Knitting: it's not just for grandmas anymore, but you already knew that. It's not just for crafty hipsteristas either. A group of teachers at Highland Heights Junior Public School have started a Knitting Club to help keep inner city kids out of trouble. Many of the students come from public housing, so the school relies heavily on fundraising for a extracurricular activities. When the idea of the Knitting Club was first conceived, the teachers......

Toronto is a city of trees. From centuries-old native oaks in our parks to imported Norway maples planted on lawns, Toronto’s greenery may not always be evident, but it is an integral part of the city’s life and history. Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) and the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) have come together to create a series of tree tours that explore the urban canopy. Toronto Tree Tours offers guided walks......

Health Canada reports that over half of Canadian kids aged five to 17 are not physically active enough for optimal growth and development. The number of overweight boys ballooned from 15 percent in 1981 to 35.4 percent in 1996; the percentage of overweight girls expanded from 15 percent to 29.2 percent. In less than a generation, obesity in children tripled. As anyone who has tried to lose a few kilos knows, it is easier to......

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......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

The 4th annual Regent Park Film Festival hits tonight, 6pm, at Nelson Mandela Park Public School (440 Shuter Street) with Wrecking Ball Videos, an evening of films made in Regent Park by youth trained at Regent Park Focus, not-for-profit organization that promotes health in vulnerable communities across Ontario. The festival continues until the 12th with a diverse programme that reflects on the lives and experiences of multicultural communities in Canada, based, as it is, in......

Toronto councillor Cesar Palacio is under fire: a charity he co-founded has reportedly been paying the mortgage on the building that houses his office. The Toronto Public School Board has managed to balance its budget without having to close any schools or cut in-school staff. More on the lottery scandal: Have you ever wondered why you never win Lotto 6/49 or Super 7? So did the CBC. Maybe you should become an Ontario lottery retailer.......

First, in blog news: Mozilla releases Firefox 2.0: It's a well-known fact that the free browser is highly superior to Internet Explorer, and the new version comes with an integrated spell check designed for blogs and social networking tools. Stop using your IE, fool! St. Louis beat Detroit last night for a 2-1 game lead in the World Series, but nobody was watching it (only 12.8 million). A 39-year-old Whitby man faces 282 charges......

...They want you. They want you as a new recruit! Anyone who's seen Pride parade in the last ten years have seen the Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps, Toronto's gay and lesbian colour guard. Since 1994, they've wowed crowds from Montreal to St Catherines with their camp and flashy routines at straight and gay functions alike (Montreal/Toronto Pride, Oshawa Santa Clause parade, Welland Rose parade). This Torontoist remembers the roar of the mob when the group......

There's a lot of Henry Moore in the city of Toronto. After so many years of public school trips to the AGO, it took a fine art education to convince this writer that Moore wasn't a Canadian sculptor. In the late 1950's, British sculptor Henry Moore was at the height of his artistic powers and world-class cities were being defined by their Henry Moore sculptures. New York got a Moore. So did London. And......

The Sorauren Park Festival is happening this Saturday. The party starts at noon with Maracatu Nunca Antes marching from Fern Avenue Public School. Because what’s a community party without a Brazilian marching band, really? There’ll be craft vendors, activities and tons of music, including the intriguingly named Parkdale All Stars. The Park is located at Sorauren and Wabash.......

TTC Chair Howard Moscoe and injured TTC driver Bobby Lowe had a nice chat yesterday and cleared up a few things. Lowe actually said that his beef wasn't with the TTC but with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. They held up his cheque for five months and Lowe lost his apartment and had to break up his family because of that. Howard Moscoe also apologized for calling Lowe a liar on a radio show......

Mercer Union, a non-for-profit art gallery dedicated to the existence of contemporary art, is once again bringing you the good life; by providing a forum for the production and exhibition of Canadian and international "conceptually and aesthetically engaging art and related cultural practices". This is something that Torontoist can totally get behind. They pursue their primary objectives through activities that include exhibitions, lectures, screenings, performances, publications, events and special projects. This year, the Mercer......

Two Torontoist posts about TTC escalators in one day? It can only mean what everyone's been eagerly anticipating all year long: Escalator Safety Week. Yesterday's hipster hot-spot was undoubtedly the Yonge and Bloor subway station where Escalator Safety Week was launched with demonstrations by local public school students on how to properly use an escalator. I won't tell you everything there was to learn (you should've been there), but here are a few tips:......

Torontoist will attempt to put the current state of Canadian-US foreign relations into perspective. As earlier reported, Canada’s refusal to participate in the President’s Missile Defense Shield, has led to a variety of fallouts - leaving the situation in a bit of disarray. In the classic movie Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan plays the role of Cady Heron, a home-schooled foreigner who arrives at her new California public school and finds out that teenage life is......