The problem of abandoned and unwanted pets is not unique to Toronto. A recent Toronto Star article, however, has highlighted the plight of abandoned animals who may no longer be collected by City of Toronto shelters due to budget concerns, ultimately leading to an overflow of dogs and cats in neighbouring municipalities. According to the article, one of the biggest fears is an explosion in the feral feline population, since—as everyone knows—cats are raging......

If you're looking for some place to take your special someone dancing, nothing screams Valentine's Day like Andrew W.K. The man who is dedicated to partying hard will be performing his live show and a DJ set at the Sound Academy this Thursday. His set kicks off a weekend that is busier than usual due to the new Family Day long weekend. Every holiday has their own set of unique traditions and clubs are working......

Last February, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the NYC Condom, with packaging echoing the city's iconic subway signage and distributed for free by street teams in heavily-trafficked areas. In time for Valentine's Day this year, the rebranded LifeStyles condoms have been redesigned, accompanied by a multimedia campaign under the slogan "Get Some." But one of the campaign's new banner ads will look strangely familiar to Torontonians—it features a......

While some may scoff at modern rituals surrounding Valentine's Day, simple expressions of love and sentimentality held a deeper meaning in Toronto towards the end of World War II. Tucked amidst the newspaper coverage of the Yalta Conference this week in 1945 were stories on how Torontonians expressed their admiration towards each other and loved ones fighting overseas. A sense of nostalgia for peaceful times affected the valentine cards that were available. Top sellers......

Today is a Valentine's Day that Kathleen Wynne will never forget. The Miss G___ Project is encouraging Ontario residents to contact the current Minister of Education today and politely demand that a Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) program be added to the Ontario Secondary School curriculum. The Miss G___ Project for Equity in Education has been fighting for three years for a WGS program in Ontario high schools. Kathleen Wynne called the project "the most......

Forget Harlequin––the results from NOW's massive love and sex survey are now out. It's got all the usual features of the Love and Sex issue, like a front cover (at left) that'll make prudes just as mildly uncomfortable as the usual back American Apparel ad will, and tons of glorious, glorious data, this year from just under 6,000 respondents. Among the salient points from the forty questions: we are getting gayer ("sexual fluidity is on......

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve. whisper/kiss love/sounds & embrace BY TAYLOR ZHOU......

In time for Valentine’s Day, Toronto-based Harlequin has released the results of a national online survey on romance and love. Did you know that most men tell white lies to women to keep them happy? According to the survey: "The majority of Canadian men (68%) have done the right thing and lied when their significant other asked the dreaded "Do I look fat in this?" According to 67% of Canadians, white lies are an......

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 Arieh Singer from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The hearts-and-kisses holiday isn't just for cute couples and kindergarten kids, no siree—or, uh, madam-ee! After the hop, skip and jump, Torontoist has Valentine's Day (or night) suggestions for every romantic situation.......

Any sweetheart worth his or her weight in Godiva's will tell you that all they really want for Valentine's Day is something from the heart, made by hand. Lovely and true. But did said sweetie specify whose heart? Whose hands? Unromantic as it seems, we believe it's perfectly acceptable to outsource your labours of love. Why spend hours wrestling with hot glue and lace when someone else can do it for you—and better? This......

Have you been looking around for the perfect Valentine's Day gift for that special someone? Nothing says "I love you" like tickets to Star Trek: The Music. Yesterday, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra announced that their 2007/2008 season finale would be a performance of music from everyone's favourite sci-fi series (Battlestar Galactica be damned!). On June 20 & 21, the TSO will play a medley of Star Trek themes with conductor Erich Kunzel, and hosts......

To borrow a line from an old Saturday Night Live parody of Talking Heads frontman David Byrne's fashion sense, you may ask yourself "why such a big suit?" Village by the Grange opened on McCaul St in the mid-1970s as a mixture of residential and retail spaces. Any secrets the complex held by the time this ad appeared were hidden in each model's shoulder or loose jacket. The toll of those stuck in narrow......

You may remember a recent Torontoist Valentine's Day contest, the prize for which was tickets for two to a Valentine's peformance of The Sheep and the Whale, currently playing at Passe Muraille. So, we'd be rather remiss not to provide any sort of review of the show after the fact. It is perhaps worth pointing out, though, that Torontoist had not seen the play at the time of the contest and had little notion......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

David Suzuki, Green Avenger and Captain of Awesome, says that Torontonians have the right to know what pollutants are in the air we're breathing. 75% of the industrial pollution in our urban air is not being disclosed to the public! Save us, Suzuki! Air Canada is no longer flying to India, a move which business leaders around the city say will harm Indo-Canadian business relationships. Services to India were cancelled to boost service to......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! While everyone else was either pining for their companion or giving Cupid the finger on Valentine's Day, Dave MacIntyre took a stroll through the Scarborough Bluffs and came back with quite the stunner for the Torontoist Flickr group. Dave......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! With Valentine's Day behind us, it's time to turn our attention to all that snow. Tobogganing? Snow-fort making? Snowball fights? Hiding indoors with a book? Torontoist Flickr group member Simon Chambers went out with his wife and son to......

