TSX plunges nearly five percent in one day. The stocks dropped as a result of a worldwide sell-off prompted by the probable American recession that, depending on who you talk to, is either here already, coming very soon, or never going to come ever. Of course, you'll only hear that last one when you talk to George W. Bush. Landlord of "the Dungeon" says it's not his fault. He only rents it out, he......

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. Two years ago, the Toronto Raptors were the laughing stock of the NBA. Vince Carter and his mom had......

Those fans who are lucky enough to be attending the first two Raptors playoff games will be happy to learn that the team is giving away red T-shirts for fans to wear during the game. The official shirts will supposedly read "Let’s Go Red. Let’s Go Raptors." However, a few entrepreneurial fans think that they have a better idea for a T-shirt. These FUVC shirts are just one example of the anti-Vince Carter sentiment that......

Nelly Furtado wins five Junos. Clearly, we will respect her if we get it. In other news, Jim Cuddy won the Juno for best adult alternative album, which means he did the best job of taking actual alternative music, dropping it to quarter-speed and setting it to acoustic guitar. Toronto is number fifteen! In the annual Mercer Human Resource Consulting review of best cities in Canada the world to live in, that is. Every Canadian......

Raptors fans have had to suffer a lot of humiliation over the last few years: There was the Vince Carter trade debacle, there was the night that Kobe Bryant dropped 81 points, and there was the 1-15 start last season that had ESPN speculating that the Raptors might be one of the worst teams in NBA history. But, the absolute low-point for the franchise came on the afternoon of October 16, 2005 in a pre-season......

Ottawa reaches $10 million settlement with Maher Arar. Meanwhile, Arar is still on the American no-fly list, so the next time some American asks you why us Canadians are so smug and self-superior as regards them, just point them to this and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. One in four Canadians lists the environment as their chief issue of concern. Twenty percent say they are very likely or somewhat likely to vote Green......

Yesterday, Jorge Garbajosa was named the Rookie of the Month for the NBA’s Eastern Conference, and he has been leading NBA.com’s unofficial Rookie of the Year Race for the past month. Garbajosa, however, is not a typical rookie; he doesn’t look like one and he doesn’t play like one. He just turned 29 years old, making him about seven years older than most of the league’s other leading rooks. Perhaps that is why he never......

Toronto officials are currently engaged in a last-ditch effort to save the 2015 World's Fair. Is it just me or would the Expo be a colossal mistake? In semi-related news, Christopher Hume doesn't think Toronto is on the road to a better future. With election day fast approaching, David Miller makes his final campaign pledges. A Richmond Hill man, missing for 28 hours, turns up at a police station. I'd been counting down this......

Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment abandoned common protocol Thursday afternoon, firing the Raptors underachieving General Manager, Rob Babcock. Come to think of it, it's only common protocol when dealing with the hockey side of the business. Raptors officials are hired and fired like one-night stands. Prior to joining the team in 2004, Babcock certainly couldn't have envisioned the next eighteen months being any more devastating. He had been a controversy from day one, when Vince......

The Raptors exploded this weekend, posting back-to-back wins in Atlanta on Friday and New Jersey on Saturday. In doing so, they also moved out of the NBA's basement and improved their season mark to 3-15. And if it couldn't get any better, Big Man Ha-fay-el Ar-RU-joe almost took out Vince Carter. VC left midway through the third with an ankle injury after getting tangled up with the big Brazillian. Although he returned to the game,......

After a busy offseason, Raptor Basketball is back at the Air Canada Centre tonight. With all the second-guessing and criticism following every personell decision this summer, it will be interesting to see how the team responds in 05/06. There is no question that veteran leadership is at a minimum this year, however, if the preseason is any indication, it looks like Rob Babcock made the right moves on draft day. First round selections, Charlie Villanueva......

The National Basketball Association's MVP and super cute BC native Steve Nash could very well be approaching superhero status in Toronto. Over the weekend, millions (or thousands) of Nashophiles were speculating whether the camera phone picture below, courtesy of Gawker, was really Hair Canada playing an impromptu game of pick-up in NYC. The Gawker reportage, which posted at least three pictures of Nash balling with non-NBA players, have since been confirmed. What a guy! Along......

Onward with the hottest public officials of the summer, it's... 4. Peter Mackay, Conservative, Central Nova Mackay's fall from grace is well documented: First he was all "smitten," then he was crying at some farm with some dog that wasn't even his. Regardless of whether he was taking orders from Steven Harper ("hey Pete, pretend you're sad to win support!") or was actually heartbroken, Peter Mackay is still a giant-sized cheeseball. What Mackay doesn't realize,......

This past week, The Mountain Goats latest release The Sunset Tree has been running through our heads, both conceptually and sonically. This album, for those who haven't heard or heard about, is from principal songwriter John Darnielle. This is a man who's been recording for over a decade, and has released something like 400 songs to date (Torontoist admittedly has only heard a fraction of these). His modus operandi has been low fidelity, endlessly imaginative......

After six long months, the Toronto Raptors season will finally be laid to rest tonight. Following a 4-1 start that seemed so promising, the boys managed just 29 wins over the next 76 games, leading into tonight's final matchup against Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. With confused fans wondering 'why in the heck?' Torontoist offers not one, but two reasons to take in tonight's game. First off, as with any funeral, loved ones come......

How was Vince Carter’s return to the Air Canada Centre this past Friday night? Torontoist doesn’t want to talk about it. With that out of the way, we will focus on the Raptors follow-up performance last night. Both Torontoist editor Josh and the Adorable Sports Writer were on hand to witness yet another Toronto defeat. The Atlantic-Division leading Boston Celtics handed it to the Raptors 103-98. With all the losses this season, Toronto fans are......

