Not content to let America have all the schadenfreude fun, Ashley Madison—Toronto-based online dating company intended for people looking to cheat on their spouses, whose slogan is "when monogamy becomes monotony" and who is responsible for TV ads like these—took out a full-page ad in today's New York Post. Addressed to Eliot Spitzer, the now–former New York Governor who was caught hiring prostitutes, the open letter (at right) slicks a thick coat of sleaze onto......

Plagued by complaints, the City of Toronto has finally gotten around to ticketing some homeowners who don't clear the snow in front of their property. A city spokesperson said they prefer not to send out inspectors in the winter because it's so difficult to get around. Anxious to cement a reputation for self-serving indifference to the public interest, more than 99% of TTC workers have voted more to reject their most recent contract offer.......

Gas prices in Toronto are at $1.09 or more a litre today, reflecting all-time record oil prices of over US$108 per barrel. For all our driving readers, it might cheer you up to consider that it's still cheaper to fill up your car with gas than say, orange juice or Diet Pepsi. By the way, if you do decide to go with orange juice, remember that the pulp-free kind is less likely to gum up......

February is Black History Month. To celebrate, the City of Toronto Archives is hosting an evening with Dr. Karolyn Smardz Frost on February 5. She is the winner of the 2007 Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction for I’ve Got a Home in Gloryland: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, which tells the story of two slaves who escaped to Canada in 1833. In an illustrated presentation entitled Fugitive Sources: Finding Clues to our......

Over the past little while, Torontoist has been quietly absorbed in The Alphabet Game: a bpNichol reader. Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson, The Alphabet Game is an essential anthology for any reader of bpNichol, and is a great starting point for those who have yet to discover his work. Nichol, who is probably most well-known for his concrete and visual poetry, had achieved many things before dying at the age of 44. He......

An up-close look at the Grey Cup trophy reveals countless dents and scratches attesting to the long and colourful life of probably the most disrespected and abused trophy in sports. Since being donated by Canada’s 9th Governor General, Earl Grey, the trophy has been head-butted, sat on, and snapped in half. It’s been abandoned for years at a time in bank vaults and hall closets. It’s been forgotten in empty stadiums and hotel rooms......

Photo by EIFF. Next week on October 17th, the International Festival of Authors will kick off its 28th year since its inception in 1980 at the Premiere Dance Theatre (207 Queens Quay West). Incorporating some of the best contemporary world literature, the festival is comprised of eleven days and nights of readings, interviews, round-table discussions, lectures, and book signings—not to mention special event readings by Scotiabank Giller Prize and Governor General’s Literary Awards finalists.......

While going to York University may seem like a giant hassle (Torontoist recommends you pack a snack for the trip), this year’s Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture is shaping up to be worth the drive or TTC ride to York. The Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture commemorates the life and work of Ioan Davies, journalist, author, and professor. Each year, invited lecturers have re-invigorated the links between cultural expression, everyday life, and political practice. Dr. Thomas King,......

Lit lovers should head over to Church Street today for the Writing Outside The Margins festival of queer literature, the first of its kind in Toronto. The Gay Village stretch of Church Street will be closed from 11:00 a.m. to 7 p.m. to accommodate stands selling everything from children's books, fiction and poetry to sci-fi, erotica and comic arts. There will also be two stages for readings and performances, where you'll get to participate......

Taking a page from David Miller's Big Book of Intergovernmental Panhandling, Dalton McGuinty is complaining that Ontario is going to need a hot cash injection from the Feds if we're going to get those manufacturing jobs back from Bangladesh. Q: What do you get when you have an NDP mayor, a Liberal Premier, and a Tory Prime Minister? A: If you pay taxes in Toronto, pretty much nothing! In related "news," New York Governor......

Faced with a distasteful choice between imposing unpopular new taxes or recommending draconian budget cuts, City Council came up with the ingeniously gutless idea of deferring the decision until after the provincial election in October. The premise is that maybe that the province will agree to once again pony up for the social service costs that it downloaded under Mike Harris. Or maybe the City Hall lotto pool will win the 6/49, like, forty......

Artist Damien Hirst's diamond-studded skull reminded us that we used to live across the street from a lady who kept a magical Mayan crystal skull in her house. Which got us to thinking about other spooky things. So we've compiled a list of ten, supposedly haunted places in the city. Make your own ghost walk and if you do actually see a spirit, please let us know. 1. The Hockey Hall of Fame (pictured here)......

Have you checked out the officially unveiled ROM Crystal yet? Some cool dudes like David Foster, Deborah Cox, Jann Arden, K'naan, Natalie McMaster, David Suzuki and Governor General Michaëlle Jean [AND CLAY AIKEN!!!—Ed.] were on scene for the dedication. A 18-month-old boy is dead after falling off of a 28th-floor balcony of an apartment building near Victoria Park and Danforth Avenue yesterday. Stephane Dion to One Cent Now: No. The Buffalo News on Toronto:......

