On April 3rd, Trevor Norris successfully defended his dissertation "Consuming, Schooling and the End of Politics" and was awarded a PhD in Philosophy of Education by the Ontatio Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). On April 4th, a party was held at the Bedford Academy in his honour. Little did Trevor know that into this party would explode his friends in the shape of a uniformed marching band, banging......

On Friday night at 10:30, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Art Attack will "descend on the streets to re-imagine bus shelters as sensational structures of snow," converting the two ad-adorned boxes at Queen and Jones into something a little more whimsical. Transit shelters, like garbage bins, are giant heaps of private property littered throughout the sidewalks and roads of our city. And, most of the time, they serve a purpose. But every now and......

If you haven't been to this year's Toronto International Boat Show yet (there must be at least one or two of you), this weekend is your last chance. The array of huge yachts you could never hope to afford and 300-horsepower outboards that guzzle gas faster than you can say "peak oil" doesn't really change all that much from year to year, but there has been one big improvement over previous shows. The indoor......

It’s a well-known fact that tobogganing kicks ass. Sadly, the mild weather we’re experiencing is not suited for snow-related activities. What begins as tobogganing quickly becomes slush-bogganing. As conditions deteriorate, you may wind up mud-bogganing, and possibly even mud wrestling. Fear not, for it’s only January, and winter is certain to provide more snow. Until the flurries fly again, why not prepare by readying your snowsuit and waxing your sled? Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

What's the most fun you can have in the days following a big snowstorm? Unlike many winter sports, snowshoeing is relatively inexpensive and requires little in the way of specialized equipment. Other than the snowshoes themselves—a decent pair costs less than a good pair of skates—you need only some warm layers of clothing, a sense of adventure, and as much time as your legs can stand. It really couldn't be any easier to learn,......

Once upon a time, we would hear the word "dodgeball" and be swept back to a simpler time, when colours were flourescent, New Kids on the Block were popular and dodgeball was little more than an excuse to work up an adolescent sweat. It certainly wasn't a sport. Redass was a sport; dodgeball was really just a way of scoring easy marks in gym class. Then in 2004, the Ben Stiller movie Dodgeball came out,......

It sounds pretty simple. There's one rule, right? Don't get so wasted that you a) spill the beans to your boss about i) the fact that you hate him/her or ii) the fact that someone is quitting, b) touch someone inappropriately, or c) throw up in your boss' lap. And yet come holiday season, we're bombarded by so much inane advice on how to not screw up at your office party that it's enough to......

While Newmindspace have organized subway parties in Toronto, SkyTrain parties in Vancouver, and métro parties in Montréal, sometimes nothing beats an old-fashioned streetcar party for a beat-bumping, track-turning, three hour party tour of the city. The TTC will rent a streetcar (PCC, CLRV or ALRV) for a minimum of three hours for a pretty steep fee to just about anybody. The customer can request a custom route, like Newmindspace has, that takes advantage of......

Most of the bronze plaques bolted to the city's historically designated sites and monuments commemorate some virtually forgotten piece of minor Toronto history—but take a stroll along Queen Street West and some familiar round medallions might particularly pique your interest. The strange plaques were part of the grand Gestures installation by the 640 480 Video Collective, which aimed to memorialize inconsequential events captured on video at ten spots around the city. Each marker was......

Does the image at right strike fear into your soul? You may be in luck, because this weekend local activists The Fat Femme Mafia host Dunk Your Chunk, a fat-positive swim event. The duo, comprised of Chelsey Lichtman and Liz Brockest, have hosted other fat-related events, including dance performances, workshops, and a fat cabaret that featured only performers of size. They've also been known to do some tagging from time to time. The event is......

If you like crowds, candy, and Christmas, but hate––absolutely hate––having time off of work, celebrating holidays at the proper time of year, and snow, this weekend's Santa Claus Parade is your month-too-early Mecca. Now in its hundred and third year, the parade will begin on Sunday, November 18, at 12:30 p.m., traveling from Bloor and Christie, east along Bloor to Avenue, south on Avenue, around Queen's Park, and further south along University to Queen.......

We don’t tend to post too often about video games here at Torontoist, what with basically the entire rest of the internet being devoted to it (well, that and anthropomorphic Star Trek slash fiction), but we do like to make special note when some pleasant news of local interest comes up, such as Toronto as a Half Life mod or the Toronto Indie Game Jam (Which we, er, forgot to mention this year. Our......

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......

Starting today and going until Sunday November 11 is the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair at The Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place. Tickets are $18, but $14 for seniors and youth (5-17) and free for kids under 5. It's a great place to take your kids to see horses and cows, and they can learn all about corporate sponsorship—I mean, agriculture!—with activities including the Toyota Dealers Royal Rodeo, the Toronto Star horse demonstrations, and the......

The above image viewed from afar might lead you to believe it is just a photo taken in a dimly-lit subway station. We were almost tricked, too! However, it is actually a screenshot from the newest Half-Life 2 mod by a team of five George Brown thesis students, which is called City 7: Toronto Conflict. The story goes something like this: The Combine, some kind of invading alien force, has turned the CN Tower......

