Stephen Humphrey RSS
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OMG! Did you hear? Adam Giambrone cheated on his girlfriend and the other woman called the press because she totally thought he was married, which he wasn’t but then she read it in the paper and, like, totally went public.
OMG! That’s, like, so Tiger Woods!
You bet. Toronto city councillors are finally giving the city a show. I mean, the garbage strike was all kinds of thrills and spills, but it was messy and called for audience participation.
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What scares Canadian writers?
According to horror writer and critic Robert Knowlton, it’s wide-open spaces.
“Searching for Canadian dark fantasy is akin to peering into a dark wood,” he writes. “The foreground is densely foliated, but the background recedes into darkness.”
Knowlton’s essay, titled “Out of the Barrens: Two Centuries of Canadian Dark Fantasy and Horror” follows 23 “chilling tales from the great white north” which comprise Tesseracts 13. Calgary publisher Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing chose a darker direction this time for the influential sci fi anthology’s latest installment, in homage to the number 13’s sinister reputation.
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With the cloud of recession hanging over it, Toronto endured a smelly six-week garbage stike and saw one of its most beloved bookstores close.
Torontonians heard announcements that the city’s approach to transit was being re-imagined for the coming decade, but also that the mayor wouldn’t stick around past the next election. One colourful political figure announced he was leaving provinicial politics to make a bid for mayor, while an Etobicoke MP began his audition for the role of prime minster.
Cancer took the lives of a talented local singer and an admired shaper of cultural events.
Toronto couldn’t get through the year without its share of bad behaviour, as demonstrated by the convication of a pipe-swinging serial bike thief and an altercation between a cyclist and a politician’s convertible which left a bike-rider dead and a political career in ruins.
Experts now claim the economy is rebounding. Here’s hoping some of that good news trickles down during the coming year.
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Strings of bright lights, glowing nativity scenes and kitschy items such as Homer Simpson Santa Claus statues adorn the fronts of houses to bring festive feelings to Toronto neighbourhoods.
Celebratory lighting first dates back to pagan Winter Solstice celebrations. In early Christian times a lighted candle signalled where worshippers could gather to avoid Roman persecution. The lighted Christmas tree became an established tradition under Queen Victoria in the 19th Century.
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There was room for plenty of pre-holiday acrimony in the final session of Ontario’s legislative assembly before it reconvenes in February.
Opposition MPPs managed to get in some final moments of shouted invective about the less-than-popular harmonized sale tax, which finance minister Dwight Duncan was left to defend in the premier’s absence.
Meanwhile George Smitherman, outgoing minister of energy and infrastructure, found energy enough for a passive-aggressive comment about Toronto’s incumbent mayor as he bid farewell to provincial politics to begin his own bid for Toronto mayor.
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Global leaders will soon discuss how to handle the dire state of earth’s climate, but the climate of corporate Canada may have already shifted. Or so it seemed as top environmentalists complemented and appealed to them Tuesday night at Exhibition Place.
David Suzuki looked across a banquet hall in Exhibition Place’s Allstream Centre, where a mostly corporate audience applauded from 150 full tables.
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Robots resembling runaway factory hoppers roll around the Ontario Science Centre’s grand hall, tossing bright-coloured balls that look to be made of silly string.
The bewildering game takes place under a banner proclaiming, “Robots Rule Weekend.” The flag presides over two simultaneous events where robots and their makers play games.
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Their thoughts keep returning to the impression of a human body in a hotel bed.
Not unusual, perhaps, in a frequently slept-in hotel suite. Unless the hotel has been boarded up for the past seven years.
For decades the Guild Inn was a jewel of Toronto-area hospitality. It was dormant since 2001, however, when the city of Toronto, the inn’s current owners, closed its doors. The once-grand hotel gradually became an eyesore among the statues and greenery of Guildwood.
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In his blog, CityNews meteorologist Michael Kuss suggested Torontonians not be too shocked to see a few unhealthy trees down.
Indeed.
Residents of the condo community at the foot of Livingston Rd. got to see the venerable old willow at its gate drop one mighty bough during last week’s storminess.
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An older man leaving a Bank of Montreal answers he’s not going to the farmer’s market just steps away from his branch.
“Too expensive,” he says. “They say it’s because it’s fresh,” he adds sceptically.
A stretch of grass next facing Scarborough’s Guildwood Parkway, is populated with white tent-tops and tables spread with vegetables, fish, free-range chickens and home-made wing sauces.
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As local and national news media struggle to employ every stock phrase concerning disaster to describe the spate of tornadoes that chewed through parts of Durham and Vaughan, the big smoke remained surprisingly unscathed.
Heavy storms smacked with sudden force into Metro Toronto, leaving behind breathless post-storm coverage and rainbows.
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It’s not at every dance rehearsal you hear someone say, “You’re stepping on my face!”
It’s more common when dancers become airborne.
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Despite a sweltering hot day, odours from the nearby, much-reviled trash pile in the outdoor skating rink at Christie pits didn’t reach spectators gathered to watch the Maple Leafs, Toronto’s minor league ball club, square off against the Guelph Majors.
Nonetheless, the overflowing rim of the city’s most controversial mini-transfer station was visible from the bleachers. Anyone who approached the much-contested site would be treated to the bouquet of rotting refuse as contractors offloaded the final bags of local trash before the site was shut at 7 p.m.
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After an apparent seizure, a character speaks with an old man in rapid-fire, elliptical phrases that might have been penned by absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett.
Next scene, a woman wrapped in bandages experiences either drowning, religious ecstasy, sexual excitement or birth trauma, while our hero gets more nervous. A burbly, ambient soundtrack plays that could easily back David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
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A fist-fight even erupts during the second half of a roller derby bout called the Clam Slam at west Toronto’s George Bell Arena.
So does a stolen kiss between team leaders, known as pivots, before ten hard-skating women hit the track in what is arguably the hardest-hitting women’s sport. (More …)
