Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Photo of Orange Parade at Queen's Park in 1912. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 1388. Nowadays, the Orange Order is thought of as a quaint anachronism, a benevolent society that marches every twelfth of July to commemorate the victory of William III at the Battle of the Boyne. But the......

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. On Wednesday, we took a look at the garbage bins. On Thursday, the advertising pillars. Yesterday, the transit shelters. Today, everything else. (Also check out Karen von Hahn's disparagement of the street furniture in the Globe.) A lot of people who otherwise hate what the Coordinated Street Furniture Program has wrought like the idea of the multi-publication structures......

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. On Wednesday, we took a look at the garbage bins. On Thursday, we looked at the advertising pillars. This morning, the transit shelters. (Be sure also to read Christopher Hume's review, which makes our less-than-kind assessments look like raves.) The "Basic" shelter. (The blue "Toronto" ribbon was present for ceremonial cutting purposes only and is not part of......

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. Torontoist was going to review all of the items at once but decided that some merited their own posts. Yesterday, we took a look at the garbage bins. Today we look at the advertising pillars. Friday, the transit shelters, and on Saturday everything else. (Be sure to read Spacing's coverage, too.) "Isn't two dollars a bit high for......

In the opening voiceover for his Oscar-winning animated short Ryan, Chris Landreth explains, "I live in Toronto, a city in Canada where I see way too many shades of grey for my own good health." This line occurred to us as we attended the official unveiling of Toronto's new "street furniture" at City Hall Monday morning, a celebration of the all-new shades of grey about to trickle onto our streets. Courtesy of Jeremy Kramer......

Photo by Lex in the City. With Bike Month on the horizon and a newly launched advocacy group, cycling in Toronto is undergoing a renaissance (as Val Dodge put it earlier this week). The attention is well-deserved: cycling is one of the most healthy and environmentally conscious methods of commuting. The joys are eloquently captured by Ryerson prof Bill Reynolds in the most recent issue of The Walrus. By listing the hazards of urban......

After months of quiet preparation, Toronto's very own Bike Union officially launched at City Hall yesterday morning. Modelled after successful cycling advocacy groups in Chicago, London, and elsewhere, the Toronto Cyclists Union is already a big name in the city's cycling community. One of the Union's primary activities will be advocating for cyclists at City Hall, but organizers have much bigger plans. July will see the debut of Dandyhorse, a thrice-yearly magazine about bike culture......

Toronto's urban street furniture collection of late has been messily schizophrenic and oft-criticized, but final prototypes from the Coordinated Street Furniture Program have just been unveiled, with installation slated for 2009. The furniture plan involved a private Request For Proposals (RFP) from three advertising conglomerates, who pitched their designs last year in the hopes of securing the lucrative 20-year monopoly with the City of Toronto. The covenant was awarded to Astral Media, much to......

Stephan Marinoiu, the frustrated father of a 15 year-old autistic boy, began a hunger strike outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario at Queen’s Park last Sunday, May 4. Six days later, he’s still hanging in there, and although he’s reportedly beginning to show signs of weight loss, he appears to be in good health. Marinoiu’s son Simon is one of an ever-growing number of children on the waiting list for a government program called......

Photo of Howard Moscoe at March's OCAP protest by Miles Storey. His forty-six friends include Adam Giambrone, Bob Rae, Adam Vaughan, David Miller, John Tory, Dalton McGuinty, and the Ottawa Citizen. His political views are "Left wing and a prayer." He's interested in "Friendship" and "Networking." His lone activity is "sculpting wooden birds." He cleans "council furniture with the Mayor's toupees at the start of council meetings." His favourite TV show is the Glenn......

Dubaimetro Naming Rights Turn your brand into a destination RTA offers Dubai Metro Naming Rights Welcome to the ultimate branding and marketing opportunity. With Dubai Metro Naming Rights, you can put your brand on a Dubai Metro station of your choice, or one of the two lines of the Dubai Metro Network. Dubai Metro Naming Rights offers you unmatched impact and visibility to take your brand to new levels of saliency and success. What's......

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.......

The idea of a TTC riders' union is nothing particularly new, but after what happened this weekend, it's quickly—and deservedly—picking up steam. Torontoist's last article about a possible riders' union was written by Roxanne Bielskis in November 2007. Our article was inspired by Erica Barnett on WorldChanging, who described the problems of Seattle's transit system and looked at the success of riders' unions (or their equivalents) in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Santa Clara, Atlanta, and......

