PICTURE COURTESY ORI DAGAN/KMJF: Order of Canada member Don Thompson performs with his Vibes Trio at Trinity Common on Augusta Avenue on Jan. 22. Following on the heels of their popular Kensington Market Jazz Festival, organizers Molly Johnson, Genevieve Marentette, and Ori Dagan have curated a series of Sunday jazz brunches during January and February.

READ MORE:

ARTS: Molly Johnson launches new jazz festival (September 2016)

Speakers as diverse as historian Charlotte Gray, sex columnist and activist Dan Savage, Emmy-award winning-actress Tatiana Maslany, and musician Tanya Tagaq will participate in the Curious Minds Weekend at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema from March 3 to 5.

Inspired by Hot Docs’ Curious Minds Morning Speaker Series, which are six-week courses on a wide range of subjects, the first ever festival includes panel discussions, presentations, lectures, and a film screening.

Naomi Klein will open the weekend with a conversation about how to sustain green policies in the age of Donald Trump, and Gigi Lazzarato AKA Gigi Gorgeous, David Lazzarato, Barbara Kopple, and Scott Fisher will present their documentary This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, about Gorgeous’s coming out as a transgender female.

Lee Maracle, Joseph Boyden, and Cecil Foster will join Gray to talk about writing Canadian history, while New Yorker chief political correspondent Ryan Lizza will discuss American politics.

—Geremy Bordonaro/Gleaner News

READ MORE:

NEWS: Building a stronger relationship (February 2017)

NEWS: A permanent home for storytelling (July 2016)

ARTS: Making her mark (July 2016)

Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is contributing little of use to the debate over how best to deal with the hundreds of refugees walking across the Canada-US border through fields and forests. Thanks to Donald Trump’s barrage of rashly conceived executive orders, immigrants to the United States seeking to stay there have become increasingly nervous that they will be deported without due process and are understandably seeking sanctuary in Canada. In Quebec alone, there was a 250 per cent increase in illegal crossings in January.

The Honourable Tony Clement, member of Parliament for Parry Sound-Muskoka, gave an interview recently to CBC Radio that should remind Canadians why they evicted Stephen Harper and his colleagues from government in the last election.

[pullquote]“Clement’s apparent inability to articulate a coherent alternative strategy on how to handle asylum seekers wading across the border in waist deep snow speaks volumes.”[/pullquote]

This country’s attitude toward refugees and immigration in general was as pivotal then as it is today. Clement’s apparent inability to articulate a coherent alternative strategy on how to handle asylum seekers wading across the border in waist deep snow speaks volumes. As the critic for the public safety ministry for the Conservative Party of Canada, he has a duty to be informed and to explain to Canadians and the government alike what the government should be doing differently.

Yet when the CBC Radio show Montreal Daybreak reached out to him on Feb. 21 to get his views on how the police and government should be dealing with people crossing illegally in Manitoba, Quebec, and New Brunswick, he proved himself to be woefully unprepared or unwilling to make a constructive contribution to the debate.

The live interview started cordially enough with Clement acknowledging that we are a welcoming and compassionate society while expressing concerns about the safety of people crossing outside of official points of entry. After that, radio host Mike Finnerty asked Clement to explain his recent post on Twitter: “Illegal crossings are unsafe and a burden on local communities. Our laws should be enforced.” Which laws, challenged Finnerty, were not being enforced? Unable to answer, Clement simply kept repeating ad nauseum that the government needs to apply the law.

Clement was also asked about the Safe Third Country Agreement that Canada has with the United States. That agreement assumes that an immigrant having entered the US or Canada from a third country will seek refugee status in the US or Canada and not be able to move between the two. The agreement, signed in 2002, assumes that both countries will give refugee applicants a fair hearing. But with Trump contemplating mass deportations, that assumption is now up in the air.

The agreement has inherent flaws, however, beyond this new imbalance. If an immigrant can dodge the official point of entry, then the agreement does not apply. Hence the folks crossing through ditches and snow. So police in Canada are welcoming families with open arms, dutifully arresting them, fingerprinting them, and then releasing them into the general population where they will await years for a refugee hearing. They aren’t allowed to work in the meantime, but they can collect social assistance.