Hey, it's snowing. Crazy! A tangled web of relationship intrigue baffles the investigators of a Markham double homicide. After reading this article three times, I still can't figure out who was married to who and who was having what affairs... ...and on that note, Happy Valentine's Day. With a similarly macabre look at love, a late Neolithic couple found buried together outside of Mantua will not be separated because, well, they're just too adorable.......

All right, time to face reality: Valentine's Day is 2 days away, and you're still single. Dateless. Planless. You got nothin'. You've perused Torontoist's list of fun, naughty Valentine's events, but you're really not into going to any of them alone. You're figuring you just won't leave the house on Wednesday. You hate Valentine's Day even when you're not single: who wants to be surrounded by nauseatingly cute couples fawning over each other? Blech!......

They call them "Hallmark Holidays", manufactured, annual events created largely by companies who stand to profit from the sentimental consumer glut behind spikes in candy sales. Valentine's Day, named after a massacre, is surely one of these days. Yes, plenty of chocolate and roses will be purchased on Wednesday, but this Torontoist will certainly not skip presents this year because of some anti-commercial pretension. If you have $160, we definitely recommend a sweetheart helicopter......

Valentine's Day is only a few days away, and we here across the Gothamist network would like to tell you, in the spirit of the holiday, just how much we love you, our readers. Don't let it get to your heads, though. There are plenty of things we love, you included. Just be glad you're not amongst the things we hate. SFist saw their beloved mayor enter rehab, and they loved the opportunity to gossip......

Valentine's Day is less than a week away - are you still stuck for date ideas? Well, Torontoist, along with Theatre Passe Muraille and Random House, are here to help you out. We have five pairs of tickets to give away for the The Sheep and the Whale, the new play at Passe Muraille, for the night of February 14th at 8:00pm. The play tells the story of a stowaway on a freighter passing......

Photo by Nadia Halim. Yes, Valentine's Day is upon us again. We here at Torontoist know that many of you disdain the day and all that it entails, so we took it upon ourselves to show you that it doesn't have to be all Hallmark cards, chocolates and teddy bears. As such, we've compiled a list of Valentine's events happening during the next week that get into spirit of the day in an unconventional......

Often considered one of Toronto's best sex stores, Come As You Are (701 Queen St. W) is throwing a 10th Anniversary Party on Thursday night. The worker owned and operated store will celebrate ten glorious years with prizes, "thank you gifts," a toonie bin, prizes and erotic pastries (we're hoping for breast cookies and penis eclairs). The bash will be taking place from 6-9pm and is the first of many free events the store is......

Newmindspace would like to wish you a very fun 2007 by offering their documentary, "Into a Newmindspace," for free online. The 15-minute film chronicles Queen of Hearts, which saw Queen West covered in thousands of chalk hearts last Valentine's Day, a massive pillow fight in New York City, and a smashing underground party to celebrate the subway's birthday in March. Filmed by two Ryerson students, Laura Dittmann and Meg Spevak, the documentary can also be......

Torontoist was looking at YouTube last night and found images of a pillow fight in San Francisco. A light bulb went off, Torontoist would like to be the first to propose an inter-city pillow fight challenge. We challenge cities around North America and the world to organize pillow fights on a certain day (SF picked Valentine's Day, Newmindspace did a Toronto pillow fight in November). Winner is the city with the most pillowfighters. If that's......

Sadly the slush had washed off a good part of Newmindspace's Valentine's Day sidewalk mural on Queen St. This literary inspired part right outside Pages Books though is still pretty clear.......

Torontoist hates Valentine's Day as much as the next corporate holiday defying curmugeon, but who doesn't love having something to hate? Join in on the anti-love brigade by hitting the Royal Cinema (606 College) at 9pm tonight for Be My Vile Valentine, a showcase of 'the flipside of love', with four short films including Christian propoganda Footprints (pre-marital sex is a sin, kids), and a special mystery film (ooh). So, if you're either in a......

The 'Dude' moniker oozes certain character traits; the man who goes by Dude tends to be a funny, laid-back, good-natured, likeable, marijuana smoker. On Saturday night, Devin the Dude lived up to his title. On the recommendation of a friend, Torontoist was on hand to witness the Houston emcee sing, rap, joke and smoke at the Reverb on Saturday night. And maybe it was the weather, or the recent TTC fare hikes, but we......