Results tagged “holidays”

The usual way for a driver to avoid eggnog-fuelled destruction during the holidays is for them to travel with a designated driver. This is a tried-and-true method of avoiding being the only perp at the station who smells alluringly of nutmeg. If, for whatever reason, it's not a viable option for you (maybe all your friends like the 'nog as much as you do?) Toronto-area entrepreneur John Long has a solution. It involves tow trucks.

              

The Santa Claus Parade was started by the now-defunct Eaton’s department store in 1905 with just one attraction: Santa. This year, on Sunday, November 15, the parade will feature twenty-six floats, twenty-one bands, and more than a million pieces of candy. To get a sneak peak at this year's edition of the one-hundred-and-five-year-old parade, Torontoist visited its Weston-area workshop last Thursday and talked to the people behind the magic—including the big man himself.

If you ever wanted to hear Har Mar Superstar try to pronounce "Degrassi Junior High," or listen to a techno remix of "O Canada," or reinforce your pre-existing feelings for Ellen Page, here's your chance: in the Crappy Holidays team video above, Justin Long, Har Mar Superstar, and Kathryn Aagesen (don't worry, we had to Google her too) prepare a Canadian Thanksgiving feast for—or is it with?—Ellen Page. And her eggo is preggo...with comedy!

This holiday season, Wal-Mart has graciously kept its Toronto stores open around the clock. To experience the holiday spirit during the stores' extended hours, Torontoist hitched a ride on the Blue Line this week at 3 a.m. to the Wal-Mart at Dufferin Mall.

Photo by hyfen from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

When you go to The Nutcracker, what you notice first are the girls. The little ones. You see the first little girl, squirming while her harried mother untucks taffeta skirt from tights, and then you see them everywhere. Little girls in festive plaid or their first favourite colour, pink. Little girls in ringlets and lip gloss, in patent mary janes, or still in snowboots, refusing to change into their fancy shoes.

Toronto's extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

Photo by Squeakyrat from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

The Santa Claus Parade is over and done with for another year, but jolly old St. Nicholas and his clones have still hardly had time to get comfortable on their thrones in the shopping malls. All the same, there’s already no room at the inn—or the parking lots, anyway. As seen from a helicopter in the early afternoon on Monday (here's a larger shot), Yorkdale Mall doesn’t have an unoccupied spot, just a gaggle of aisle-crawlers cruising and waiting for someone to leave.

It’s not quite Halloween yet and here’s the Bay already giving us warning that Santa, or perhaps just a close facsimile, is on his way—ten days ahead of the official November 16 Santa Claus Parade. Given the economic downturn, perhaps it takes longer to pry people’s money from their pockets.

SPORTS: The Toronto Maple Leafs take on the St. Louis Blues this afternoon. Ideally, the Leafs will see better results than last Saturday's game, but we're not keeping our hopes up. Air Canada Centre (40 Bay Street), 1 p.m., $44.61–$401.51.

For the forty-sixth year, St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church brought together the community of Little Italy with a procession marking Good Friday. Torontoist was there, capturing some of the faces of the neighbourhood event.

Happy Family Day! Happy, that is, unless you're part of the seemingly endless parade of business owners, executives, police officers, parents, people who have to work today, cynics, bitter old men, or plain old ne'er-do-wells in general who believe that Family Day is going to ruin life—and, more importantly, the economy—as we know it. Well, buck up, kiddo. It's just not that bad.

"There is nothing more valuable to families than time together. And yet it seems tougher than ever to find, with so many of us living such busy lives." So declared Dalton McGuinty on last October's announcement of a new holiday: Family Day! And McGuinty's right: work is hard, days off are totally sweet, and families are pretty great!

Photo by mappamundi.

Oh, how this time of the year can be so unexciting. Holidays are done, the New Year has come, and there is not much to look forward to until, well, the new statutory holiday. Until then, Musicologist recommends indulging in the odd show that surfaces from the woodwork and makes trekking through 20-below weather worthwhile. This Friday, for example, is worth that trek: Metal Kites and Great Bloomers are playing the Rivoli for a mere 5 bucks.

All photos by Kristin Foster.

Contributor Tony Makepeace is taking us for some spins around our city with his fantastic VR panoramas. You can look up, down, side to side, in and out—pretty much every direction but back at yourself, which would be kind of creepy. Say hello to Panoramaist: the Toronto shoe-gazer's worst enemy.

What to do if you are alone tomorrow, either because you don't celebrate Christmas, or because there's no one around to celebrate with:

In every neighbourhood there is one dude who goes a bit overboard with the Christmas lights. It's the stuff of bad Christmas movies. But few go quite as far as the Lindsay family, who seem to be trying their best to outdo the ZooTV tour.

Still missing some gifts on your holiday list? Here's a last-minute suggestion: the 2008 Toronto Fire Fighter Calendar. What better way to suffer a snow storm than with the company of 12 buff do-gooders? In addition, proceeds go to Princess Margaret Hospital to benefit the Fire Fighters' Cancer Research Fund. We caught up with Mr. July himself, Drew Foote, at a autograph signing at the Bay on Yonge Street this afternoon.

Really not much on in terms of Christmas films this week. The Bloor is showing National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (which is about as far away from a Christmas classic as we can imagine without being a film about aliens from another galaxy that have never heard of Christmas) and White Christmas. We’re still happy to recommend Enchanted (we just saw it, and it was absolutely lovely), but for those of you who want to see something specifically related to Christmas, the Revue has come to your rescue with the help of Dion Conflict, who will be showing Christmas Kitsch-A-Roo at 9:30 p.m. If you’re familiar with Dion Conflict’s Hunk-A-Junk screenings, you’ll know what to expect—a variety of utterly bizarre found shorts—but they’re normally excellent fun and the Christmas theme means some really weird stuff is going to show up. Hopefully he’ll be showing the legendary Santa Claus' Punch and Judy, which really has to be seen to be believed.

The ever-reliable Transit Toronto has just posted a comprehensive list of a number of Ontario transit services' holiday hours. If you have any intention of using any or all of Barrie Transit, Brampton Transit, Burlington Transit, Durham Region Transit, GO Transit, Guelph Transit, Hamilton Street Railway, Milton Transit, Mississauga Transit, Oakville Transit, Orangeville Transit, Region of Peel Transhelp, Toronto Transit Commission, or York Region Transit between today and December 28, the list is an invaluable look at how you will and won't be able to get around over the next week.

Photo from Deko-ze.

Photo by karlofun from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

We've already taken a look at a few local seasonal beers, and the reigning champion is still Great Lakes Winter Ale, which some have described as tasting like sitting beside your fireplace during a snowstorm.

It sounds pretty simple. There's one rule, right? Don't get so wasted that you a) spill the beans to your boss about i) the fact that you hate him/her or ii) the fact that someone is quitting, b) touch someone inappropriately, or c) throw up in your boss' lap. And yet come holiday season, we're bombarded by so much inane advice on how to not screw up at your office party that it's enough to make anyone paranoid. So to save you some time, we thought we'd do a summary of the not-so-helpful suggestions from our local etiquette experts.

In what simultaneously has to be one of the most hilariously inspired and gut-wrenching punishments in the history of parental discipline, a local GTA father has set a new standard for puffing penalization. The man—an elementary school teacher known by the screen name "k_lid"—decided to sell his son’s Christmas present on eBay (a notoriously hard-to-find copy of the best-selling Guitar Hero 3 game) when he returned home from work early to find 15-year-old Isaac...