In contrast, there are applicants for Canadian citizenship that wait for years in their home countries, paying large fees and filling in endless forms for just the chance of living here. Those that just walk across the border have effectively jumped the queue.

Did Clement offer any of this? Are these not legitimate concerns for the public safety critic to espouse? Instead he just hung up on the broadcaster and sulked off to tweet “Way to go CBC. Taking a serious issue (illegal crossings) to shout me down on the air. Your tax dollars at work.” There was no shouting, just Clement refusing to answer even the most basic questions about his views.

It’s this sort of petulance that was Harper’s undoing. Once in a while at least, a little intellectual honesty goes a long way. Maybe he does not have an answer, but it’s going to take a lot of good will from all sides of the political spectrum to find the right response to this emerging border crisis.

READ MORE:

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EDITORIAL: Grappling with growth (December 2016)

EDITORIAL: Freeland got it done, with flair (November 2016)

EDITORIAL: Stealth rate hike may work (October 2016)

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EDITORIAL CARTOON (JANUARY 2017): Not really! It’s actually nice! by Stumpy the Subway

The stages of voting reform! by Joe Proportion (December 2016)

Previously rejected police car designs! by Designed Without Public Consultation (November 2016)

The sincerest form of flattery! by Dow Indepols (October 2016)

A warm carbon blanket! By Hock Estique (September 2016)

Canadian cities receive only 10 cents for each tax dollar they pay

By Mike Layton

With all the talk about tolls and taxes, I feel I need to admit something: I don’t mind paying taxes.

The reason I don’t mind paying taxes is simple — taxes are the price we pay for living in a great city like Toronto, the city I think we can make even better.

Yes, I want to make sure my taxes are going to important things: transit, roads, parks, shelters, and childcare for families. Our society and economy are made more prosperous by the taxes we pay to support them.

[pullquote]“Our taxes are not keeping pace with the increasing costs. Can you believe that Canadian cities receive 10 cents of each tax dollar they pay? This is simply not enough to deliver the day-to-day services we expect and deserve.”[/pullquote]

Yes, I want to make sure my taxes are not being wasted. I want to make sure taxes are fair and everyone is paying their share based on their personal benefit and what they can afford.

After three years on the Toronto Budget Committee, I have come to learn a couple of things that I’d like to share with you.

First, no matter what you hear on talk radio or read in the newspaper, Toronto has a revenue problem — not a spending problem. Sure, some long-term decisions seem frivolous, like spending billions to maintain an elevated expressway east of Jarvis Street and building a one-stop subway in Scarborough where more people could be served by a seven-stop at grade rail system for less money. But these are only two very politicized decisions, ones whose alternative solutions would also cost money, and only two out of thousands of ways the City of Toronto spends our money for our benefit.

Each year city staff and councillors identify more efficient ways of delivering services for less and find between $100 and $300 million in savings. But despite these savings, we still struggle to meet the increasing costs to deliver and expand services to meet the growing needs of our communities. This is because our taxes are not keeping pace with the increasing costs. Can you believe that Canadian cities receive 10 cents of each tax dollar they pay? This is simply not enough to deliver the day-to-day services we expect and deserve.

Second, promises to freeze taxes without lowering services is a farce. We all know costs of services will keep going up; even if we find millions in efficiencies (which we regularly do), and if we don’t raise the money to pay for existing services, service levels will eventually suffer. We might be able to last a year or two on our reserve funds, but once they run out (and they quickly are), we will be hit with the hard reality of a city without resources to provide services people depend on and expect.

To make matters worse, the main source of revenue for cities is property taxes, but they don’t increase with inflation. The federal and provincial governments not only have greater taxing powers, but many of their taxing sources increase automatically with inflation. So, cities without the power to raise needed revenue must contend with a decreasing share of revenues. And, unless we keep our taxes at least at pace with inflation, we will keep falling behind.

Third, while tolls sound great, they are not the best way to raise money. Tolls are terribly expensive to collect (every $1 collected costs about $1.40 to collect) and they disproportionately impact those who live in the outer areas of our city and depend on their cars because they don’t have access to transit. Property taxes, sales tax, and income tax are all revenue tools that are much easier to collect and can be implemented more fairly than tolls.

