The last time we looked at accessible pedestrian signals (APS), those chirping and cuckooing crossing indicators for the visually-impaired, it was with some surprise at the city's claim that it simply couldn't afford to install APS at more than a handful of intersections each year. Instead of allocating enough money to improve availability of a fairly basic service to visually-impaired residents, the city instead looked for corporate sponsors to pick up some of the......

Palace of the End, Judith Thompson's most recent play, is not only her most political work, it is also her best. As most auditioning actors in this country have discovered, Thompson's greatest strength has always been her monologues, and in this piece, she uses that strength to its full advantage. In fact, she dispenses with character interaction altogether and breaks her show into three long monologues, each spoken by someone who has been greatly......

A new free service called Operation Red Nose launches tomorrow that provides volunteer designated drivers to get drunks and their cars home safely. The service already runs in places like Sudbury and Aurora, and now festive partygoers in the Distillery District can try it out this Wednesday, December 12 to Saturday, December 15. The program is fairly flexible since drivers can request service as often as necessary to get from one place to the......

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......

CityPulse. The New Music. Baby Blue Movies. City Lights. Fashion Television. Speaker's Corner. These programs are among the innovative shows that have aired on CityTV since it officially launched way up the dial 35 years ago this evening. CityTV had a short gestation period after the CRTC approved its license in November 1971. Key figures in the station's early ownership included president Edgar Cowan, vice-president Phyllis Switzer, lawyer Jerry Grafstein and managing director/former CBC......

Poverty is an issue politicians like to debate, pundits cluck their tongues over, and that everyone agrees is kinda crummy, but pretty overwhelming. While debates, discussions and campaigns aren't bad things, they don't always result in a lot of concrete solutions. So what do we do about a complex issue like poverty? We find a complex solution. Pathways To Education is a program that started in Regent Park in 2001. It was the result of......

The city of Paris has recently been courting tourists from London, England with a new series of ads that look like this: What does a Paris tourism poster have to do with Toronto? Well, the C'est So Paris ads, with their posy compositions, saturated colours and irreverent humour, bears an uncanny resemblance to those T.O. Live With Culture posters from January, only these are actually good. The Parisian ads are witty, attention-grabbing and intelligible—everything the......

The Toronto Public Library is the only good thing to have come from amalgamation. One of the worst things to have come from amalgamation, on the other hand, is City Council's insistence that everything that it doesn't do is a result of not being able to afford to do it, and that everything that it does do is a result of not being able to afford not to do it. Last Wednesday morning, June......

If last week’s key word on the literary scene was “big,” as in prizes, galas, festivals, sold-out readings, visiting writers, and BookExpo, we get back to normal-ish this week. In fact, we’ve not had such a low-key stretch since March. Fear not. The Scream Literary Festival is adding more information to their website every week. On July 3rd, the festival kicks off with readings by Dennis Lee and Souvankham Thammavongsa, films by Shapour Shahidi, and......

This morning, the City revealed a few models of Toronto's proposed street furniture at City Hall. Like the Nathan Phillips Square competition, the designs are being evaluated by an independent jury which will submit their evaluation to the Executive Committee on April 30. The public will not be solicited for feedback, despite the program being featured on the City's website under the "Get Involved" category. The physical prototypes are strangely only on display today......

The elite of the documentary film world gathered this morning at Revival for a press conference announcing the lineup of this year's Hot Docs festival. It's a powerhouse program, which TVO's Rudy Buttingnol attributes to the filmmakers and the growing importance of the medium. "Documentaries are helping change the way people think," says Buttingnol, who will also receive the inaugural Outstanding Industry Achievement Award. "Just look at how governments around the world are now trying......

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To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, the organization wants us to get involved in their "50 for 50" Arts Challenge. Canadians are invited to meet the challenge by engaging in 50 arts-related activities over the course of the year. Do not fret if you’ve neglected the arts since Jan 1 due to laziness and winter hibernation; there's still ample time to reach the goal in the 45 weeks that......

Hey, have you been outside? It's hella cold. Yesterday kicked-off the LCBO's new bottle recycling program, and the homeless dig it. It's estimated that the program could increase the recycling of wine and spirit bottles by 30-40%. My dad can chase down your dad. After his minivan was stolen with his 3-year-old son inside, Derrick Lahey jumped into the family car and hunted down the perp - the van was found less than a......

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann courtesy of the TSO. If you’re turned off at the idea of classical music concerts because they seem like an activity for the high society rich, think again. There are plenty of ways to enjoy Toronto’s healthy classical music scene on the cheap or for free. Toronto Symphony Orchestra In an effort to infuse some young blood into its increasingly grey-haired audience demographic, the TSO offers $12 concert tickets to......

