Cow herds and invalids were among the radio listeners that spent over 10,000 mornings waking up with Wally Crouter. His run as CFRB's morning man from 1946 to 1996 saw his comforting style stay afloat in the ratings against competitors like top 40 radio and shock jocks. Crouter felt that one of the keys to his long run was creating a comfort zone for listeners to ease themselves into the new day, without bringing......

With summer now officially upon us, some of our fair city's citizens face an age-old dilemma: stay in the city for the weekend or flee to the cottage. Families who choose the latter are then faced with the prospect of entertaining themselves in the midst of gridlock and curveballs tossed by the weather deities. Enter CBC's network of repeater stations to keep family members safe from each other's throats and help them avoid the......

After six successful years on the Oxygen network south of the border, flawless Toronto septuagenarian sexpert Sue Johanson is ending her TV call-in show Talk Sex. The show was the most popular late-night draw for the network, receiving 100,000 attempted phone calls per episode, but the 77-year-old registered nurse, lecturer, and sex therapist felt it had become tiresome working the 11 p.m.–1 a.m. time slot for more than three decades. Talk Sex began airing......

Several ways to interpret the stated goal of "reporting some of the happier happenings in our community": An opportunity for budding reporters to hone their skills on enlightening human interest stories and positive community events that fly under the radar during a typical grim news day. A momentary respite from the sensationalism creeping into the news world. A program that allows a media outlet like CFRB to break in fresh young talent gently, without......

If you're near a radio on Monday, tune into CBC Radio for 25 hours of music and talk programming dedicated to Music Monday. Four years ago, the Coalition for Music Education in Canada established Music Monday—the first Monday in May—to highlight the importance of music education in schools. Kids and school staff across the country are encouraged to go outside and play a short concert. The main focus of Music Monday is to join......

Little-known scientific fact: clock radios embedded in a block of ice will cause their frozen shell to melt faster when tuned to an album rock station than any other kind of radio format. Tests are inconclusive as to whether this effect will occur more rapidly if the clock was manufactured by Panasonic or General Electric, or if the ice will reform whenever Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" blares away. Think of how much the city......

An ornately set table. A fine bottle of pink sparkling wine. A bouquet of flowers purchased in a hurry on the way home from the office. A filter on the window to simulate a blue moon. Andy Williams crooning "Moon River" or the 101 Strings playing "Light My Fire" in the background. All of the necessary mood-enhancing ingredients for a cozy tête-à-tête on Valentine's Day. There's a good chance many of these evenings from......

Photo by Daniel Kahn. Last night, amidst the falling snow, the torrid wind, and the downtown lights, a sizable contingent of ironically-dressed hipsters, amateur figure skaters, tiny tots, and bewildered parents skated to the sounds of Stars, Major Marker, and Kevin Drew. All the while, Craig Norris froze his ass off while hosting the R3-30, CBC Radio 3's weekly indie rock countdown, at the Natrel Skating Rink at Harbourfront. Besides the music, there was......

For some magically ridiculous reason, CBC Radio 3's weekly countdown, the R3-30, is broadcasting from a skating rink this week in a move that's heavily dividing the hipster set after the announcement of another free—and markedly less active—event that same night: Tokyo Police Club at Nathan Phillips Square. But host Craig Norris offers this pitch in their favour: "If you've ever listened to The R3-30 in the comfort of your warm, cozy home and......

Many of us developed an affection for opera early in life through Looney Tunes versions of Rossini and Wagner. For some, having Elmer Fudd chant “Kill the Wabbit” to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries” in Chuck Jones's animated masterpiece taught us everything we wanted to know about opera. But if your ambition to appreciate the finer things in life extends beyond Bugs Bunny, real opera could be an intimidating world of old rich......

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. Michael Redhill’s had a big year. His novel Consolation, in addition to being nominated for the Man Booker Prize......

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Each Sunday, the editors of every site—from LAist to Londonist—choose their most interesting article, a list which is compiled into the network-wide feature Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse. SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others.Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish......

According to Environment Canada, this winter will be the coldest in fifteen years. That news should send us all running for the comforts of indoors, but once again Harbourfront Centre provides the perfect reason to play outside. DJ Skating Nights return for a third year, providing those who brave the cold to skate under the glittering skyline with a soundtrack from local DJs. The five Friday nights of the series will feature five different......

If you are saddened by your procrastination that cost you Richard Hawley and Jose Gonzalez tickets this week, you can direct your attention to the eclectic choice of shows as a mild substitute. It does, however, appear as if local label Arts and Crafts have successfully cornered the market on this week's moderately sized shows (read: tickets that cost no more than $35). Tuesday you can catch Jason Collett with a surprise guest at the......

A massive fire at a townhouse complex on Jarvis Street near Mutual resulted in the death of an unidentified victim on Saturday night. Construction on the townhouses had been abandoned for ten months and the building was being inhabited by squatters, says a resident at the adjacent Radio City condo tower. Novelist Norman Mailer died this weekend. Kim Ruehl at Seattlest has a nice eulogy: "He was, as most great novelists are, a complete......