Toronto City Council recently voted in favour of a regional sales tax, tolls on city maintained expressways, and a new hotel tax. I supported all three. Council did so because the Toronto mayor and councillors were under the impression that the Province of Ontario would grant Toronto the power to implement tolls, but not any other tools. Sadly, despite whatever agreement the mayor and premier had, the premier has decided not to give Toronto the power to implement its transit and affordable housing agenda.

Don’t get me wrong — the new gas tax revenue will be helpful, but it will barely cover the maintenance costs of the Gardiner and the Don Valley Parkway. Far more concerning is the fact that the province is rejecting the city’s request for powers that will help to make Toronto more financially stable.

Finally, it is becoming increasingly common that politicians all want someone else to pay. While it is important that those who benefit from services, even if they don’t live in Toronto, should help pay for them, it will not be enough. Our city needs to find the best tool that will pay for much needed infrastructure while balancing its operating budget and maintaining fairness in how we raise revenue.

Tolls, parking levies, and sales tax can help achieve that, but many politicians simply don’t want to have a difficult conversation with their constituents and admit that we will need to pay for the city we want.

Mike Layton is the city councillor for Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina.

Correction: The original post of this article listed the date as February 2016.

READ MORE BY MIKE LAYTON

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Owner Katalin Koltai reveals enduring appeal of Country Style

PHOTO BY CLARRIE?FEINSTEIN/GLEANER NEWS: Katalin Koltai poses in Country Style, which reopened late last year after undergoing a two-month renovation.

By Clarrie Feinstein

Despite the recent closing of Honest Ed’s and the constant turnover of Annex storefronts, Country Style has stayed firm in its place at 450 Bloor St. W. for 55 years.

The only adjustment made to the Hungarian restaurant was a two-month renovation last year, which owner Katalin Koltai said was sorely needed.

“The place was looking a bit old and needed a new look. We love it.”

[pullquote]“The cooking reminds me of my mother’s cooking. The tablecloths are like the restaurants in Budapest. Every time I’m back, I feel those memories” — Stephen Lugosi, customer[/pullquote]

The new bike lane has also caused some inconvenience for bringing in groceries to the store, but Koltai adjusts to the neighbourhood changes because she must.

In 1971, at a young age, Koltai moved from Hungary to Canada and became a business partner at Country Style in 1980 for four years. The previous owners emigrated from Hungary and had owned the restaurant for almost 30 years at that point. She then worked at a bank for some time, and at another restaurant, Hungarian Rhapsody, before returning to work at Country Style as a server for 12 years. When the business was under threat of being sold in 2002, Koltai bought it and has owned it ever since.

“I could not do the bank job — sitting all day,” Koltai said. “I always wanted my own business and I knew I could do it myself.”

When Koltai began working at the restaurant there was a larger Hungarian community in the Annex that included six other Hungarian establishments along Bloor Street West, where the language was often spoken. Many of the patrons were among the 100,000 refugees who came to Canada in 1956 after the failed revolution against communist rule. The community has long since moved further north and many of its institutions went with it, but Country Style remains as one of the last remnants of the people who used to call the area home.

While the façade has been updated, an essential component has remained the same: the food. The entire menu consists of homemade Hungarian dishes, with customer favourites being the crispy wiener schnitzel and comforting beef broth, gulag soup.

Head cook Tunde prepares all of the food herself, having learned the traditional Hungarian recipes from the cook who used to work at the restaurant. Every morning Tunde starts cooking at 7:30 a.m., just as she has done for 15 years.

“The green pea soup and schnitzel are my absolute favourites!” said Stephen Lugosi, who has been coming to Country Style twice a week for over 40 years. “The cooking reminds me of my mother’s cooking. The tablecloths are like the restaurants in Budapest. Every time I’m back, I feel those memories.”

There are only three Hungarian restaurants in downtown Toronto and Lugosi says Country Style is by far the best one.

“It’s the food that people love and it’s why they come back,” said Koltai. “I mean they love the tablecloths and window front, but the food has never changed, it’s remained the same.”

