Results tagged “halloween”

Well, look who's offering candy to babies now. Stephen Harper ditches the friendly blue sweater in favour of something a little spookier in this politically themed Halloween montage in Little India. On Woodfield Road, the resident artist's lawn arrangement is placed perfectly for tonight's festivities—the city will be closing down a portion of the road tonight from 6–9 p.m., where a fire eater will be taking the place of cars. And while the performer is busy chomping on flames and captivating the eyes of kids, well, here's hoping the politicians don't pop out and try to eat the children.

Halloween has long provided an excuse for Torontonians to relax and cut loose their stiffer qualities for at least one day. Whether it’s infants dressed as garden vegetables and insects or downtown revellers dressed in outfits that can’t be mentioned in family publications, Toronto has long loved assuming disguises and participating in all of the accompanying rituals that go along with today. A flip through old local newspapers shows that pranks played a large role in past Halloweens, from harmless showoffs to destructive blazes. For better or worse, tricks were as equally important as the treats.

Blackface: probably still not the best idea for a Halloween costume.

Unbeknownst to many, Toronto is full of landmarks, private homes, and even university buildings that supposedly shelter real live ghosts. From the McLaughlin Planetarium at the ROM to the Queen's Park vaults, these are the places that keep ghostbusters in business. Here are a few options if you're looking for a proper scare this Halloween.

                                   

It's a bit early for the dead to rise this month. Toronto's annual zombie walk—the seventh, can you believe—happened a full week before Halloween. But considering that the cruising speed of the average zombie is slightly faster than the Gardiner Expressway on Friday night, one week is probably about enough time to allow them to complete the course.

Oshawa, you big, adorable, patriotic lug, your heart really is in the right place. But seriously, calm down or you're going to pull something.

When an avid Halloween-lover hits high school, he or she has limited options: attend a friend’s haunted house party and try to score with that promiscuous ghost between the sheets, or continue trick-or-treating and hope that their height/beard/tattoos/piercings pass as all part of the costume. Unsatisfied with these choices, Rachel Brown decided instead to begin her own hallowed tradition. Ten years ago, she became a "Haunter," working year-round to transform 164 Old Forest Hill Road into the Haunt on the Hill, selected last year by Global TV as Toronto's scariest house.

Halloween has returned as scheduled, and there's lots on the plate this evening for ghosts, goblins, stormtroopers, and Jedis alike. If our detailed Halloween-ist guide hasn't sated your appetite for BRAINS...um, events to attend this evening, swing by some of the following gigs—just watch out for razors in apples, strangers in white (or was it red?) vans, unwrapped chocolate bars, crossing the road without a reflector, going into strangers' basements, shaking hands without sanitizer, and binge eating pixie sticks.

Photo by Bytepusher from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

"That doesn't make sense—Macs don't get viruses."

STREET PARTY: The last Pedestrian Sunday of the year invites us to honour our ancestors as we approach All Hallows Eve. Streets Are For People adds to their usual great Sunday market fun with some special holiday treats. Live music, messages to the dead, and a costume contest (registration between 2–3 p.m., runway contest at 5 p.m.) lead up to the sundown Halloween parade to the Underworld. Kensington Market, 1–7 p.m., FREE.

The post-holiday cleanup slowly continues across the city. Tree collection winds down this week, decorated lightposts grow patchier, and leftover sugar cookies are available for deep discounts alongside remaining Halloween candy.

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.

It has been exactly one year since our last subway party, which means this one is long overdue! Dress in your spookiest, scariest, funniest, or furriest costume and meet us by the last car at Kipling station at 11:13 p.m.

Rosie DiManno sucks. Every day, poor Toronto Star readers are subjected to another over-the-top, awkwardly-written, occasionally-insulting column about the day's top depressing story from the purple-streaked purveyor of pulp. Torontoist, for one, can't take it anymore. The Evidence From today's "'Not even close' to fair trial: Wills," another story where DiManno gets to stretch her oh-so-weak writing muscles about Richard Wills:One hundred and sixty-nine days, since jury selection began in the first-degree murder trial of...

