Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Queen Street West and James Street, looking northeast. William James Sr., 1908. Wikimedia Commons One of the easiest way to grab a snapshot of Toronto's past is to find the nearest microfilm reader (or online archive) and browse any of the newspapers that have chronicled the daily adventures of the city. For......

In the current issue of Toronto Life, Philip Preville attempts to argue for a big-box store in Leslieville. It's no easy task, but Preville's argument is pretty sound, resting on convenience (it'd be close to where people live), location (what else is going to go in its place?), cost (cheap!), and—oh yes—the environment (less driving = less pollution). Preville also says about the smartest thing we've yet heard about the development, which is that "instead......

Eye's Kate Carraway, in an article about how Toronto media is not even close to being mean, critical, or gossipy enough (which Gawker has already had a field day with): "Safe is too easy to get right, as is the all-consuming earnestness of Spacing, Torontoist, BlogTO and the rest of it. This city has needed these outlets (and also Wavelength and the uTOpia series and their similars) to build a sense of self-confidence. But none......

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On Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice gave a press conference about the South Ossetia war, taking the opportunity to gently chastise Russia on behalf of the American government for not ending military operations in the region. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, like many other news organizations, had a live feed from the White House to televisions across Canada during the conference—that is, until the feed got knocked out mid-question, just as a reporter was comparing Russia's moves......

It's hard to disagree with the wisdom attributed to New York Sun editor John B. Bogart, that "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." And if a man bites another man? Depends. And if a man eats (even a part of) another man? In that regard, we have to respectfully differ from the CBC. The other......

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Photo of Gordon Sinclair in the Far East (ca. 1930). City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 2098. After a long and controversial career, Gordon Sinclair's obituary called him "soft-hearted, irascible, generous, rude, impulsive, sensitive, boorish, colourful, egotistical, irritating, explosive, warm and irreverent all rolled into one." The description was apt. With......

On Monday, after running a factually-dubious cover article claiming Toronto was in the midst of another "summer of the gun," the Toronto Sun conducted a poll asking their readers if they thought Toronto was safe. Of 3648 respondents, 72% said no. At least the Sun gave their readers an option: after CityNews also published a story claiming a summer of the gun, their poll offered voters five possible responses to the question "Do you......

Photo by David Topping. Last week, Torontoist spent a good amount of time and energy analyzing homicide statistics in Toronto. From the data we examined, we concluded that not only was Toronto a relatively safe city (insofar as homicides measure overall safety), but that it actually seemed to be improving—and that the media had a responsibility it had been largely neglecting to report the truth rather than sensationalize it. You need only look at......

"Hordes of Annex hipsters watched in disbelief last night while police cordoned off the intersection at Bloor St. W. and Brunswick Ave. and questioned witnesses about a shooting that took place at 11 p.m., wounding two young people."......

At right is the cover of The New Yorker's July 21 edition. It depicts, as Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar summarized, Barack and Michelle Obama enacting "every smeary right-wing stereotype imaginable: ...[Barack] Obama in a turban and robes fist-bumping his be-afro'd wife, dressed in the military fatigues of a revolutionary and packing a machine gun and some serious ammo. Oh yes, this quaint little scene takes place in the Oval Office, under a picture of Osama......

NOW is getting set to launch its new blog, NOW Daily, this week. Edited by former Torontoist editor/curmudgeon Josh Errett, it's promising "daily album reviews, a stable of online-only columnists, stage and live music recaps, breaking news and interviews. And, what with the wonders of the World Wide Web, a healthy amount of content will be interactive, like map mash-ups and reader reviews, and also multimedia, like playlists, podcasts and videos." About time. And also:......

Well, it's a slight improvement over "LIES." Someone has been placing homemade warning labels on newspaper boxes—only Toronto Sun newspaper boxes, as far as we know—that caution: "Contents may cause ignorance, cynicism, and distrust in public institutions. Repeated exposure may impair intellect." The stuck-on Sun box pictured above was spotted by Ron Miyanishi around Jones and Danforth. Photo by squeakyrat from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.......

Earlier this week, Toronto Life killed off their blogs. The move was a surprising one, especially since the magazine was one of the few local print outlets that had finally started to figure out how to create interesting and original content online that was separate from but complimentary to what could be found in print. According to Toronto Life's Online Editor, Matthew Fox, the magazine is "re-evaluating where we are investing our Web editorial......

Well, that didn't take long: Toronto Life has pulled the plug on Philip Preville's City State blog, on James Chatto's Chatto's Digest, and probably on Doug Bell's Spectator, too. Chatto was gone as of June 19, and today Preville wrote a post on City State that first read (in our RSS reader, at least) that "City State is being discontinued as of this post, as is its sister blog, Doug Bell’s wonderfully amusing Spectator, so......

This is how today's AY    R arrived at subscribers' doorsteps. The wrap was last year's innovation. The beer "coaster" is a piece of paper stuck on like a post-it note. We wonder what 2009 will bring.......

