3 Comments September 9, 2015 at 5:00 pm

Extra, Extra: Book Prizes, a Harry Potter-Themed Bar, and a Time Capsule Gets Opened Wide

Every weekday’s end, we collect just about everything you ought to care about or ought not to miss.

Place yer bets, kids: the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist was released today, and the Globe and Mail is calling this year’s CanLit mix “the most intriguing and wonderfully unexpected list in the prize’s 22-year history.” The shortlist will be revealed October 5, with the prize winner announced on November 10.

Speaking of books, Toronto has a Harry Potter-themed bar now. Owners of The Lockhart, located on Dundas West near Dufferin, insist that the watering hole–with its fully-loaded cocktail menu and solid stable of snacks–will appeal beyond its geeky gimmick. Time will tell on that front, but in the meantime, the joint is getting its share of nerdtastic attention.
A 100-year-old time capsule, buried in 1915 at the site of the Canadian Pacific North Toronto train station, was cracked open today. The reveal unveiled blueprints, coins, newspapers, and stamps of the era. Since 1940, the former train station has been the site of the city’s grand Summerhill LCBO.
From today’s edition of 12:36, Toronto’s new lunchtime tabloid newsletter: The Toronto Star has front-page photos of hundreds of children of sex ed protesters learning on a lawn rather than showing up for the first day of school at Thorncliffe Park Public School. The photos happen to have been taken by Sam Sotiropoulos—the conservative and extremely divisive ex-TDSB trustee, who continues to use @TrusteeSam as his Twitter handle despite having been voted out of office in 2014. With tempers flaring on both sides of the sex ed controversy, who can even tell who the “SHAME ON YOU” graffiti outside of two Thorncliffe schools is actually aimed at? (Want more 12:36? Subscribe to it now.)