A ten-year-old Toronto girl with a lemonade stand is more than three-quarters of the way to raising $100,000 for heart and stroke research. For purposes of comparison, when I was ten years old, I really liked riding my bike. Former Liberal MP Charles Caccia died of a heart attack on Saturday. The highly respected MP represented Davenport for approximately seven thousand years and was both a former Minister of Labour and Minister of the Environment.......

Jeff Healey, legendary Torontonian musician and owner of Jeff Healey's Roundhouse on Blue Jays Way (and Healey's at Queen and Bathurst prior to that), has died of cancer at only 41. The news, posted to his website earlier tonight, comes just under two months before the domestic release of Healey's new album, Mess of Blues, recorded with what Healey called "the best damned bar band in Canada." His website has plenty more information about......

Ottawa to introduce new fuel economy standards. They will be "at least" as stringent as American fuel economy standards. In response, David Suzuki blew upon a party horn sarcastically and waved a tiny flag, his derision apparent to all and sundry. Bobby Fischer dies at 64. The former world chess champion was famous for beating the Russians, and for being quite possibly fairly insane, which inspired the nifty little film Searching For Bobby Fischer.......

Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee win the Iowa Democratic and Republican caucuses. The caucuses, which are the first real test for any American presidential candidate, delivered powerful margins of victory for both candidates. However, Iowa alone does not guarantee you the nomination—just ask 1992 Iowa caucus winner Tom Harkin. Legendary Star sportswriter Milt Dunnell passes at 102. A great sports columnist, Dunnell will be missed. Troubled Britney Spears taken to hospital because oh I......

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,......

Canadian DMCA to be introduced to Parliament today? That's what a lot of sources are saying, and the bill will likely be an abomination, essentially outlawing, among other things, freeware hacks for the iPod, automatic intellectual property rights for research purposes, making copies for your own personal use, and the above image. Al Gore rips into John Baird at the Bali conference. So, with two of the most pressing legal issues of the new......

John Tory says any religious schools must stick to the Ontario curriculum or lose their funding. Thus, creationism would not be allowed to be taught as science. That having been said, non-religious faith-based teaching (like "the invisible hand of the market can fix all economic problems" or "one day the working class will rise up and create a proletarian utopia") is fine! Luciano Pavarotti is dead at 71. The opera star finally succumbed to pancreatic......

Amidst the swirl of sensationalism surrounding the death of a "caretaker" at the Brentwood home of actor Ving Rhames last week, many Torontonians were unaware that the victim, 40-year-old Jacob Adams, was a local actor and screenwriter. "If hard work was enough to make it in Hollywood, then Jacob should have been a superstar," says friend and acting colleague Janice Edwards. "My last Jacob sighting was just outside Albert's on St. Clair West. He was......

Toronto legend Edwin "Honest Ed" Mirvish has died. He was 92. The philanthropic businessman was a crucial part of Toronto's reputation as a world-renowned theatre centre, and had been mostly out of the public eye after contracting a severe case of pneumonia in 2003 and experiencing deteriorating health ever since. Mirvish died at St. Michael's Hospital at 1:30 a.m. Mirvish was born in Virginia on July 25, 1914 to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. His introduction to......

June Callwood, the journalist and social activist dubbed by the CBC as "Canada's Conscience," succumbed to cancer this morning at 82. Callwood is entrenched in Toronto's history as one of our most important and powerful social crusaders. She co-founded AIDS hospice Casey House (named for her late son) and more than fifty other social organizations, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, PEN Canada and Yorkville's Digger House youth hostel. Raised amidst early family instability and......

He was known for his tales of Old Hollywood as much as his ever-present hairpiece, and Toronto just became way more boring without him. Yesterday, famous publicist and personal manager Gino Empry died at Western Memorial Hospital from congestive heart failure due to a stroke he suffered in July. Though he lived in a huge downtown penthouse condo on Mutual Street, Empry had been in the hospital since the stroke. Empry never revealed his true......