Results tagged “globeandmail”

Hot off the heels of another summer hit movie and likely Oscar-worthy role in Julie & Julia, Meryl Streep visited Toronto for an informal conversation chat with Globe and Mail journalist Johanna Schneller in the Royal Ontario Museum at a special event entitled "An Evening with Meryl Streep." The evening is part of the series The Question of Celebrity, a lineup of public programming surrounding the museum’s newest exhibition, "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008."

George McCullagh seemed to have it all: a rags-to-riches back story; a brash, cocky charm that appealed to financiers, politicians, and the public; a growing family; influence in the back rooms of government; and ownership of several Toronto daily newspapers. He even attempted to lead a crusade to change the nature of government that would enable him to fulfill his belief that he alone could improve the state of affairs for Canadians or at least the state of affairs for his friends in the mining industry. Ultimately all of this may have been too much for one body to handle.

In our first-ever joint live chat with Torontoist partner the Globe and Mail, Donald Schmitt, of Diamond+Schmitt Architects (Museum subway station, the Four Seasons Centre, Jerusalem City Hall), fielded reader questions ranging from the hue of Museum Station to the importance of infrastructure investment. Toronto is "certainly not a pretty place," he said in response to one question, "but it has vitality."

We at Torontoist are big fans of: architecture, urban design, using technology to facilitate interesting conversations, and, of course, Toronto. It is thus with great pleasure that we will be simultaneously co-presenting, along with our partner the Globe and Mail, a live chat with architect Donald Schmitt, of Diamond+Schmitt Architects, at 1:30 p.m. today. (The firm's résumé includes the Four Seasons Centre and the redesigned Museum subway station, which is about as wide a range of styles as we can imagine.) The subject: Toronto architects going global. Local firms are gaining increasing prominence internationally, and we will discuss the whys and wherefores. You can submit questions here on Torontoist once the chat is underway, or if you're an eager beaver, post them in the comments section of the Globe's article here.

Ed McMahon passed away earlier today; an article about his life, by Lynn Elber of the Associated Press, opens by describing McMahon as "the loyal Tonight Show sidekick who bolstered boss Johnny Carson with guffaws and a resounding 'H-e-e-e-e-e-ere's Johnny' for 30 years," and currently stands as the most-viewed new article on the Globe and Mail's website. The third most-viewed item? The Globe's obituary for Johnny Carson, written by their own John Doyle, published this morning and dated Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 09:03AM EDT—even though Johnny Carson died four and a half years ago.

Torontoist and the Globe and Mail have liked each other so much, for so long, that we've decided to finally make it official. As of Friday night, the Globe now has a brand new Toronto section on their website, and as of Friday night, that hub will regularly and prominently feature selected Torontoist content, part of a content-sharing partnership between the two media organizations.

It seems like just last week that we were watching the Globe's Editor-in-Chief, Edward Greenspon, excitedly introduce his paper's new website. Because it was just last week! And now he's out after twenty-three years of working on the paper (and editing it for seven), replaced as Editor by John Stackhouse, Report on Business' editor since 2004. In an email sent out to employees, publisher Phillip Crawley said Greenspon was "stepping down," but also wrote that "reimagination-inspired teamwork during the last four years has reinforced the value of a more collaborative way of managing our business....I have reviewed the composition of the Executive Team, and identified priority areas for improvement. New skills and different styles of leadership are needed."

You'll have to battle through a few error pages to enjoy it, but the Globe and Mail's website has, as of this morning, a fancy (and quite nice) redesign. Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon talks all about it in a video, how it's "more colourful" and "more dynamic," and—teasingly—how it will feature a regional Toronto "hub" that seems to not yet exist but that we'll surely be keeping our eyes on.

No statistics have ever been made public about the number of deaths and injuries caused by the swift, sudden attack of colossal bellboys bearing large stacks of classifieds that descended upon downtown Toronto during the spring of 1936. Urban legend has it that the attack was an extreme ploy launched by the Toronto Star in its circulation war with the number two paper in the city, the Telegram, that was intended to bury "the old lady of Melinda Street" in a mound of newsprint.

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.

Apparently, Canada's "best and brightest young people" are all between the ages of thirty-two and thirty-nine. Or so today's issue of the Globe and Mail would have you believe. In their annual quest to name the "Top 40 under 40," Caldwell Partners International Inc. (or, rather, their independent advisory committee), has selected forty almost-forty-year-olds, and the Globe and Mail has, once again, devoted an entire section of the newspaper to these findings (see section "E" in today's print edition).

It's an interesting experiment: ditch twenty wallets around town—filled with cards, personal information, sentimental items, and a bit of money—and see how many come back intact. That's what the Star did, with impressive results: fifteen have been returned so far, with the paper in the midst of tracking down the people who've called to say they found two others. (There's even a pretty heartwarming Google Map featuring each location's story.) But the funny part? One of the Star's drop locations was "the public reception area of The Globe and Mail." And while the wallet did make its way back to the Star, it "was missing the cash," and "a Globe spokesperson said last night the person who picked up the wallet found no money in it 'and we have it on video surveillance.'" Mystery!

Both the Globe and Star picked up and ran with yesterday's story about Virgin Radio's subway suicide ad; here's the Star's article, and here's the Globe's. From them, we learn that Astral Media Radio programming director Pat Holliday, upon seeing early mock-ups of the ads, said that "we were all laughing like crazy because we just thought they were so funny"; that TTC Chair Adam Giambrone is saying the TTC should review its policies for commercial still photography; and that the Star somehow managed to completely avoid mentioning either Torontoist or writer Jonathan Goldsbie in their article, saying instead that "The Toronto Public Space Committee," which Goldsbie is a member of but wasn't acting on behalf of, "didn't find the poster so amusing and alerted TTC chair Adam Giambrone, who agreed they were 'in poor taste'." And, oh yeah—the Globe helpfully restated one of the most important parts of our story yesterday, one of the biggest reasons the ads were so dubious: "Astral [Media], which holds the city's massive street furniture contract and administers all advertising on transit shelters, also owns Virgin Radio." Whoopsy daisy.

Toronto needs a song. Yes, there are plenty of tunes about Toronto, plenty of albums inspired by Toronto, plenty of lyrics that namedrop Toronto. But we lack an anthem. Songs that have this city as their explicit subject tend to be at least one of: a) ironic, b) mournful, c) novelties, or d) dated. Yet we suspect there are already some hymns-in-waiting that defy these categories; perhaps you've even written one yourself.

Severed feet are turning up on beaches in British Columbia—this Monday, the fifth one in the past year floated onto Westham Island, south of Vancouver. It's the first left foot found in a sea of rights, and the gruesome mystery has provided fodder for many a news organization. This week, the Globe published two versions of the story onto their website: one in the British Columbia section and the other in National.

Mathew Ingram, a technology writer for the Globe and Mail and has been on the tech beat for the last 17 years. Now he's sharing some of his knowledge as an organizer of MeshU, a web conference happening on May 20 where the brightest and shiniest tech brains will converge. Speakers include Daniel Burka, the designer behind Digg, and Leah Culver, a co-founder of Pownce. We spoke to Ingram about MeshU, how companies mess up in Web 2.0, and the future of the web.

The above video—not safe for work unless you're using headphones—was shot by the late Peter Walker and is a clip from Min Sook Lee's documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing (winner of the best Canadian feature prize at Hot Docs 2005). Uploaded to YouTube fewer than three weeks ago, it's been passed around online over the last few days, since being linked to by Toronto Life's Philip Preville in a Friday blog post.