre, left vacant by Bill Graham last summer. He also called by-elections for three other ridings across......

We’re going to take a break from our usual Torontoist style in this post because the passing of John Harkness, the film critic for Now magazine since its inception in 1981, is something that has particular importance for me. As the writer of Torontoist's weekly “Film Friday” column, which, as you know, very often quotes the reviews from local critics, I have probably quoted John Harkness more than anyone. There’s a funny story in this,......

This Friday, November 16, we (Newmindspace) will be hosting our very first lightsaber battle! This summer at Burning Man, we witnessed a 10,000-person lightsaber battle put on by a camp called Watto's Junkyard, easily the largest lightsaber battle since the Jedi Civil War. However, with our limited resources, we realized that without a large donation from a rich weirdo (which are plentiful in San Francisco), we would probably not be able to get the......

With a little over twelve hours to go until this year's Capture the Flag, Lori and I are feeling anxious and excited. Not entirely sure the 3,000 glowsticks we've purchased will be enough, not confident that we will be able to handle the crowd, and not certain that the game will go smoothly at all, there are a lot of things to worry about. We've spent the week calling up wholesale companies in the......

"It's hard to beat the system / when we're standing at a distance / so we keep waiting / waiting on the world to change." - JOHN MAYER How Do You Get To Massey Hall? I don't know, I only came close. I can at least tell you that practice has nothing to do with it. I'd practiced my speech a lot. Last night I was invited to represent my party (the Green Party of......

Photo by Hamish Grant. Customer loyalty is a hard thing for a company to get, but once they've got it, it takes a hell of a lot of bad work to lose. With Amato Pizza, I was one of the people who happily ate from the pizza place in spite of the protests against it in 2005, when employees organized outside the St. Clair West location in mid-winter to protest $82,000 in alleged overtime......

This was Toronto’s downtown at 10:30 a.m. yesterday, as seen from Lakeshore Boulevard near the Canadian Exhibition Grounds. Air Quality Ontario’s Air Quality Index measured a daytime high of 54, which put Toronto’s air well into the “Poor” category. The day before, the AQI hit 59. What to do? I ran errands on my bike yesterday, passing bumper-to-bumper car traffic everywhere I cycled. When I started cycling Toronto’s streets fifteen years ago, I didn’t......

Hi, My Name is Chris, and I'm a Politician I have a confession to make. I'm not like you. I'm not a normal, well-intentioned, benefit-of-the-doubt receiving human. Of course, I don't actually believe that. I phrase it that way because when I was first nominated as a candidate for the last federal election, that's how a lot of my friends reacted. They couldn't understand it. Running for Parliament wasn't something people they know did. They......

On the way to the sold-out Bunch Family Salon at The Arts and Letters Club last Saturday, my eight year old son looks into the window of our subway car and sees an alternate universe; it's just us, but backwards. After he asks me to call him by his inverse reality name, "ttenraG," he ponders how my name would sound. Turns out that even in other worlds, my name is "moM." The Bunch Salon......

Call it cultural tourism, voyeurism, a geek fest, call it what you will. But when we heard that I Maid Cafe—a Cosplay restaurant—had opened up in Scarborough last December, we knew we would be taking the trip to Kennedy and Finch very soon. For those who don’t delight in Japanese pop culture, “cosplay” is short for costume play. It started with kids getting dressed up as their favourite anime characters, which, if you’ve ever been......

Photo of Wellesley station by David Topping from the 69 Stations project. On Tuesday afternoon rush hour, as I emerged from the stairs linking the southbound subway platform of Wellesley station to its fare and bus area on the street-adjoining ground level. A man with long-ish ponytail walked by, and then another man shuffled up to him. His friend catching up, I supposed. But then the second man took out a wallet-like case and......

You know your style must be tasty when everyone keeps trying to bite it. This new advertisement for Johnnie Walker whisky which has recently festooned Union station is clearly attempting to ally its product with our fair city by blatantly ripping off the Torontoist logo. Oh, sure. The buildings are in a different order and they use the Skydome instead of a streetcar and they throw in the outline of what I assume is meant......

I should've listened to that bus driver at Jane Station. It was May 23rd, 2006. Two weeks before, I’d decided that I wanted to photograph all of Toronto’s subway stations. Jane was only the fifth station out of sixty-nine, and by the end of the project––including travel time, shooting, and editing––it would suck up more than 300 hours of my summer. At the time, however, I was blissfully unaware of how consuming the project......

So I had to go buy some lettuce today. A Price Chopper is down the road from where I live, at Dundas West & Runnymede (and its prices! They're chopped!). On my way out, though, with my $1.50 worth of lettuce, I saw it: one of the most disgusting and horrifying things I've ever seen. There are three things wrong with the photo at left, snapped (unfortunately) with my cellphone camera. There are no license......