Country Style’s loyal clientele — 60 per cent of customers are regulars — reflects that continuity.

“We have new customers, a lot come from the university and passers-by see our storefront and want to come in. But, we have customers that have been coming for decades,” explained Koltai. “It’s beautiful to see them grow up from when they were students to now bringing their children and grandchildren.”

While Koltai visits Hungary every year to visit her mother, her home now is Toronto. Once she decides to leave the business her daughter — also named Katalin — will take it over, making her feel assured the restaurant will be in the right hands. Country Style has now become a family business.

“It makes me very happy. My daughter will do a wonderful job — we’ll do it together.”

READ MORE:

EDITORIAL: Embrace refugees (December 2015)

Grizzle tried to change system from within

By Paul Lawrie

FROM THE ARCHIVES: In honour of Black History Month, we reprint the following article, which was originally published in our February 2003 edition. Stanley G. Grizzle was one of “Blackhurst’s” many early heroes, and we profiled him twice in these pages. He was also featured in a November piece on local war veterans, which is available on our website. Stanley G. Grizzle, who lived to his 98th year, passed away last November, one day after Remembrance Day.

A lifelong Annex resident, Stanley G. Grizzle has dedicated his life to the struggle for equality along racial and labour lines. A tireless advocate for fighting the good fight, this spry octogenarian is the embodiment of the ethos of the “political as personal”.

[pullquote]“The first time I truly felt Canadian was when I handed out that first set of citizenship papers”—Stanley G. Grizzle[/pullquote]

Grizzle, featured in a Remembrance Day tribute to local veterans, was born in Toronto into a family of Jamaican immigrants. Although the racial climate in Toronto was somewhat more hospitable than in most southerly climes, this was perhaps due more to the relatively small numbers of Blacks than any vaunted sense of Canadian racial equality.

One of Grizzle’s most vivid childhood memories is that of his father being slashed by an assailant while sleeping in his cab outside Union Station. It was a scar that the elder Grizzle carried to his grave.

The Grizzle family belonged to the Bloor Street United Church, and Stanley attended Harbord Collegiate Institute for three years. However, his education was cut short by pragmatic concerns born of the racial reality of the time. As he remembers now, “what was the point of getting an education if it wasn’t going to lead anywhere?”

One of the few avenues available to Black men in the 1930s and 40s was that of a railway Pullman porter. Grizzle soon joined this almost exclusively Black vocation when he became a porter aboard the Canadian Pacific Railway. He made runs from Toronto to Vancouver, Montreal, Chicago, New York, and Detroit. Porters would work in excess of 18 hours a day, catching naps whenever they could. Grizzle recalls that in 1940 he worked approximately 400 hours a month for the sum of $75.

In addition to their hectic schedule, porters suffered the daily indignity of being addressed by passengers with the all-encompassing pejorative term of “George”.

“It was always ‘Hey George, how you doing?’ and ‘George, can you do this,’” recalls Grizzle.

The origin of the moniker dates to George Pullman, the inventor of the Pullman car, who hired Blacks to work aboard his railcars as a helping hand during the difficult time of Reconstruction in the 1870s. It was this practice that inspired the title of Grizzle’s autobiography: My name is not George.

With the advent of World War Two, Grizzle was conscripted, like many other young Black men, into the Army. However, his enthusiasm for King and Colony was less than enthusiastic. Defence of a way of life in which he could not partake was no great incentive for duty. But the army was where Grizzle’s activism began.

After refusing to serve as an officer’s batman, as it was not regimental duty, Grizzle was sentenced to four weeks of latrine duty, after which he went on a three-day strike. Assuming he was not going to survive the carnage of war. Grizzle decided that he was not “going to stand for any injustice”.

As a result of his strike Grizzle was assigned to the quartermaster store and left with a profound sense of individual rights. Returning from the war with the rank of corporal, he was one of the founding members of the Toronto CPR Division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Canada’s first and only Black union. In 1959, he ran as a candidate for the Ontario Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in the provincial election, and served as a delegate to the Toronto Labour Council.

