Laura Godfrey RSS
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For 35 years, toy train tracks, pillow pit reading spots and shelves of donated books characterized the Children’s Storefront, a laid-back family drop-in centre. There was no set schedule for playgroups or reading circles, and parents appreciated the flexibility of a centre that worked around their schedules.
But on Oct. 31, a fire destroyed the building, and decades of memories along with it.
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Ted Barris has spent the better part of his life tracking down living history.
The author, broadcaster and Centennial College journalism professor has interviewed and befriended Canadian veterans from the First World War and onward, and over several decades has written 16 books on our country’s history. But in his latest book, Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories From the Great War to Afghanistan, Barris, 60, offers more than just another account of the great military battles.
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On Wednesday night at The Tranzac downtown, a 34-year-old man took to the stage and spewed more than 60 insults and obscenities to a large crowd. They hooted with laughter, gasped at the more taboo terms and broke out into applause when it was all over.
Andrew Jehan’s performance was an extreme example of what audiences might hear at Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, a free reading series whose name pretty much says it all. This was the eighth installment of a show where people read old diary entries, angsty teen poetry and mystifying grade school assignments to a roomful of strangers.
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Fire spinners, chainsaw-juggling clowns and human statues of all kinds took to the streets around the St. Lawrence Market this week. Starting on Thursday, August 27, the 10th annual Toronto BuskerFest descended upon Front Street between Yonge and Jarvis, celebrating the art of pleasing the crowd for a living. Check out our gallery featuring some of the best acts from the first two days.
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As the lead fire performer with Zero Gravity Circus, Kalen “PyRomeo” Davidson, 27, goes through a lot of aloe vera. The road to his unique profession started when the Vancouver-born daredevil went to a very unusual party in his early teens.
“There was a sort of outdoor jam session going on with circus performers doing fire eating, fire breathing and fire staff, which is [now] my favourite prop,” Davidson says. “I saw them and said, ‘I can do that.’ It was really exhilarating. I felt moved and I kind of fell in love with it.”
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When Ezra Houser tried stilt-walking for the first time, he was immediately off and running. But despite his bird’s-eye view atop stilts four feet long, Houser admits that in everyday life he stands at a modest five feet nine inches.
“I’m a little guy,” he says.
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Just when they were preparing for ferries to revive their deserted businesses, Toronto Islands workers must endure yet another delay in the 38-day city strike.
Although the strike was set to be ratified today, CUPE Local 416 – representing Toronto’s outside workers – has delayed their vote. Mayor David Miller said at a press conference this afternoon that the main problem is negotiating back-to-work protocol. In other words, who’s going to clean up those mountains of garbage?
But business owners on Toronto Islands are just eager to welcome back the 22,000 visitors they normally see each day on a typical July weekend.
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For 62 low-income families living in run-down, high-rent areas, the garbage bags piling up at nearby drop sites are not the cause of the big stink in Toronto’s city strike. Instead, it’s the news that construction on their affordable housing units has been pushed back indefinitely.
These families were scheduled to move into houses built by Habitat for Humanity Toronto. Some had already given notice to their current landlords. According to Neil Hetherington, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Toronto, the most emotional part of all this is telling families they can’t move into their new homes.
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Step aside, Bella and Sookie – this year’s Fringe Festival is bringing back the leading lady of a vampire franchise from before your time, with her very own Scooby gang to boot.
Starting this week at the Bloor Cinema, dreams will come true for fans of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On July 2, 5 and 10, the show’s critically-acclaimed musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” finds its way onstage as a shadow-cast, where enthusiastic performers will recreate the show as it plays on a movie screen behind them. (More …)
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Between Tiger Beat and Seventeen, fad diets and makeup tips, the typical teen magazine doesn’t normally give young girls much credit. That’s why Shameless, a feminist teen magazine, reaches out to “young female readers who are often ignored by the mainstream: freethinkers, queer youth, young women of colour, punk rockers, feminists, intellectuals, artists and activists.”
On Tuesday night, the magazine launched its new book She’s Shameless: Women Write About Growing Up, Rocking Out and Fighting Back at a prom/anti-prom celebration featuring live readings and music at the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom. In an uncanny recreation of my own high school experience, the DJ played ‘90s classics from the likes of Blur and TLC, while a vintage episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer played on a projector screen in the background. (More …)
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When Kai Wa Yapp, 22, heard about Buddies in Bad Times Theatre just over a year ago, he was relieved to find a haven for queer youth. As a gay high school student in the suburbs of Richmond Hill, he found that his hometown lacked the diversity of the downtown theatre.
Three days before deadline, he applied for PrideCab 2008, an annual cabaret that gives 10 young, queer performers between the ages of 15 and 25 the chance to collaborate on a creative, multi-disciplinary performance. This year, he’s back as the assistant to directors Chy Ryan Spain and Evalyn Parry. (More …)
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Just when the fleeting, inconsequential world of Twitter is beginning to spread its wings, one Toronto artist has decided to pluck some noteworthy Tweets from the Twitterverse and stick them somewhere permanent.
Sarah Lazarovic’s art installation, called “Older,” was shown Tuesday in the Luminato Box at Brookfield Place (181 Bay St.). It was the fifth of 10 installations to be shown by different artists at this location – one for each day of the Luminato Festival. (More …)
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It’s not every day that you walk through busy Nathan Phillips Square and find yourself face-to-face with a big, 15-foot inflatable red ball.
In fact, today’s the only day you can do just that, as the RedBall Project kicks off the 10-day, mostly-free Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity.
The big, red ball weighs 250 pounds and takes about an hour to go from a deflated stack of PVC fabric to a 15-foot interactive piece of public art. This project, created by artist Kurt Perschke, has travelled through cities such as Barcelona, Sydney and Chicago – Perschke’s native town – and has been tucked, wedged and hung in some unexpected places. (More …)