Are you concerned that the magic's gone out of City Hall? If so, then this Saturday, November 3 might be your perfect opportunity to make a little magic happen over at Nathan Phillips Square, as a multidimensional mystery unfolds between the hours of 2:20 and 3:20 p.m.

With Halloween almost upon us, the mind turns to the dark side. Though today's ad seems innocent enough on the surface, its evil intentions are evident from its most prominently displayed sale price. While humans usually sell their soul to demons for wealth, power or self-sacrifice, all your eternal fate will earn you at Towers is a pair of cheap polyester pants.

'Tis the season for costumes, and this year, the boxy look is in. The inventive modus operandi of the recently arrested "Cardboard Box" Gang has given Torontoist this last-minute costume idea. Thief-In-The-Box is perfect for Halloween, or it will make a truly unique gift for the upcoming holiday season. Don’t hesitate, call and order your Thief-In-The-Box today! Operators are standing by to take your call. If cardboard isn't your style, try this vending machine disguise on for size.

There's an old cliché that says everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. It follows, then, that everyone is goth on Halloween .

On Sunday afternoon, over 150 independent publishers, writers, artists and bloggers from across the continent will pack Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel for Canzine, Canada’s largest celebration of small press publishing and alternative culture.

Last year, 26-year-old Ines Markeljevic had an idea. Why not try and set a Guinness World Record for the most people doing the Thriller dance?

New laws will officially criminalize identity theft by making it illegal to gather personal information which can be used for criminal purposes. Fun fact: if your identity is stolen online, the chances of the crime ever being investigated or prosecuted are practically zero. Surf safe, kids!

We’ve heard of skeletons in the closet before, but skeletons at Toronto’s Old Don Jail? Recent excavations uncovered three skeletons, likely former prisoners buried in the prison cemetery. Before the 1976 abolition of the death penalty in Canada, seventy executions by hanging took place at the jail. Please remind us not to go trick or treating at the Don Jail this Halloween, as we have an acute case of phasmophobia.

It’s always strange to write a Film Friday column in the week before the Toronto International Film Festival, since by this point it’s hard to think about anything else. We’ll be previewing the festival on Monday, so be sure to check back if you can’t think of anything else, either. In the meantime, have you had a chance to enter our Canadian Retrospective contest? You could win one Canadian Retrospective ticket package containing tickets for six screenings featuring nine Michel Brault films. It closes on Sunday!

It's almost time to say goodbye to North By Northeast for yet another year. Two longs nights have past, leaving tonight as the last chance to get out an enjoy some of the best new music from around the world. Seeing as it is Saturday, expect a lot of the shows to be really busy so going earlier is always better than later. All the cool kids are doing it!

"Hey kids, let's dig out that cowboy gear we bought for Halloween last year and hum the theme to Bonanza on the way to the Western Days hoe-down in Don Mills! Don't forget the toy gun, pardner!"

Call it cultural tourism, voyeurism, a geek fest, call it what you will. But when we heard that I Maid Cafe—a Cosplay restaurant—had opened up in Scarborough last December, we knew we would be taking the trip to Kennedy and Finch very soon.

¡Prospero año! Perhaps the only party "weekend" that Torontonians take more seriously than Halloween weekend, New Year's starts days before the calendar ends and terminates in a hangover, often in strange settings. We have rounded up what this Torontoist considers the best parties at which to get your groove on and completely forget the year 2006. When the glitter settles, the real question will be, "Where's the afterparty?"

Torontoist has noticed an abundance of lost pet notices downtown this month, and what could be sadder, really? We don't know if it's a time of year when pets go missing more often, but we do know it's unlikely to be a result of a Halloween ritual blood sacrifice. Many shelters south of the border report that most of their missing animal calls come on the heels of July 4th fireworks, which often scare a pet out of the house and into hiding.