Severed feet are turning up on beaches in British Columbia—this Monday, the fifth one in the past year floated onto Westham Island, south of Vancouver. It's the first left foot found in a sea of rights, and the gruesome mystery has provided fodder for many a news organization. This week, the Globe published two versions of the story onto their website: one in the British Columbia section and the other in National. The stories......

Back in the 1960s, if you were female and wanted to be a journalist, you would have had to content yourself with getting coffee for the “real” reporters (i.e. men), making copies (for men), and maybe (if you were lucky) doing research work and writing (which men would read). Barbara Walters changed that, paving the way for everyone from Diane Sawyer and Christiane Amanpour to Meredith Vieira and Katie Couric. She was in Toronto last......

"City State," writes Toronto Life's Philip Preville in his first post on the magazine's new blog of that name, "will try to take some of the piss out of this town." To wit:Here’s another urban riddle for you: Why doesn’t Toronto have a better sense of humour about itself? Wit, pun, snark, cheek and parody are the only sensible responses to Rob Ford, the TTC’s union, the new black hole–size recycling bins, the CN......

William Morassutti and the TORO girls at his Brant House (yes, Brant House) launch party. A picture is worth 1000 words, or roughly twice as long as the average article in the new TORO "Magazine." It took us two mornings to recover from the oceans of alcohol imbibed at the TORO online launch party on Wednesday, peel our champagne goggles from our mascara-encrusted eyes, and take a deep breath and a second look at......

In an article in last Saturday's Globe about NOW and Eye's dwindling readerships, Eye's City Editor Edward Keenan told the Globe that "we keep asking, how do we reinvent ourselves? But maybe we should stop trying to be the best of a dying species." Keenan's words felt a bit out of place, coming, as they did, at the end of an article that featured the publishers of both weeklies assuring the Globe that their......

Remember when the town crier would stand on Yonge Street and shout his hear-say and hear-ye, passing out copies of the daily news for a penny a pop? Yeah, us neither. The fast-spreading news of today is a far cry from days of old (take us for example), and we'll bet you didn't see what was coming next. But tomorrow at the corner of Queen and John, you just might. Walk past Pages and......

Photos of CablePulse24's broadcast on July 25, 2007, courtesy of Joel Charlebois. Just before noon on July 25, 2007, Joel Charlebois caught a man, he says, breaking into his house. When Charlebois gave chase, the man fell from the second-storey deck, landing hard on the ground below and breaking his leg. As police arrived, Charlebois—an avid photographer who has a Flickr account under the name uwajedi, who is an active member of Torontoist's Flickr......

ThinkWater.ca, the Canadian manifestation of the United Nations' Water for Life campaign, is by all appearances a worthy project, aimed at educating citizens in various facets of water conservation, from the problems with bottled water, to the benefits of more efficient toilets. One of its TV ads [MPG], in which random shoppers in Kensington Market are quizzed on their knowledge of storm water management (and are grossed out to learn that everything that goes......

Several ways to interpret the stated goal of "reporting some of the happier happenings in our community": An opportunity for budding reporters to hone their skills on enlightening human interest stories and positive community events that fly under the radar during a typical grim news day. A momentary respite from the sensationalism creeping into the news world. A program that allows a media outlet like CFRB to break in fresh young talent gently, without......

No, it's not a printing error—all 815,000 copies of Metro across the country really are pink today. The stunt is in support of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, and the ad-supported free daily is donating 5% of today's national advertising revenue to the CBCF (what that amount actually is remains undisclosed, but editions of Metro are also published in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Montréal, and Halifax). Corporate sponsors are crucial to the Canadian Breast......

Torontoist had a major hard-on for Toro Magazine during its four-year run as Canada's handsomest glossy. So when the thinking lad's mag shrivelled up back in spring 2007 (proving, sadly, that subscribers and awards mean little without advertisers and government funding), its sudden absence from newsstands left us frustrated and unfulfilled. Investigative reporting, social commentary, witty essays, and tits? We couldn't find all this between the sheets of any other rag in the country.......

At this time last year, BBC journalist Alan Johnston was being held hostage. For the three years before he was kidnapped by a Palestinian jihadist organization called the Army of Islam, Johnston was the last foreign correspondent brave enough to live and work in the volatile Gaza Strip. He spent four months as a hostage, from March 12 until his release 114 days later on July 4. To celebrate World Press Freedom Day, Alan......

It's 1:45 a.m. now. The TTC strike is done: twelve hours ago, TTC employees were legislated back to work by the provincial government; nine hours ago, TTC service started back up; not too far from now, employees' Monday morning shifts will start as usual, in time to transport the morning rush. But you wouldn't know that from the Star's Strike Watch blog, which the front page of the Star's website still links to, which......

Despite its excellent online coverage from 10:30 p.m. Friday and onwards, not all print editions of Saturday's National Post carried news of the TTC strike. All versions of its Toronto Magazine, however, included the presciently coincidental graphics shown above (Post illustrators' responses to the predictably utopian sentiments of the "My Toronto Is..." tourism ads proffered by OCAD advertising students for their annual let's-generate-PR-for-a-billboard-company contest). Graphics by Jonathon Rivait and Steve Murray, respectively.......