It has been exactly one year since our last subway party, which means this one is long overdue! Dress in your spookiest, scariest, funniest, or furriest costume and meet us by the last car at Kipling station at 11:13 p.m. Don't worry, no commuters will be harmed in the production of this event! Please find a list of guidelines to help the ride go smoothly and to prevent any disruptions to TTC service on......

City Council is going to be crazy today. We highly recommend you watch. (Click here for the online feed.) The chambers are going to be packed to capacity, with the overflow relegated to watching the proceedings on the screen in the rotunda. This does not happen often. It will be loud. It will be hectic. It will be exciting. Both the pro-tax and anti-tax groups are encouraging supporters to flood the meeting. This will......

Sunday afternoon is the Toronto Public Space Committee's third annual Human River Walk, a trek along the course of the buried Garrison Creek, from Christie Pits to Fort York in a parade of blue, symbolically bringing the river back above ground for one beautiful afternoon. Along the route, there will be music, performances, and stories about the history of the creek, the neighbourhoods, the trees, and Toronto's stormy relationship with its water. But, above......

We have a new hero. And it's whoever wrote this craigslist post. See, this person found a lost wallet belonging to one Simon "Pee-Pee" Harris (this name is apparently a convoluted code, which we don't understand—and if you do, that means you're probably Pee-Pee, and our readership is broader than we ever imagined). Anyway, the wallet-finder wasn't exactly thrilled with the evidence of Pee-Pee's sketchy professional life and questionable extracurricular activities. But it wasn't......

Think you can write, draw and finish a 24-page comic book in 24 hours? Next Saturday, October 20 is 24-Hour Comics Day, an all-night comics exercise held all around the world and at The Burrow Art Centre in Toronto. The pencils will commence their sketching at 2:00 p.m. and won't stop until 2:00 p.m. the next day. The idea originated in 1990 when future comic book theorist Scott McCloud (who we interviewed back in......

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......

As long as there have been cowboys, there have been gay cowboys. Now that we consider it, Torontoist isn't sure there are any real cowboys any more (well, other than those ones). But if living in Toronto teaches you only one thing, it's that there are gays; gays who want their dress-up parties. This Thursday marks the second appearance of the amazingly-named Steers and Queers, a quarterly queer country night at the Dakota Tavern.......

Wednesday is Election and Referendum Day. And because Torontoist believes that voting is the least you can do as a citizen of a democracy, we don't want you to have any excuse for not casting your ballots—unless, of course, you're under eighteen years of age, not a Canadian citizen, and/or not a resident of Ontario. (Although the residency requirement is somewhat flexible: you can still vote if you left Ontario sometime in the last......

Tomorrow night, scores of arts collectives and community groups will be putting on impressive exhibits, performances, and workshops as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. The Toronto Public Space Committee thought it would be neat to do something, too, but guess which word in the event title made the TPSC uncomfortable. So instead they bring you noncorporatized Not Blanche, "a pwyc all-night public-space thing," straight outta the Brunswick Theatre from 11:00 p.m. Saturday through 3:00......

Billiard balls in the mouth, eating live goldfish, sitting on flagpoles… people will go to great lengths just to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Fortunately, unlike this guy, you don’t have to bowl for 100 hours or have a 126-member wedding party to get a shot at immortality. On October 3, Ontario is going to challenge current champs Western Australia for the World Record Walk. Last September, the Aussies got 100,915 people......

Photo by Qehven from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. If "free contemporary art things" happen to be your thing, then chances are you were one of the 425,000 people wandering around at last year's inaugural Nuit Blanche. And unless you've been living under a rock, you know that this year, it's back this Saturday night—with a vengeance. Boasting 123 museums and over 150 projects, teamed with all night subway on certain routes and txtArt allowing......

If you can imagine, for a moment, that Queen West has been designated a streetcars-and-pedestrians-only zone, it would not be that much different from the traffic flow in 1907, or this weekend. Join Streets Are For People this Saturday for World Carfree Day. Celebrated in over 1,500 cities around the globe, Toronto's version is custom-tailored to our homegrown oil addiction. This Saturday, there are two related happenings to be aware of. The first is......

Torontonians aren’t that cold, even if we have to be given a reason before hugging a stranger. If you’re tired of handing over cash every time you simply want someone to gather you in a warm embrace, or you’ve collected so much money from selling hugs that you want to do some charity work, then luckily for you the Free Hugs Campaign has unofficially deemed September 10 International Free Hugs Day (one of many).......

All summer long, Toronto has been jam-packed with countless cultural festivities, and as the last weekend of the summer begins to dawn on us—with students gearing up for school and vacations coming to an unfortunate end—why not end the summer with some Ukrainian style? This year, what was formerly known as the Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival is being renamed the Toronto Ukrainian Festival and will take place at Harbourfront Centre. From August 31......

Fan Expo is awesome. As awesome as anticipated by Torontoist late last week. Sure, the food is expensive, a bunch of the guests cancelled last minute, and Hobby Star is a huge corporate bully, but that doesn’t change the fact that Torontoist came within spitting distance of Adam West this weekend. In this three-day celebration of all things geeky, the biggest winner in the comics vs. sci-fi vs. horror vs. anime vs. video games......