No, those aren't Tibetan prayer flags strung up at Yonge and Carlton—it's Toronto Hydro airing their dirty laundry for all to see, and if our own observations are any indicator, the windblown apparel is attracting a lot of mystified attention from pedestrians below. The stunt is a reminder that they're giving out free clotheslines at Costco, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot for two more weekends. The campaign is targeting clothes dryers because the average dryer......

Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism is a series of lectures at the Revue Cinema that will look at films made during past and present American presidencies that reflect the culture and politics of their time. The lectures will run monthly from April until November, with the first lecture scheduled for April 26 at 10:30 a.m on the Kennedy era. The Manchurian Candidate, about a soldier brainwashed by......

The fear over bisphenol A is understandable. That something as innocuous as feeding infants from baby bottles could cause irreparable harm to their development is scary, and preemptive measures are worth taking if there is sound science to back it up. Concern over the danger of bisphenol A has picked up steam as researchers look at the effects of low concentrations, which had previously been assumed harmless. The decision by the Canadian government to......

Photo by Marc Lostracco. Last week, minimum wage was raised to $8.75 an hour in the first of three scheduled increases. According to the arguments provided in the media (and on Torontoist), an increased minimum wage is necessary to help people make ends meet, but could force businesses to cut jobs to accommodate the increased costs. From a numbers point of view, the raise was a necessary antidote to the minimum wage being frozen......

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. The......

When we named councillor Rob Ford as one of 2007's Villains for his consistent insensitivity, political grandstanding, and outright idiocy (witness statements like, "I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day," and, "If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you won't get AIDS probably"), we couldn't have......

Last week, undergraduate students at UTSC (University of Toronto Scarborough) rejected the U-Pass by a stunning margin, with full-time students voting against it 1674 to 622, and part-time students spurning it 53 to 16. Minus the abstentions and spoiled ballots, that worked out to 73% No for for full-timers and 77% No for part-timers. When last we wrote about the proposed offer—a compulsory $60-a-month transit pass for all students, with no potential to opt......

Now that Spring is officially here, we can retrospectively name Winter 2007–2008 "The Winter of the Pothole." As the snow dunes melt, an ever-growing number of colossal crevices are appearing on the city streets and highways. City crews are working overtime to patch up the damage, but Toronto already spent $1.3 million of its $4 million annual pothole budget by early March. Yikes. So when are they going to deal with that crater in......

Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently has been engaged in a federal by-election campaign, which concluded yesterday. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a behind the scenes glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. First of all, I'm very happy with our result. I've posted video of last night and written on my own blog about why. And that's all I'll say about that here. Yesterday morning......

"Stop the torture—end the war," read one colourful placard at Queen's Park. "End the siege of Gaza," read another. Voicing solid opposition against the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, immense columns of demonstrators took over Queen's Park and Bloor Street on Saturday. "From Iraq to Palestine," they shouted, "occupation is a crime!" When the demonstration reached the heart of Yorkville, you could imagine the neighbourhood's original war resisters seized by the......

NDP charges Liberals "deceptive" over nuclear energy plans. Apparently the nuclear energy commitments the provincial government has made require almost four times the nuclear energy generation capability that their promised plant could deliver, unless the plant itself was four times larger than the Darlington plant. This is all part of the current clever government plan to get ahead of everybody else and be massively involved in the next energy crisis when the world runs out......

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie. According to a December 2004 article in the Globe, Mike Harris is (or at least was at the time) the chairman of video advertising company Onestop; he got on board "in return for an equity stake" in the business. Presuming that he still has that stake (and why wouldn't he? he may be evil, but he's not stupid), Harris became a richer man two weeks ago, when the Toronto Transit......

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.......

Seriously? Photo by sevennine from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.......

Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a behind the scenes glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. This is my last Campaign Confidential before E-day, yet I'm hesitant to pen any "final thoughts" knowing how much can happen in the final week of a campaign. It's been a bit of a strange campaign. On the......

A demonstration at City Hall yesterday by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty forced the Speaker to halt proceedings after the protest spilled onto the chamber floor. The action by OCAP was called after the discovery of a homeless man frozen to death in a downtown stairwell February 27. A statement by OCAP called the death a "preventable tragedy." Members of the activist group handed out statements to councilors as others rebuked them for their......

Photo by jpghouse. The incentive to spend money is enormous: there’s always a bigger latte, a newer iPod, and a better apartment waiting around the corner. Saving money is laborious and—let’s face it—boring. Unfortunately, easy access to credit and rising property values have turned the West into a population of grasshoppers, just starting to get a taste of the financial winter coming. Although the new federal budget has underwhelmed, the government has provided an......