For anyone who missed this year's Massey Lecture last Friday at U of T, don't fret. The City of Words, by celebrated writer, essayist, novelist, and anthologist Alberto Manguel, will be broadcast on CBC Radio One's IDEAS each night at 9:00 p.m. beginning Monday, November 5 running to Friday, the 9th. As a new feature this year, each of the five lectures (unedited and complete with audience discussion) will be available for download starting......

William the Conquerer may have been a great tactician and a bit of a bastard, but we're not quite sure if he was a talented musician. William the Conquerer (the band), however, is a talented musician. Five of them, actually. If you haven't heard their stuff, you should. They're a a buzzing mix of indie-rock and classical training, a blending of instruments and a quasi-seductive husky voice that makes you want to get up......

If you have ever been to Cherry Beach on a Sunday, you are no doubt familiar with the chill beats and mellow atmosphere of a Promise event. This weekend, Promise teams up with alienInFlux for their annual Harvest Festival. The festival, which begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday near Huntsville, ON, is billed as an "Autumn equinox arts and music Celebration." It is perhaps more accurately described as a bookend to a summer of......

Originally published by Viking Press in 1957, Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been wearing holes in the back pockets and floppy canvas knapsacks of gaggles of come-find-yourself road trippers and college-aged who-am-I types ever since. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of its publication, Wednesday night will see the Gladstone play host to something of a symposium on the life and legacy of their main man, Kerouac. Authors Ray Robertson and David Creighton will......

Photo of In-Flight Safety courtesy of Craig Norris of CBC Radio 3. There are those who snidely believe the Hillside Music Festival is all politically-motivated tie-dye and body odour, but that’s a cursory dismissal. The 2007 version of the festival brought together the indie-kids and the hippies, the families and the staunch loners, and the musicians and the fans into a community of solar-powered folk and rock music that blistered throughout the weekend. Toronto......

Photo by bitefight from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Torontoist has a soft spot in our heart for CBC Radio One. We kind of want Stuart McLean to be our grandfather, we can often be seen funking out and/or singing along to the addictive theme song of The Current, and we think that Jian Ghomeshi is just dreamy. The summer, however, brings strange and disturbing changes to everyone’s favourite public broadcaster—the summer schedule, full of......

Yesterday, the Lakeview Generating Station in Port Credit was demolished as crowds looked on. Toronto usually gets weepy over the destruction of buildings, but the station was a pretty ugly example of Soviet-era industrial architecture and it was powered by coal. Are you going to miss it? Andy Barrie, host of CBC Radio One's Metro Morning, has early-stage Parkinson's. Three men have been charged with pimping out a 17-year-old girl at strip clubs and......

MP Peggy Nash and MPP Cheri DiNovo protest the closing of Toronto's swimming pools. At 8:30 this morning, hundreds of protesters gathered at the corner of Keele Street and Glenlake Avenue to save their community pool slated for closure next month. Extremely fit-looking senior citizens with youthful energy wore bathing suits, goggles, and swim caps. Young children, chanting “Save our pools! Save our pools!” waved signs which read, “Swim skills save children’s lives,” and......

For the time, it seems, side-projects are here to stay. If you take a look at any of the large indie bands from Canada (Broken Social Scene, Stars, New Pornographers, The Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, off the top of our head), they've got at least one offshoot, whether active or not. The surprising thing is that, for the most part, these side-projects have done a decent job of living up to the hype brought......

The Art of Time Ensemble played their final shows of the 2006/2007 season this past Thursday and Friday at the Harbourfront Centre. The group's aim is to bring chamber music to new ears by blending it with other genres and new ideas, while retaining its elegance and intelligence. Andrew Burashko created The Art of Time as a way to "test my assumption that we could present chamber music in an accessible way." Judging by......

For the entire month of May, the Deep Wireless festival will be taking place at various venues, from the west end to your very own living room. Presented by New Adventures in Sound Art, this is the sixth edition of the annual festival that explores the medium of experimental sound and radio art. Don't let the idea of experimental audio art put you off. It's far more accessible than it sounds, and with a......

Final Fantasy alert! Over the past week, the always-lovely Good Hodgkins has twice graced us with new Owen Pallett tracks. First came a grand total of six tracks from Owen Pallett and rapper Cadence Weapons's CBC Radio session in mid-April. Pallett is featured on three of Cadence's tracks (check out "Sharks," in which Pallett incorporates some sweet Andrew Bird into the mix) and then has three of his own songs: "What Do You Think......

Despite Canada's love-hate relationship with the CBC, we're big fans of York theatre grad Barbara Budd. Budd has co-hosted CBC Radio One's venerable As It Happens since 1993, and the Toronto-based show is known across Canada and satellite radio for its off-the-wall take on current events. Probably the show's most cringingly infamous clip is from 1976, when Barbara Frum is goaded into profanity, trying in vain to interview a hard-of-hearing British farmer about the world's......

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......

The fine for street racing is now $10,000. There goes my weekend. A man was discovered stabbed to death at 1:30 a.m. this morning on an empty subway car at Kennedy Station. The station was closed for investigation for most of the morning rush hour, and details are limited at this point. We'll keep you posted. Pro-Tip #6834: Don't describe a women's college basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" if you value your job at......