Photo by sevennine from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. In the 1996 Canadian movie Kissed, a young female mortician discovers the joys of necrophilia. That same year, David Cronenberg made Crash, wherein a group of omnisexual urbanites eroticize car accidents. In Léolo, a 12-year-old boy masturbates with a chunk of liver, later served to his family for dinner. This spring's Young People Fucking is, well, called Young People Fucking. Canadians have traditionally been somewhat blasé......

Raising banners, flags, and fists, a polyglot crowd descended on the U.S. Consulate with a deafeningly simple point: “Kosovo Je Srbije”—Kosovo is Serbia. Saturday’s demonstration comes on the heels of Kosovo’s secession from Serbia, a move that has sparked outrage among Serbs and many in the international community. Despite this, Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17th has been recognized by many Western nations, including the United States, Germany, France, Denmark, and Turkey. While......

If you're like us (and, God willing, you’re not), then you're utterly exasperated by the ongoing steroid scandal in Major League Baseball. You're puzzled that the United States Congress has nothing better to do than to interrogate multimillionaire athletes who might've used performance-enhancing drugs. Moreover, you're wondering why, this past Wednesday morning, no fewer than three Canadian sports networks were showing live coverage of the Roger Clemens hearing. Is it really that important? Regardless,......

Photo by Denmar from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Canadian telcos are masters at exploiting customer tolerance limits—when you need a mobile device and are locked into a contract with few alternative options, you're pretty much forced to accept the beatdown levied by one of the three majors. And the carriers benefit greatly by confusing customers, whether it be via despicable "system access fees" or by giving meaningless, unhelpful names to monthly rate plans, like......

It's snowing again! This gives Torontoist yet another opportunity to bust out a pretty picture of streets clogged with snow, and it gives the rest of Canada the opportunity to go, "Hey, how come those Toronto folks can't deal with a little snow ha ha ha don't they have plows?" Then we say, "No, we don't have enough plows, fuckers, because it turns out everybody else is entirely happy to suck money off us......

Photo by Lina Aristizabal. Yesterday, January 21, was the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that decriminalized abortion in the United States. Monday marks the 20th anniversary of Canada's Morgentaler decision, a similar judgment that found the Criminal Code's abortion provision to be in violation of womens' Charter rights. In the Morgentaler case, Justice Bertha Wilson wrote the following:The decision whether to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a......

Government fires head of Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Linda Keen. However, it is understandable, considering that Ms. Keen went public about government interference in her job and threats of being fired if she shut down the Chalk River reactor for being potentially unsafe. We mean, you can't say she wasn't warned that her bosses were mendacious assholes, is our point. Mitt Romney wins Michigan Republican primary. The former Massachusetts governor, thought to be made......

Gas prices are up three cents a litre as the price of oil crossed the psychological threshold of US$100 a barrel for the first time ever. Upon hearing the news, Stephen Harper flew to the Alberta oil sands and gave a stirring speech about how victory would soon be his, whereupon he was roundly cheered by all the hosts of Mordor. A low-level mobster claims that in 1974 he was tasked with assassinating Pierre......

Almost half of all Toronto-area residents are foreign-born. This is the first little tidbit released from the 2006 census, which the government is doling out as if it were a movie trailer or something. (Will Smith versus zombies: probably more entertaining.) Bank of Canada lowers interest rates. A weakened loonie will allow Canada's manufacturing sector to compete more efficiently in international markets, by which we mostly mean the United States. Conservative insiders will meet tonight......

Dalton McGuinty's throne speech will focus on poverty and climate change. They were going to focus on Desperate Housewives, but the writer's strike got in the way. If you wanted to know more about the phony bomb scare last night at the ROM, Torontoist has the goods right here. Buy all our playsets and toys! Opposition rebels against Tory climate change proposals. Harper says that the Commonwealth's climate change plan would have meant a doubling......

If you're like us, and you attended a Canadian university, you probably watch U.S. college football with a mixture of bemusement and envy—bemusement because you can’t quite fathom how a hundred thousand people could turn up to watch collegiate athletes, envy because you wish you could’ve had that experience at your school. This past Friday, for instance, over 90,000 fans packed Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks knock off......

Our national infrastructure needs $123 billion in investment to avoid collapse. If Canada's governments don't spend the money, we will end up looking like The Road Warrior. (Torontoist dibs being the Gyro Captain.) Internet "brownouts" could become common by 2010. Yes, you read that right: the horror of slow downloads could happen to you. The report, prepared by an organization funded by the American telecommunications industry, recommends massive investment in fibre optic cabling for......

Some Canadian cattle will now be allowed into the United States following a 4-year ban in the wake of several cases of "mad cow" disease. American Homeland Security regulations will still require that any bovines wishing to cross the border carry a valid passport. The latest UN report on climate change says that global disaster is a safe bet if we don't change our carbon-emitting ways by 2012. It's all good for Canadians though, as......

Few companies inspire the kind of product lust that Apple does, and it's no secret that Mac users can be somewhat evangelical about the company from Cupertino. To many Apple fans in Canada, it's sheer torture that TV shows and movies aren't yet available in the Canadian iTunes Music Store, or that the iPhone is taking so damn long to cross the border. In the United States, the iPhone has been the must-have tech......

Scandinavian Airlines says that they will permanently ground their fleet of Canadian-made Bombardier Q400 turboprops following three accidents involving problems with landing gear. In response, Bombardier will no longer market the plane as the Q400 Skid. The Dalai Lama is in Ottawa, where he will spend three days meeting with Tibetan exiles and politicians. The world's cutest religious leader said during a speech that war is obsolete, noting, "We all come from our mother's......