BikeShare is no more. After six years of award-winning programming and service, the Community Bicycle Network's BikeShare program announced this morning that they will not be reopening next season. Turns out they were unable to secure the funding they needed. This, despite the fact that the program has been a huge success. "In just five years," explains Margaret Hastings-James, a CBN director, "the program has signed up over 2000 members, put 243 bikes on......

MIT's Media Laboratory is getting a lot of press these days with their One Laptop Per Child research program that hopes to revolutionize the Third World with $100 laptops in schools. While Canada boasts being one of the world's leading wired nations, there are still many underprivileged kids in Toronto who don't have easy access to a computer of their own, further widening the gap of opportunity. Journalist and tech guru Andy Walker (author......

Probably the best thing you can say to any artist is that their work remains relevant and surprising regardless of age. For the most part this is the case with the work of Canadian animator Norman McLaren. Born in Scotland but working for most of his life with the NFB, McLaren was arguably the greatest Canadian animator ever and a natural choice for an NFB retrospective celebrating not only his work but the 65th anniversary......

...and save. The city is pushing its toilet replacement program "Flush With Savings" with ads on litter bins. It's hard not to go on punning, but instead Torontoist will take a look at some of the 100 or so city-approved replacement models on the downloadable list [pdf]. Toilet selection is not a snap. First of all there's Lpf -- or liters per flush, for the incognoscenti. Your regular toilet probably dispenses 13 or more Lpf,......

Torontoist should have been tipped off by the glowing reviews from "Larri King," "Dr. Pheel," and "Star Joynes" printed on the inside of the program... But regardless, with an hour to kill, MAN-o-pause was on the agenda. Unfortunately titled, (only palely punningly referential), the rote plot is an historical account of a divorced gay man and a divorced straight woman's lives, from high school until their current 40s. What was supposed to be a......

First off, two thoughts. One. Directly before writing this someone called us to let Torontoist know it was ‘National Break-Up Day’. We declined to break up largely because we hypothesised that it was a holiday invented because they’ve just released The Break-Up, the new film featuring a woman who Brad Pitt didn’t impregnate for whatever reason, and a man who looks like he never sleeps (that joke is stolen from Family Guy, but come on,......

Maogosha Pyjor, coordinator of the CBN's BikeShare program just told Torontoist that their fleet of yellow bikes are being targeted by vandals! "Someone has been going around and puncturing the tires on yellow bikes," she just told us over the phone. At first, east side bike hubs were being targeted but now it seems even isolated yellow bikes are not safe. Around 25 bikes have been taken off the road with damage. With warmer weather......

In honour of Jane Jacobs CBC Radio One's Ideas will be re-airing their programs on Dark Age Ahead, her last work. The book describes how cultures decline and dead end and why our society might be sliding into a dark hole that might not be so easy to get out of. Part one of the the program airs tonight at 9:00. Half an hour later in Newfoundland (we don't get to say that often on......

It’s an interesting and potentially important time for English language Canadian filmmakers, with several Canadian films managing to reach cult hit status, such as It’s All Gone Pete Tong and The Life And Hard Time of Guy Terrifico. With only five percent of movies seen by Canadians made by Canadians (according to the program guide) and the writer of It’s All Gone Pete Tong Michael Dowse expressing a wish for Canadian content quotas for cinemas......

This month's installment of the WSFF's world of shorts program is 'Full Time Job,' a series of films about working to live, living to work, or just going along for the ride. Films include TEMPO, JOB STREET, RIDING SHOTGUN WITH JACK MCCONAHA, TOKYO EXPRESS, HONEY, IRIS, AWAKEN, GLENDA MARY’S GLENDA GLOSS and THE CARPENTER AND HIS CLUMSY WIFE. And the program screens twice, at 6:30pm and 8:30pm, at the NFB. - And also! Tom Twyker......

The above words are those of a friend of a Toronto graffiti artist who was killed on Tuesday, while tagging a train car near Dupont and Christie. Anthony Reinhart writing of the tragedy in the Globe, says Bardia Bryan Zargham, or Alpha, was one of the city's most prolific graffiti artists, one whose tags covered the city and was well known for his ubiquity. The Star quotes a graffiti eradication program officer as saying this......

An American network television show paid lip service to Canada again yesterday, and this country's media were shouting the news from every rooftop. The plot of last night's Simpsons episode centred around a trip to Winnipeg to scam pharmaceuticals for hard-up Springfieldians. And despite the fact that there was little that was actually recognisable about the Canada portrayed (where, good sirs, was the Golden Boy?), The CP and Canada.com, the CBC, and members of the......