City designates Bloor Street a cultural corridor By Annemarie Brissenden, Brian Burchell, and Liivi Sandy Toronto City Council designated the 1.5-kilometre stretch along Bloor Street from Bay to Bathurst streets as a cultural corridor last month, just as the province forgave a significant portion of a loan it had granted to one of the arts organizations […]

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READ MORE: CHATTER: Ground-breaking bike lanes launch on Bloor Street (August 2016) NEWS: Bikes blessed for another season (June 2016) FOCUS: An early advocate for bike lanes (June 2016) NEWS: Bike lanes for Bloor Street (May 2016) The faster we lower speeds, the more lives we save (October 2015) Early brewer the basis for Bloor […]

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Visioning a future for Little Italy By Annemarie Brissenden Is Little Italy a victim of its own success? That question was top of mind for those attending a meeting on the future of College Street from Bathurst to Shaw streets at the Royal Theatre last month. Jane Jacobs loomed large as City of Toronto planner […]

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Spadina Avenue high-rise not a bar for height By Annemarie Brissenden A 25-storey, 334-unit apartment building is providing the model for a new mixed-student residence at the northwest corner of Spadina and Sussex avenues, but not in the way local residents’ associations would like. “It’s effectively the same height as 666 [Spadina Ave.],” said Scott […]

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Local residents recognized at Heritage Toronto Awards Former Chief of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation and community historian Carolyn King received Heritage Toronto’s Special Achievement Award in recognition of her decades-long efforts to preserve the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation’s community and to celebrate First Nation heritage at this year’s award […]

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TDSB repair backlog reflects critical state of infrastructure By Annemarie Brissenden With both the federal and provincial governments making significant investments in public infrastructure, the Ministry of Education’s release of information detailing the maintenance backlog in Ontario raises a serious question: are we doing all that we can to maintain our buildings once they are […]

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By Annemarie Brissenden Applications to rezone an area at Spadina and Sussex avenues as well as 666 Spadina Ave. have been received by City Planning and are available online. The first application is by the University of Toronto, which seeks to build a student residence on the site. The owners of the apartment building at […]

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Bohemian Embassy tribute honours founder Don Cullen By Annemarie Brissenden At one time, it was one of the few places in Toronto where you could be a little bit different. It was a launching ground for some of Canada’s most legendary cultural icons, like Margaret Atwood and Lorne Michaels. It was even an ersatz university […]

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By Annemarie Brissenden The city has responded to a developer’s application to build what many have termed a “vertical rooming house” at 316 Bloor St. W. with a development of its own: the Bloor Corridor/Annex Block Study. “Two applications led us to believe that there is a certain amount of development pressure in the Annex,” […]

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By Annemarie Brissenden Although it may seem from his last name that his future was pre-ordained, Brian Green’s career at the City of Toronto’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation department really began as the result of a lark. Thirty-one years ago, he wrote a gardener’s test at the suggestion of his sister. When he passed, his […]

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By Annemarie Brissenden It’s hard to feel sad when playing a ukulele. “Everyone feels good when they play the music,” laughs Sarah Bradley, a branch head librarian with the Toronto Public Library (TPL). She and her colleagues have been running a ukulele program at the Lillian H. Smith branch at College Street and Spadina Avenue […]

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Rogers family donates $5 million to Hot Docs By Annemarie Brissenden Ninety years after John Grierson — who would go on to become the first commissioner of the National Film Board of Canada — coined the term documentary, Toronto’s burgeoning narrative feature industry has secured a permanent home. Late last month, Hot Docs received a […]

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