Mid-1970s diners expected a certain level of ostentation when eating at finer Chinese cuisine establishments. Decor was touted as much, if not more, than what went into one's mouth. The atmosphere diners were promised at today's featured restaurant hints at a feast for the senses. Except that the foo dogs were not mere decoration... The history of 346 Spadina Avenue reflects the neighbourhood's ethnic shifts. During the mid-20th century it was home to the......

The Stephen Harper government unveiled its plan for the country in the Throne Speech last night, emphasizing the usual panoply of tax-cuttin', crime fightin', environment dismissin' Conservative virtues. Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe have already stated they will not support the government, while Liberal leader Stéphane Dion will decide whether to force an election after consulting with his caucus. Dion is envied by the other opposition leaders for his massive caucus. Water prices for Toronto......

Stephen Harper pledges $40 million to polar research. Forty million dollars? That will buy an entire research station! By 2015, we will have turned drowned polar bears into a renewable energy source! Electioneering party leaders promise to get tough on street racing. Most impressive: Howard Hampton's promise to bring back photo radar. Yes, Howard. That will get the NDP lots of votes. Peter Mackay calls Liberal MP's trip to Afghanistan a "stunt." However, when......

If you were a child passing through Toronto since the early 1970s, there's a good chance you may have eaten at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Kitschy antique decor, the pots of whipped garlic butter that arrived with the loaf of bread and a family-friendly atmosphere have kept the crowds coming for nearly four decades. The Old Spaghetti Factory opened its first location in Portland, Oregon in 1969, a period when themed sit-down restaurant chains......

Anyone who grew up in Toronto has been on at least one school field trip to historic Fort York. You've smelled the horseshit, eaten the biscuits, and probably watched some corny performance by someone in a costume telling you how things used to be in the olden days. So it might be tempting to dismiss Crate Productions' new play The Fort at York as an educational play, or worse, historical reenactment. This would be......

Peter Gatien was, at one time, the undisputed king of nightlife in New York City. After being driven out of the United States by a government crackdown on nightclubs led by former New York mayor and current American presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, Gatien made Toronto his home, and is now opening CiRCA in the former Playdium/Lucid location on John Street. Gatien calls the 55,000 square foot CiRCA an "entertainment complex," which hardly begins to......

David Hughes, a senior geoscientist at Natural Resources Canada, is to energy security as David Suzuki is to the environment or Al Gore is to Global Warming. The fact that he has yet to receive the same level of attention is an unfortunate oversight, since our energy security (or lack thereof) is an increasingly urgent issue that we must learn more about and begin to address. Mr. Hughes' message regarding dwindling energy supplies is......

A 13-year-old boy at St. Mary's Catholic Secondary School in Toronto was arrested after he was found to be carrying an illegal 200,000 volt stun gun in his backpack.The Star quotes school board chair Oliver Carroll as saying that "everyone was shocked." Presumably Carroll was not speaking literally. The Toronto International Film Festival opened yesterday, and as always, will showcase some of the most creative minds and promising newcomers in the movie industry. More......

Last night, the seats of Harbourfront Centre's studio theatre were packed with a mix of middle-aged art aficionados and well-coiffed hip, young homos all dying to see Francesco Vezzoli give a lecture and screen his notorious Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula. Vezzoli is an Italian artist known for his work in video and embroidery (yes, embroidery) who set the art world ablaze a couple of years ago with his re-imagining of the......

Beginning this Thursday, the fifteenth annual Junction Arts Festival will be swarming the streets with an entourage of innovative musicians, performers, and visual artists hailing from Canada, Denmark, Brussels, and the United States. Taking place on the one kilometre stretch between Quebec Avenue and Keele Street on Dundas Street West, the festival will present the works of over fifty visual artists as selected by the 2007 Juried Art Exhibition—and for the first time, will......

All summer long, Toronto has been jam-packed with countless cultural festivities, and as the last weekend of the summer begins to dawn on us—with students gearing up for school and vacations coming to an unfortunate end—why not end the summer with some Ukrainian style? This year, what was formerly known as the Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival is being renamed the Toronto Ukrainian Festival and will take place at Harbourfront Centre. From August 31......

"Busker? Don't even know 'er!" jokes aside, Toronto's annual street performer extravaganza is back until Sunday with a new roster of bizarre talents from around the globe. Buskerfest, the last of the major summer street festivals, draws about 350,000 spectators over four days and it's the best place to see someone jam a sword down one's esophagus up close. Magicians and balloon artists are also present for the kiddies, and there are plenty of......

Out of respect for the funeral of Richard Bradshaw, the Toronto International Film Festival Group chose not to hold their traditional big final press conference in Nathan Phillips Square yesterday, and so with slightly less fanfare than usual we received a massive lump of press releases from the Festival announcing that they’ve announced absolutely everything about the festival there is to announce, pretty much. So what does that entail? Well, in the 32nd Toronto International......

As mentioned in last week's ad, the Canadian National Exhibition took a break during World War II. Once the war was over, the existing buildings were modernized to prepare for the Ex's return. "From acting as a depot through which passed thousands of young Canadians to the theatres of war," noted a Toronto Telegram editorial, "it now reverts to its role as the window through which the world may glimpse the peacetime strength and......

Canadian Bar Association demands that Stephen Harper negotiate with the United States to return Omar Khadr to Canada. The country's largest legal organization (and Khadr's own American military lawyer, for that matter) states that Khadr will not get a fair trial in the United States, which is obvious. Also obvious: the likelihood of Harper doing exactly dick about it. Gay Nicaraguan man goes into hiding in Toronto after being denied refugee status. Which is......