In 1962, Grizzle, along with fellow civil rights activist Donald Moore, was instrumental in persuading Ottawa to rescind its immigration laws that had long cited race as an exclusionary category for prospective immigrants, changing the face of Canadian society forever.

Perhaps Grizzle’s proudest moment came in 1977 when the [Pierre] Trudeau government appointed him a citizenship court judge.

“The first time I truly felt Canadian was when I handed out that first set of citizenship papers.”

The only thing that exceeds Grizzle’s numerous achievements is his desire to share them with the younger generation. He understands the alienation that some youth feel, but argues that the only way to change things is to work within the system, rather than forsaking it altogether.

And, as proof, Grizzle points to himself and the changes gained through his own individual activism.

Three Annex veterans recall war service

By Annemarie Brissenden

Georgette Caldwell remembers the exact moment she decided to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service. It came after the first firebombing of London. Walking along the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “you could smell the wood burning, and the cobblestones underneath my feet were still steaming.”

“That sealed the deal,” remembers Caldwell from her home on Tyrrel Avenue. “I joined the Navy, I was so enraged.”

At the beginning of her service, she was part of a group of women whose job was primarily to “release men who would normally be doing shore service to go do active shore service,” but after becoming an officer candidate, she was part of a large group who planned the invasion of Europe.

Despite the horror that surrounded her, it was still an exciting time for Caldwell, who admits it “was one of the best five year sequences of my life. I enjoyed it.”

Stanley G. Grizzle, however, was less enthusiastic about joining Canada’s forces in World War Two. As the Palmerston Square resident recalls, “I got this very kind invitation in the mail.”

And notes Grizzle, “none of us Black boys were happy about being conscripted.”

Once in the army, he went on a three-day strike after being forced to do latrine duty for four weeks because he refused to be an officer’s batman.

“Seeing so many bombs, and so many bodies,” Grizzle didn’t think he was coming home, so he “didn’t tolerate any justice.”

He was paraded to his Commanding Officer, whom he told he wanted a “discharge because the principles we are fighting for don’t apply to me,” and consequently was posted to the Quartermaster’s stores, a plum assignment.

“I should have raised more hell,” laughs Grizzle now.

“Unlike Grizzle, Dr. Don Harrison of Wychwood Park was afraid he’d miss the war. Only 14 when war broke out, he remembers thinking, “I’ll never get into the war; it will be over before I’m old enough.”

He was accepted to the Royal Roads naval college in B.C., and upon graduation joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, known as the “wavy navy” for the wavy stripes that adorned their uniform instead of the straight stripes for members of permanent navy.

By the time he sailed for England on the Aquitania in August of 1944, D-Day had already happened. There was still, however, much work to be done. Harrison was assigned to a Motor Torpedo Boat in the 65th Flottila, stationed in Ostend, Belgium. Their main task was to “try to open up the convey route to Antwerp.”

“It was an exciting time,” says Harrison of his war experience. “You would go for a walk in the park, buy candy, and that night you’d go out to sea, and all hell might break loose. You never knew.”

These days, he doesn’t think much about his time in the Navy, but, “I usually try to go to the ceremony at Hart House” on Remembrance Day every year.

Caldwell generally spends November 11 privately because “I find it a very upsetting day. I had so many friends back home who perished. I just have this overwhelming sorrow that out of the 12 young men I knew since childhood, only two came back.”

For his part, Grizzle says he used worry that Remembrance Day glamourized war, but “I don’t feel that way anymore. Not if it’s done right.”

He, like Harrison and Caldwell, are speakers with the Memory Project, a Dominion Institute initiative that sends veterans into schools to speak with students throughout the year. For Grizzle, it’s an opportunity to underscore the importance of continued participation in the political process, “because I want young kids to know not only about the war but why we have the kind of system we have today.”

He says his time in the army taught him, “to stand up for what is right.”

Caldwell feels she emerged from her experience as an entirely different person.

“You were away from home, and grew up so quickly,” notes Caldwell. “I started out as a girl in school and came out as a married woman.”

“A time of loss, horror and excitement” originally appeared in our November 2002 edition.