We've shown you a tour of the inside, and today, Torontonians will get a chance to take a look at the ROM's new addition themselves following the free street concert tonight on Bloor Street. First-come, first-served timed tickets will be allocated starting at noon for admission into the empty Crystal, and admission is free until tomorrow. The public will be allowed into the ROM's empty new galleries until June 10, when the Museum begins......

Sam the Record Man is closing its Yonge Street store on June 30. Remember when Sam's was the only place you could get a cassette of The Lowest of the Low's Shakespeare My Butt? Remember cassettes? Two high profile cases got their day in court yesterday. Wing-Piao Dumani Ross and Alexander Ryazanov, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing the 2006 death of cabbie Tahir Khan. The pair were sentenced to house arrest for a year,......

Get on over to the east end tonight for Exile Editions' Spring Reading. New books will bloom this eve, and others will be ripe for picking throughout spring and summer. Exile Editorial Board Member Chris Doda gives us the layout for tonight’s garden of authors: Priscila Uppal's Ontological Necessities, her fifth book of poetry with Exile, has been shortlisted for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize. It deals predominantly with the absurdity of the 21st century......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay tribute......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing—what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as they wrote......

Playing at the Tranzac this evening is Harry and the Potters, a band that inspired a new genre of music called Wizard Rock. While brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge started playing their Harry Potter-inspired songs just to friends, they developed a massive fan base online and began touring around North America. Pitchfork named their appearance at the New York Public Library one of the top live shows of 2005, and now there are over......

Austinist gets arty with an interactive guide to SXSW, loved some local art galleries and a new art exhibit and lamented the possible loss of "Friday Night Lights" production to New Mexico. Bostonist was happy they finally found an Anna Nicole Smith connection to their fair city and that an Apple Store was opening up. They were less happy that new rules have been established limiting underage shows and that their Governor is spending a......

This article is a response to a series of comments you can find on Spacing Wire, in which someone compares Toronto to a "crossroads" or "meeting place." The poster claims this label makes sense because the word Toronto originates from an aboriginal word meaning "meeting place." There was no post contradicting the definition, probably because we have all heard this claim before and most of us accept it. Upon further investigation of the matter,......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

A lot of the Big Ticket shows in town these days are shows that we've had the chance to see before. This is not a bad thing. There's nothing more exciting than seeing a brand new play that blows your mind, but it's also good to know that if a play is good enough, it can have a life that extends long after its initial run. Probably the highest-profile of these remounts is John......

Drake, you ho, this is all your fault. The Ontario Municipal Board has approved a high-rise residential project on Queen Street West at 48 Abell Street, just steps from the Gladstone and everything hipsters cherish about Toronto's arts scene. Developers intend to build 7 condos in total with affordable housing, and the ratio of "normal people" to "artists with cool hair" will be thrown into upheaval. Unfortunately, there's not much that we or neighbourhood-preservation......

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death for war crimes, and may be hanged within the next few months. What does the international community say? U.S. President George W. Bush calls the verdict "a milestone in the Iraqi people's effort to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law". The UN and European Union criticize the former Iraqi leader's death sentence. Vatican representative, Cardinal Renato Martino, calls the sentence "eye for an......

Who's going to come out on top of the strangest Giller Prize shortlist in years? While the smart money is on Rawi Hage's DeNiro's Game, which is also nominated for the Governor General's Award, writers from the Globe raised a convincing argument for Gaetan Soucy's the Immaculate Conception. Sadly we won't get to see Canada's literati ogle Justin Trudeau but that doesn't mean that you can't celebrate Canada's biggest literary prize, go to a great......

The Ryerson Review of Journalism is one of the most acclaimed magazines in the country – and it’s run entirely by the students of Ryerson University’s school of journalism. Running a national magazine is a costly endeavour, so to fill the coffers the RRJ is hosting a black-tie fundraiser this Tuesday night. It promises to be a good one. In honour of the 40th anniversary of Truman Capote’s Party of the Century, the RRJ is......

No time…Must get back down to Harbourfront…IFOA in full swing…Here are some other literary events taking place this week…. Monday The Test Reading Series returns on Monday night, 7:30pm, with readings from Rob Read (that could be the best name for a writer I’ve ever heard) and Souvankham Thammavongsa. This night is also doubling for the launch of the new issue of Carousel, one of the best lit mags in the country – Mark Laliberte......

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for? Austinist was in an entertainment state of mind as they covered the dickens out of the Austin Film Festival, depicted all the Big 12 football coaches as South Park characters, and interviewed Jose Gonzalez. Chicagoist talked about the passion as they bid adieu to Bell......