Posts Tagged ‘Toronto’

Oh my, but it’s been a nice Canada Day. We were up pretty early — improbably, Nellie get out of bed before I did — and walked down to the waterfront to catch the ferry to the islands. First we rented bikes (crappy ones, too…next time I need to find a better place from which [...]

Just back from a semi-whirlwind trip to Halifax for a friend’s wedding. In addition to the ceremony itself, which was a ton of fun, we also squeezed in brunch with friends at their beautiful new home, dinner at Bish with my parents, brother and sister-in-law and even some down time on a few patios. Aaaaaaaaaand [...]

I’m getting too old for this. Last night wasn’t a late finisher so much as it was an early starter. Dinner at Fieramosca (with a bottle of wine), then drinks with co-workers at The Pilot, then more co-worker drinks at Volo, and finally dinner at Origin. I think our meal was good. I know it [...]

4,634 days ago I moved to a place I never thought I’d end up: Toronto. Growing up on the east coast of Canada, you’re trained to dislike Ontario in general, and Toronto in particular. Of course, that was an uninformed opinion, typical small-town distrust of big cities. I was excited as soon as it became [...]

Last year I commented on a Dooney’s Cafe article about the decline of a great Toronto neighbourhood: The Annex. The article was focused on the strip of Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst, and about how banal it had become. Really, what’s happened to that piece of Bloor is studentification (admittedly, that’s not a word, but [...]

Nellie’s vacations are always bittersweet for me. As an introvert I love the alone time, but I always miss her too. Two years after I saw Once for the first time, I watched it again. Still just as amazing. The scene in the music store where he teaches her “Falling Slowly” gave me chills, just [...]

If you live in Toronto and have recently been near the corner of Yonge & Bloor — arguably the core intersection of the city — you would have seen the empty lot, razed many months ago in preparation for the 80-story condo that generated lineups hundreds-deep for early sales. Looking across that nice flat lot, [...]

Since CityNews, BlogTO, Torontoist and everybody else are posting dozens of amazing pictures of the storm that slammed Toronto earlier today (and spawned tornadoes around the GTA), I decided to post one from the minutes following the storm. Make no mistake, the storm was amazing. I got video of it rolling in (and this storm [...]

BlogTO yesterday raised an interesting topic: the differences in travel styles. Emphasis is mine. Yesterday, the New York Times published yet another one of their great travel articles on a Toronto neighbourhood that doesn’t get much play from the powers that be who promote our city. Titled Skid Row to Hip in Toronto, the article [...]

A few weeks ago the Toronto city council voted to reduce Jarvis Street, a north-south corridor running from midtown Bloor to the downtown core, from five lanes to four. Despite the facts that the city is woefully behind on its plan to implement bike lanes around the city and that Jarvis was a nightmare for [...]

Well, I’ve had an enjoyable forty-ish hours. It started Friday night when we walked down to Front Street to see this year’s criterium. I have no real interest in cycling, but it’s fun to watch racing on a downtown street. Plus, it gave me a chance to test out our new camera: a Canon SX10 [...]

Today Toronto Hydro announced that they’ll soon charge variable rates for electricity, depending on the time of day. Toronto Hydro announced Thursday that it will begin charging its customers new higher rates to use electricity when demand peaks, such as summer afternoons, and lower rates in the middle of the night, in an effort to [...]

Once again, Star columnist Christopher Hume has gone and gotten my hopes up about Toronto’s waterfront. Today’s column, Breathing life into Don River, is about redeveloping the foot of the river where it meets Lake Ontario, and contains the lovely little representation seen above. Sigh. Hume ends the article by saying it’ll take twenty-five years [...]

What a great weekend. Not because we did anything particularly dramatic or new, but because it was just so damn enjoyable. With work being the way it has lately (though it’s let up a bit for me in recent weeks, Nellie’s still hard at it) we’re usually happy just to relax and not feel guilty/worried [...]

According to Richard Florida’s latest in the Globe, I’m living in the wrong city. MID-CAREER PROFESSIONALS (Age 29-44) 1. Ottawa-Gatineau 2. Calgary 3. Whitehorse 4. Yellowknife 5. Iqaluit 6. Edmonton 7. Guelph 8. Victoria 9. Toronto 10. Montreal Hmmm…#9, and behind some cities that I really have no desire in which to live. Also, the [...]