Listening to the Fan590 on the ride home last night, Torontoist was disturbed to hear the words idiots and applause when referring to tonight’s matchup between the Toronto Raptors and the New Jersey Nets. They suggest that it is inappropriate for Vince Carter to be punished for “quitting” the Raptors. Torontoist disagrees. TOist thinks Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment should have recalled all the tickets for tonight’s game and held a contest to find the......

Similar to a child's excitement prior to christmas morning, Torontoist will be tossing and turning in it's bed tonight. The terrible sleep will be credited to the anticipation of Vince Carter's return to the ACC tomorrow evening. With his New Jersey Nets only a game and a half back of the Philadlelpia 76ers for the Eastern Conference's eighth and final playoff spot, Vince's long awaited return to Toronto could be the game that decides his......

For those of you still in mourning over the lost hockey season, Torontoist says “Get a Life Loser”. Both this Friday and next will offer Toronto sports fans something they have been waiting for since the Argo’s Grey Cup win… Excitement! The abysmal basketball season will be pushed aside tonight as baseball returns to the newly revamped Rogers Centre, with the Blue Jays taking the field against the World Champion Boston Red Sox. The 2-1......

Alonzo Mourning apologized to Raptor fans yesterday, saying he’s sorry if he got their hopes up following his inclusion in the deal that sent Vince Carter packing. Mourning, who came out of retirement following a 2003 kidney transplant, said he wanted to play for a championship-caliber team. His return to Miami, where he had his best years as a pro, may in-fact allow him to achieve his long awaited goal. Depsite the fact that the......

Believe it or not, the Raptors once again lost in disgraceful fashion last night. After clawing their way back to hold the ball for the game-winning shot, RESERVE point guard, Milt Palacio elected to attempt an off-balance, heavily guarded lay-up instead of calling a timeout. Same old Raptor story. One bright spot for the Raps was Jalen Rose’s 35 points. Unfortunately the team has given up 110 points in four of their last five games.......

Five Provinces, Two Friends, One Canoe, One Thousand Dreams! The slogan of the outdoors expedition that will see two friends paddling across the Canadian countryside with one goal in mind - Charity! Le Pistol drummer Drew Osborne will be teaming up with longtime pal Clare Cayley for the four-month adventure that begins mid-April when they will place their canoe in the North Saskatchewan River. The premise behind the journey is to replicate the paths taken......

The Raptors found themselves on the other side of ball Tuesday evening, and it couldn’t have come at a more crucial time. With their fan base losing faith in the rebuilding process, the team’s eighteen-point victory against the Nets was undoubtedly a welcome change. The Raps can credit the road-win to poor shot selection, untimely turnovers and a general inability to compete. Only this time it wasn’t them making the mistakes. It was their opponent,......

We live in an age of information technology where the influence of television appears quaint; it's nice to speak of the latest Millionaire show or who is f-ing who on the Bachelor. But if we were to take sides with media critic Neil Postman, these sorts of things would be taken up as political issues. Postman notes that Americans, through political process, rejected new technology of supersonic transport planes (SSTs) in the 70's because they......

Is Toronto doomed to replace Montreal as the sports world's least desirable location? With the exception of the Bible-minded Blue Jay Cory Koskie, would the ultra religious sports community consider a city that allows same-sex marriage on par with the Miami's and L.A.'s? And what of those taxes! Well, Jay closer Billy Koch says he likes the city so much that he came back after stints in Oakland and Chicago. Departed first baseman Carlos Delgado......

With Gary Bettman finally putting an end to the prolonged nausea of the NHL’s Collective Bargaining, we now look at alternative distractions to fill the void in the absence of our country’s top sport. The void once filled by the even more nauseating lockout coverage by top sporting networks such as TSN and RogersSportsnet, will hopefully see a shift to real sporting news, such as "Target="new">Vince Carter’s resurgence and this weekends’ NBA All-star game. With......

Raptor Coach Sam Mitchell had some strong words prior to Wednesday’s 110-107 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. In clarifying Tuesday’s night’s rumored altercation with point guard Rafer Alston, Mitchell called out the Gund Arena cleaning crew for keeping a messy house. "I laugh at the fact that it went from shouting to I was actually rolling around on the floor with my nice suit on," said Mitchell. "I don't do that anymore. I'm a little......

With Vince Carter merely an unfortunate memory to our fine city, another Toronto Raptor is filling the void left behind. Point guard Rafer Alston has disrupted the team once again this week, with rumors claiming that he started a fistfight with coach Sam Mitchell during halftime on Tuesday evening. And, in plain view of all the Cleveland fans, Alston appeared to leave the court in tears. Tears! There's no crying in basketball. In post VC......

January 26th is an important day in pop culture history. Today marks the births of Hockey Legend Wayne Gretzky, Academy Award winner Paul Newman and Outspoken Comedienne Ellen DeGeneres. However on a day so cherished, it is desperately unfortunate that we must include ex-Raptor Vince Carter, who will be blowing out twenty-eight candles today. With all the life-threatening injuries he has sustained during his illustrious career, we must congratulate him on making it this far.......

Don’t look now, but the Toronto Raptors are only 2 games out of third place in the Eastern Conference. Currently sitting 10th, and three and a half games back of the streaking Chicago Bulls for the final playoff spot, the Raps can thank the NBA playoff structure and their abysmal Atlantic division for their opportunity at a home court playoff series. Despite how poor a record, the division leader is guaranteed a top-three seed. With......