Today's ad features your stereotypical 1950s architectural professional: trenchcoat, tie, hat (preferably a fedora), and a fistful of building plans. The building this dapper construction supervisor is depicted next to would quickly become one of St. Clair Avenue's architectural landmarks. Pigott Construction was based in Hamilton, where company president Joseph Pigott contributed heavily to the community as a president or board member of institutions such as McMaster University and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.......

It's been thirteen years now since the Royal Ontario Museum's McLaughlin Planetarium was shut down. The utilitarian building––half a dome unceremoniously shoved on top of a rectangular prism––was, until recently, all but forgotten, obscured by construction offices for the extremely un-utilitarian Crystal being built around the corner. When those construction offices moved out in December, however, leaving a mass of wide open space that hadn't been wide open for several years, the Planetarium quietly......

A little more of the renovation of Museum subway station has been revealed, showing oddly contrasting purple columns and white moulded volutes. (See also Rannie Turingan's video taken from a train pulling into Museum station.) Still under wraps until the official unveiling in April are the individual column designs themselves. The subway revitalization project, which includes Museum, Osgoode, and St Patrick stations, has not been without its critics. Joe Clark calls the project a......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. From price hikes to bomb hoaxes, the ROM has been a constant news item this year. But while Thorarinn......

As part of the TTC's subway revitalization project, Museum subway station has been undergoing renovations under the direction of architects Diamond and Schmitt. The redesign of the station [hotly-contested by some––Ed.] is themed after Egyptian antiquities in the Royal Ontario Museum above, with hieroglyphics decorating the giant lettering and castings of artifacts wrapped around the columns to form a hall of caryatids. After five months of renovations the first glimpses of the finished design......

The Toronto Public Library is an undeniably important public space in this city. Beyond offering a sanctuary for quiet study and learning, library branches provide after-school programming for youth as well as settlement information and language resources for newcomers. It’s little wonder that this fall, even as he was threatening budget cuts, David Miller remarked: "Our libraries are where people become Torontonians." Striving to remain relevant and innovative, the public library constantly introduces new programs,......

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......

In Tuesday's news round-up, we told you that the plan to sell McDonald's the land at Bloor and Avenue had been halted until January 18. It's a good thing, too, as there are many questions that must be answered before the $3.38 million sale is finalized. Is it in the best interest for Toronto taxpayers? Is the sale a smart corrective action to the bungled 1971 lease agreement or another dumb move we'll regret for......

On Thursday evening, Torontoist broke the news that Wednesday's bomb threat at the Royal Ontario Museum was OCAD student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson's final project for an advanced video class. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades (like Fountain, pictured above), Jonsson told us that the piece was about recontextualization, the idea that context changes art's meaning; in this case, something that is, he said, "quite clearly not dangerous, but when you put it in a different......

Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has, as he put it to Torontoist in a phone interview earlier today, "seen better days." The Integrated Media OCAD student and his final project for his advanced video class are the direct cause––intended or not––for yesterday's bomb scare at the Royal Ontario Museum, and, a day later, Jonsson is now suspended from OCAD and is wanted for questioning by police. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades pieces (the most famous of......

Photo by David Topping. A mysterious bag discovered in an alleyway beside the Royal Ontario Museum at about 7:00 p.m. tonight has shut down all traffic––pedestrian and vehicular––on Bloor between St. George and University and on Queen's Park southbound from Bloor and Harbord. UPDATE (10:45 p.m.): CTV is now saying that police have found "what appears to be a pipe bomb," and that the building was (half-)evacuated (contrary to what we were originally told).......

At the Wellington Street entrance of the CBC Broadcast Centre, visitors of a certain age are met with some familiar sights from their childhoods: the treehouse from Mr. Dressup, a gang of puppets from Sesame Park, and the ratty but iconic Rusty and Jerome figures from The Friendly Giant. Now, the family of the Giant aren't feeling too friendly following a comedic skit shown during this year's Gemini Awards, and they are demanding the removal......

Ever marvel at the architecture of Casa Loma, Osgoode Hall and the Ontario Legislature in Queen's Park? Those lovely red-brick buildings, dear friends, are the legacy of Toronto's vernacular building material—sweet slabs formed from the banks of the Don herself. From 1889 to 1980, the Don Valley Brick Works made some of the highest quality brick in the land. Why, in 1893, the Don Valley brick was crowned Best Brick at the Chicago World's......

Urbanist is a photo series that will look at developments, architecture, trends and activities happening in various cities––including our own––to inspire the urbane urbanist at home to make Toronto a better place. While Toronto has been making headlines in recent years for its investment in artistic institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Royal Ontario Museum, and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Ottawa has been in the spotlight of late because......

If you're into the idea of kids with bigger, shinier brains and programs that facilitate such things, you might be familiar with Now Hear This!, Toronto's very own not-for-profit literary outreach organization. With a mandate of education through the arts, they do good things like hold Satire and Fake News Writing workshops for kids, complete with handouts from The Onion. Kind of idealistically akin to Dave Eggers' ass-kickingly progressive nonprofit, 826 National. Anyhow, these......

Photo by End User from the Torontoist Flickr Pool Last night, under the futuristic angles of the Royal Ontario Museum Crystal, over 2000 people gathered to do battle with glowing cardboard tubes in an epic lightsaber battle organized by Newmindspace. The evening was a huge success, attracting hundreds of curious, incredulous or plain baffled onlookers. More images after the jump.......