Crossing Bathurst Street with A Different Booklist

Itah Sadu says some of the books gracing her new storefront window might include Viola Desmond’s Canada, in honour of the woman who will grace Canada’s new $10 bank note, They Came Before Columbus by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, as a reminder of how deep African roots in North America truly run, and something by Thomas King or Sherman Alexie, so that “we are mindful too while we are having conversations about our roots in Canada, that we are also standing in the land of our Native brothers and sisters”.

By Annemarie Brissenden

The Postman, a 2015 play about Albert Jackson, Canada’s first Black postman, opens with an invocation.

“Toronto the Good. Toronto, the White. Toronto the Christian, Irish, Scottish, English. This is happening right here in this neighbourhood: Harbord, Major, Palmerston, Brunswick, Euclid, Borden,” says Jackson. “Good solid White names. No ‘Albert Jackson Lane’ then, I can assure you. These are the rivers I crossed every day. Downtown further, Queen and Broadview, country then — city now, there’s a sign on a bridge today says: The River I Step In is Not the River I Stand In.”

Performed in the Annex from the very porches he delivered mail to, from the very place he called home, the play invites the audience to cross times as it relates the story of barriers crossed and miles were walked.

“We are a community of people who have crossed over so many things, important things before,” explains Itah Sadu, wanting to underscore the importance of crossing over for the Black community.

Earlier this month, A Different Booklist, the bookstore she owns with husband Miguel San Vicente, relocated to a new location to make way for the Mirvish Village redevelopment. An army of volunteer helpers supported the move, creating a parade of patrons crossing Bathurst Street toting boxes of books on Feb. 4.

“It is exciting that we could have a movement, an extended family of people involved in this movement of people,” says Sadu, adding that the backyard is the only thing she’ll miss about the old place. “We had the coolest backyard ever. We called it the island. We’ll miss the opportunity to be outdoors, ‘on the island’ with a little flavour of back home.”

The bookstore will remain in the area, just across the street in fact, a cultural marker of a time when the neighbourhood was known as “Blackhurst” for the concentration of Afro-Caribbean stores and restaurants serving the Black families that lived nearby.

“At one time, Jewish people rented houses to us because nobody else would,” Sadu says. “There’s a rich legacy of people of colour in the Annex: Rosemary Brown, Stanley Grizzle, Austin Clark, Albert Jackson. A lot of people who opened doors; we have to keep those doors open, so people can keep walking through.”

Sadu is a careful custodian of that legacy. She curates historical walks along Bathurst Street, and reaches out to students in the local high schools. And she and Miguel San Vicente were awarded the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts last October.

“A Different Booklist has been a remarkable contributor to our cultural tapestry, bringing people together and celebrating literature from African-Canadian and Caribbean writers,” said Eleanor McMahon, the provincial minister of tourism, culture and sport, in an email. “Because of leaders like Miguel San Vicente and Ita Sadu, our youth are able to better explore multiculturalism and Toronto benefits from having a meeting point where generations and ideas intersect freely.”

Sadu says she was both humbled and proud to receive the award.

“When I looked around the room, I saw the cultural industries of Ontario. And to be in the society of those institutions is not something we took lightly. It’s an honour to know the tentacle and outreach of the bookstore has extended far and wide from Bathurst and Bloor [streets].”

She also tells a story that illustrates how there is still work to be done in crossing divides.

“When we came in, the security guard asked us for an invitation. He didn’t ask anyone else,” Sadu says. “Then for us to emerge as a winner. Maybe we are supposed to be in the room. We don’t need an invitation to the party.”

Reflecting on the moment, she references American activist and writer bell hooks, who wrote of having to move from the margin to the centre.

“We have moved to the centre.”

A wealth of activities for kids of all ages

By Heather Kelly

February is a month of celebrating love and making time with family members.

Valentine’s Day really is Valentine’s “week” in the Annex. For a special Valentine’s Day date night on Feb. 14, plan a fun dinner and enjoy a film, concert, or exhibition on the Bloor St. Culture Corridor. The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema is screening its True Crime Tuesdays film Capturing the Friedmans at 6 p.m. and a special screening of Harold and Maude, the quirky and romantic cult classic comedy featuring all of your favourite Cat Stevens tunes, at 9 p.m.

