As an environmentalist, few things make me cringe quite like Christmas does. We are heading into the season when Canadians will each discard a staggering 50 kg of trash over the holidays. Experts with the waste electrical and electronic equipment forum estimate that in 2021 alone, the world will discard a mass of e-waste equivalent to that of the Great Wall of China, the world’s heaviest human made object.

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As part of the Gleaner’s annual area park reviews here is Part Two. We grade each park and compare the score with the prior year. We look for amenities, trees, gardens, and cleanliness. We also tell you something you may not know about how the space got its name. 

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In an interview with the Gleaner, Bell said the pandemic has been challenging especially when the community engagement work that a politician would typically do like in-person events, door-to-door canvassing, and having people to testify at Queen’s Park, has been banned for a year-and-a-half.

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The improving pandemic situation has led to some of the parks that were locked up last year to be set free again. Huron Washington Parkette and Margaret Fairley Park have been restored to their former glory. But, neglect and lack of resources have persisted in others like Sally Bird Park and Euclid Avenue Parkette.

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The Gardiner Museum for Ceramic Art sees museums as more than buildings, but also as communities, that’s why they’re offering free exhibitions, public art projects, family clay activities, outdoor dining, wellness workshops, performances, and more all summer. Better yet, they’re all outside.

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It’s a Sunday afternoon in July at Christie Pits Park. Standing near the baseball diamond, Alan Ross leans back and casts his gaze around the field. “I want you to make a note that I’m doing this under protest,” he says with tongue in cheek, in response to a request for an interview. “I’m not an interesting person.” Baseball fans at the Pits would beg to differ. To many, “Al the Ticket Man,” is a living legend.

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Yoga in the park was put on hold in April due to a province-wide lockdown, but as of June, it’s in its third summer. Teachers Montana Skurka and Michelle Karunaratne have seen their small group classes grow exponentially since leading their first park yoga sessions in 2019.

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Christie Pits set to welcome fans back to the old ballgame By R.S. Konjek The sights and sounds of live baseball will return to Christie Pits this summer, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are raring to go.  After the 2020 season was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic, players are dusting off their spikes and […]

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The era of prioritizing cars is long over and the city, (actually, the entire country), needs to catch up.

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Value Buds to open where Aroma Coffee operated By Luca Tatulli  The legal cannabis business is booming in the Annex. Value Buds, whose slogan is “get high, spend low,” is opening at 500 Bloor St. (the site of the former Aroma Coffee shop) – just a few doors down from Tokyo Smoke, a store whose […]

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Your May 2021 Arts Brief By Meribeth Deen  May 16th, 2021 is a Sunday, and in all likelihood, you will not be going anywhere, certainly not to a museum or concert. Maybe, maybe… you will go to a park.  So why not eat carrot-zucchini bread covered in cream-cheese icing, just because you can? And because […]

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Let’s not go back to unhealthy “normal” By Terri Chu While we all wait for vaccines to bring us back to some sense of “normal” (don’t hold your breath as the variants might beat us at this game), let’s take a moment to reflect on how much normal really sucked: for so many Torontonians, “normal” […]

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