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......

The Royal Ontario Museum didn’t know what to expect when it began organizing its new exhibit, Canada Collects: Treasures from Across the Nation (October 6–January 6). Where usually a curator arranges carefully selected artifacts into an intellectual framework that brings out their larger meaning, for this exhibit, the ROM invited institutions and private collectors from across the country to contribute an object of their own choosing. With over 70 items from 50 contributing institutions......

Photo by Word Freak So, the shortlist for the Giller Prize is out. And whether you think it's rigged or based on talent, we still have to wonder: who's it going to be? Aside from that, the 28th International Festival of Authors officially kicks off tomorrow evening with a PEN Canada benefit event, featuring Margaret Atwood in conversation with Ian Rankin. And if you don't have any tickets, well, you're out of luck, as......

Transformation AGO will soon be entering the final stages of its expansion project, estimated to finish sometime in mid-2008. But before the AGO closes its doors in order to begin reinstalling over 5,000 pieces of art into 110 galleries, they will be offering free admission to the public for its closing weekend this October 6 and 7. This will be your final opportunity to view the four exhibitions that have been on display since......

OCAD's events calender may be gently filling up in anticipation of Nuit Blanche awesomeness, but before we can think of drowning our bodies in caffeine and submitting them to a twelve-hour period of sleeplessness (Torontoist will have our Nuit Blanche preview posts coming on Tuesday, incidentally), you may want to take some time to welcome OCAD's visitor. This week, Ann Hamilton has been invited as an artist in residence through the Nomadic Residents program,......

Given the chance to provide insider knowledge about Toronto to a well-known travel site on behalf of your city and fellow residents, what juicy local secrets would you reveal? Lucky Toronto members of Travelocity.ca presented with this very challenge seemed to buckle under pressure. Based on a poll of its members, this year’s Toronto finalists in Travelocity's 25 Canadian “Local Secrets, Big Finds” were Café Diplomatico and Riverdale Farm. While we can all agree......

On September 4, the The Misshapes released their style book, and the trio of trend-setting, New Wave rock-producing New Yorkers are hitting Toronto on Thursday, September 6 in celebration of its release. Who are The Misshapes? Known for their weekly Saturday night parties—the "best in hipster Manhattan" since February 2004—these musicians (and cutting-edge fashion influences) have established themselves as "an intersection of music, art, and fashion." The Misshapes are Greg Krelenstein, Leigh Lezark, and......

From October 1–4, the Walk21 conference comes to Toronto. Keynote speaker Dr. David Suzuki will be joined by a host of academics, urban planners, elected officials and activists to discuss urban pedestrian issues. Lectures, discussions and workshops will cover the theme of “putting pedestrians first” in policies and infrastructure in order to make active transportation viable and attractive in increasingly dense urban areas. Running concurrent to Walk21, the YWALK youth forum is aimed at......

If you have ever driven up Yonge Street towards Richmond Hill, you probably couldn't help but notice the Vishnu Mandir Hindu temple and its landmark statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Alongside the temple is the unique Canadian Museum of Hindu Civilization, which is presenting an ambitious Festival of India this weekend. The festival promises to be an authentic expression of Indian culture, with innumerable local artists performaning alongside many that are being imported from the......

Good news for our Mississauguaguaguanian readers: UTM, as part of its fourtieth anniversary, is hosting "Flicks on the Field," two free family-friendly outdoor movies shown on a big screen with (and it's good that they note this as far as outdoor screenings go) "professional projection and sound." Hopefully no one in the audience will hold it against them that the traditional gift for fourtieth anniversaries is rubies, not film screenings. Both "Flicks" screenings will......

Much like the budding romance between Hero and Claudio in the play itself, Wednesday night's open-air premiere of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing was threatened by the malevolent influence of outside elements, in this case a light drizzle that foreshadowed an impending downpour. As the skies darkened, it seemed likely that this year's Canopy Theatre premiere in Philosopher's Walk would be postponed for a day. But the actors seemed impervious to the rain......

Can a transit system foster love for a city? Torontonians may scoff, but Londoners will nod. The underground—better known as the Tube—is often cited as a reason why so many Londoners take pride in their city. One trait of the Tube—and possibly something that Toronto can learn from—is the way in which stations are named after the city’s neighbourhoods and landmarks. A journey where you board at Notting Hill, travel past Marble Arch and St.......

In light of Montreal’s Fraser Hickon Library’s recent shutdown, it’s good to know Toronto’s own book havens are as strong as ever. On top of the newly introduced Museum and Arts Pass, the summer kids' programs and all the help the library gives to incoming immigrants looking to get familiar with the city, the Toronto Reference Library provides a varied wealth of hard-to-wrangle books along side wireless, air conditioned luxury. Now this oasis at Yonge......

The bus platform of Pape station was engulfed in a whirlwind of mops and microphones early yesterday afternoon as workers scrubbed the walls and windows till they sparkled and the media mingled with curious commuters, all of them eager for TTC chair Adam Giambrone to arrive and kick off the Station Modernization Program. This whammy of a project, which will include the restructuring and redesign of nine subway stations, was set into motion at......