Another idea is to visit the Royal Ontario Museum in February for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, a showcase of 100 striking landscape and biodiversity images from the world’s most prestigious nature photography competition. Only a few tickets are left to see the unmistakably joyous and uplifting South African a cappella vocal ensemble, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, at Koerner Hall on Feb. 14. The Royal Conservatory of Music is offering an add-on post-concert soirée with chocolates and cocktails to top off the night. On your way out for the evening, stop at Alliance Française to see the Encounters with the Sublime featuring images by photographers Sebastião Salgado and Bradford Washburn on view from Feb. 8 to March 4.

If you’d like to share the sentiment with a special person on another night that week, you can celebrate Valentine’s Day at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, a.k.a. “the J”, with timeless love songs in The Kings of Swing: A Valentine’s Day Concert on Feb. 16. The J is also presenting a new take on Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in Ahuri Theatre’s What Dream It Was installation in the Al Green Theatre Feb. 16 to 19.

The University of Toronto Faculty of Music is presenting the Cecilia String Quartet and tenor Lawrence Wiliford at Walter Hall on Feb. 13 with a program of Mozart, Rubbra, and Schubert, and on Feb. 16 the Musicians from Marlboro will perform Thomas Adès’s Arcadiana, Brahms’s String Quintet in G Major, and piano trios by Haydn and Fauré. On Feb. 16, the Gardiner Museum will unveil the special exhibition, Janet Macpherson: A Canadian Bestiary, where hybrid animal creatures stand in for the complexity of human experiences. The exhibition, which the Gardiner commissioned to commemorate Canada’s sesquicentennial, both celebrates and questions notions of Canadian identity.

Family Day is Feb. 20, and there is an abundance of arts and culture activities to enjoy with family members of all ages throughout the long weekend.

On Family Day Monday, the Bata Shoe Museum will be a winter wonderland with arts and crafts, ISpy games, shoes to try on, and a special screening of the children’s movie The Snow Queen. The Gardiner will present special programming inspired by A Canadian Bestiary, where visitors can explore the new exhibition featuring Janet Macpherson’s curious hybrid animals and create creatures out of clay, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema is screening Strike a Pose at 1:45 p.m., about the group of Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour dancers and their impact on LGBTQ culture. The ROM’s Family Fun Day Weekend features Asafo flag maker from Ghana, Baba Isaaka, leading Asafo Flag workshops, and a performance by the School of Atelier Ballet in a Dance Through Time on Feb. 20.

The Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre is also planning Family Day festivities for all ages from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 20.

If you are looking for family activities throughout the rest of the weekend, visit the Japan Foundation’s gallery 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Feb. 18 to see the exhibition Legendary Loyalty: The 47 Ronin in Japanese Prints. The Bata Shoe Museum offers hands-on activities for kids in the galleries every Saturday 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema will be showing the hilarious exposé My Scientology Movie and Kedi, a film that explores the lives of seven Istanbul street cats (in Turkish, with English subtitles) with multiple screenings throughout the weekend.

Heather Kelly is the founder and director of the Bloor St. Culture Corridor, one of the city’s leading cultural districts.

READ MORE:

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NEWS: A permanent home for storytelling (July 2016)

ARTS: Making her mark (July 2016)

ARTS: Creating growth through the arts (January 2016)

PHOTO BY BRIAN BURCHELL/GLEANER NEWS: Two city councillors want to make Toronto’s laneways available for housing. bpNichol Lane — shown above — hosts a variety of uses including residences and Coach House Books.

READ MORE

NEWS (JANUARY 2017): Laneway living

Should infill take precedence over upward building?

By Brian Burchell

With affordable housing at a premium in Toronto, two councillors are proposing to open up the city’s 2,400 laneways to infill development.

Arguing that residential growth in the city must not only be vertical and sprawling, Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32, Beaches-East York) and Ana Bailão (Ward 18, Davenport) see the back lanes as a place for people to live. Although not currently permitted by the city, the councillors believe what they term “laneway suites” could transform underutilized spaces like rear garages and parking pads into sensitively-scaled housing that allows for adding second storeys to garages.

It’s not a new concept.

[pullquote]“We have done three charrettes that were very well attended and the response has been very positive, which is almost never the case for development issues”—Mary-Margaret McMahon, city councillor[/pullquote]

Croft Street (technically a lane), near College and Bathurst streets, is a legacy from a previous period of rapid growth — 1870 to 1930 — when laneways were home to workshops, lumberyards, and even housing. The 15 laneway houses were originally commercial, and the properties were severed into parcels that legally distinguish them from the houses that front the streets on either side.

It’s a bit different, however, from the vision proposed by the councillors in which the land would remain in common ownership with the main house. It would mostly see the conversion of existing garages into living space, and all services would be fed from the main house.

McMahon says this is long overdue for Toronto.

“Vancouver, Ottawa, and Regina are way ahead of us. We have done three charrettes that were very well attended and the response has been very positive, which is almost never the case for development issues. Realtors, builders, homeowners with lanes, students, and seniors were all supportive at these events.”

The proposal does not contemplate severing property (as it does in Vancouver), and the idea is to create rental housing. Proponents argue that these new residential spaces will be occupied by seniors and students, but McMahon admits that bylaws do not extend to setting demographics. She also couldn’t say whether a proposed bylaw would cover only existing structures or if a homeowner could construct a new building, and noted these were details to be ironed out. She is hopeful a policy would be put in place by the end of the year.

“This is win-win. We have so much underutilized geography in the city where we have 2,400 laneways.”

But not everyone sees the plan as win-win.

The Harbord Village Residents’ Association (HVRA), for example, has a long-standing policy against laneway infill.

“Most laneways are not serviced specifically in the form of sanitary sewers,” explains Gus Sinclair, the association’s chair. “Laneway housing means more load on a tenuous [sewer] connection…. This is a stable built form community and the [existing] laneways are a critical amenity to how this neighbourhood works.”

Laneways, which are prevalent in Harbord Village, are wed to the shape of the existing built form.

“The height is at the street and then you drop down to green space across the lane and then you have the opposite. It’s a bowl effect and you fuck with that at your peril. Adding [second storeys on garages] on either side of a narrow lane will create a canyon,” he adds.

Laneway infill has also been tested at the Ontario Municipal Board at least once before. In 2009, it denied an application by a Brunswick Avenue homeowner to build a second storey right back to the rear lane, recognizing that preserving the backs of the houses and lanes were as important as streetscape.

“I can see the attraction, they are like dollhouses, but we are against it,” says Sinclair. “The way that people have lived here for 120 years involves the commerce between the front and the back, and across the laneway. You cut that off at your peril.”

He’s also concerned about adding additional density to an already dense area. In Harbord Village, the above grade density of living space can be equal to the square footage of the lot compared to most other residential neighbourhoods where the above grade coverage is only 60 per cent of the lot.

“We are already doing the density thing by the density that was put here by the Victorians,” argues Sinclair, adding that the city should solve its population growth problem on Spadina Avenue and at transit points, as is mandated by the Official Plan.

For his part, Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) takes a middle ground.

“Laneways are a tremendous untapped resource for downtown Toronto,” says the councillor, whose ward includes a lot of them. “Every laneway requires animation that is suitable to that laneway. In some cases, it is infill housing, in some cases it’s greening, and in others it’s cultural animation (such as the CBC’s Rick Mercer rant lane south of Queen Street West). It’s not just housing, and it should not be a cookie cutter approach.”

This nuanced approach to the possibilities for laneways may be what’s needed to get wider support for the plan on city council. “Right now, it’s hard to do anything in a laneway. Making our laneways viable requires us to adopt rules that give us flexibility,” he says.

McMahon believes that it may come down to priorities about people and things.

“We have great spaces for our cars often with windows [in garages] and we put humans below ground in basement apartments, and isn’t that a little strange?”

READ MORE:

City seeking street greening opportunities: Harbord Village plan targets laneways, parkettes (February 2016)

FORUM: Untapped potential (February 2016)

Incubating micro-retail: Laneways untapped realm of urban design (December 2015)